There is one fact that I have discovered while renovating and repairing this great old house. That is that any given project will take approximately three times the expected amount of time to finish, and will cost up to ten times more money than estimated. This has been referred to as The Mushroom Factor, and is evidently a known part of owning an old house. Take, for instance, my dining room light fixture.
We had only been in the house for a couple of years when we decided to have our first fancy dinner party. Actually, my husband thought I was nuts right off the bat (did I mention I was pregnant?), so it was I who gathered my strength, planned a menu, and got the place cleaned and ready for company. As I was setting the dining room table the morning of the event, one of the light bulbs in the hanging fixture over my head went out. Okay, I thought, this is no big deal. I'll get a light bulb, climb on a chair, and fix it.
Well, the first thing I had to do was run to the hardware store and get some light bulbs, as we were out of the ones that matched the fixture. Then we had to move the table and most of what was on it to reach the light. As my husband (face it, we do need them for the menial chores) was changing the bulb, a bit of plaster plunked down from the ceiling onto the table. As a result, I climbed onto the table and tried to clear away any problem plaster that would potentially wreck my perfect table setting.
There was only one small glitch. The plaster in the ceiling surrounding the base of the light fixture was wet. Not soaking wet so you could see it from a hundred yards away, but damp enough to point to a problem leak somewhere on the second floor. At that point I took everything off of my table and pulled down all of the remaining soggy plaster. Then I went upstairs to see what was going on. I now had a three-foot in diameter hole in the dining room ceiling, and a similar amount of soggy plaster on the table.
It didn't take much searching on the second floor to discover that the drain pipe from the bathtub had a leak. To get to this leak it looked like we would have to pull up the tub, break through the concrete base under it, and figure out which section of pipe was about to be dripping on my party. So I called a plumber. He arrived quickly, but refused to touch anything wet until the electricity under it had been disconnected, so I called my electrician. By now it was after lunch time, and getting dangerously close to the appointed dinner hour.
It took the electrician only a moment to disconnect everything, and happily the plumber found the leaky joint without having to break up the entire bathroom floor. Before he left, I had the electrician hook up the light fixture once more. The ceiling, however, was still in the middle of my dining room table.
Believe it or not, the party was not cancelled. I still had the dinner guests arrive as scheduled. However, the style of the evening changed considerably. We had a lovely buffet set up on a couple of card tables in the living room, and we all ate on our laps. It's a good thing we have understanding friends, but then, most of them live in old houses, too.
There is, I guess, a moral to this story, and it comes in the form of a quiz:
Question: How many people does it take to change a light bulb in an old house?
Answer: The two owners, a plumber and assistant, an electrician, and eventually a plasterer and painter to complete the repairs on the ceiling. Mercifully, I have completely forgotten how much this all cost us.
By the way, I wouldn't trade my old house for anything. As of this November, we have been in it for 35 years. We have rebuilt most of it at some time or other, but the best things we have built are 35 years worth of memories.
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