In 2002, I walked out of the house I’d spent seven years restoring. My marriage had ended and I knew the old house needed lots more work and I knew that as a fledgling writer, I didn’t have the financial wherewithal or the emotional energy or the time required to work on the old house. My soon-to-be ex-husband, on the other hand, was strong, competent, capable and had the skills to build and/or repair anything with nothing more on hand than a leatherman, a speedometer cable and a couple wagon wheels. And maybe some duct tape, too.

In 1995, my (then) husband and I had moved into the fixer-upper in Alton, Illinios. The purchase price was a mere $50,000.  The house wasn’t in the best of shape, but we knew that going in. As the years passed, we installed new ductwork, new central air, new furnace, some new plumbing and repaired the box gutters, and replaced the massive, 14/12 roof.

In addition, I painstakingly removed thousands of gallons of beige paint from ornate newel posts, staircase baulstrades, quarter-sawn oak fireplaces and more. As anyone who’s stripped paint knows, this is a laborious process that involves meticulous work, mind-numbing detail and very sharp dental picks.

The house consumed thousands of hours of my life. The research alone consumed too many hours to count. I pored over countless magazines and books, reading, reseaching and learning the best way to restore old wooden shutters and how to mix lime mortar for the 100-year-old limestone foundation and what color of paints were most appropriate for a home built in 1904.

It was a labor of love and an enormous undertaking. I even wrote and sold a few articles about the projects. Read a snippet here:

And then in 2002, the marriage ended and I moved out of the house and into a crummy singles’ apartment. Yes, it was hard to see a 24-year-old marriage die. It was hard to leave the family home. It was excruciating to have my sweet daughter only 50% of the time. But there was another loss that no books on divorce ever talk about: Walking away from my semi-finished pièce de résistance. It was to be the crowning jewel of my old house projects. For so many years, it had been my raison d’être and now it was gone.

I still remember working on that house for hours and hours and asking myself, “Is this really a productive use of time? Is this a worthy way to spend a life?” And then I’d reassure myself by saying, “Yes, this is your legacy. This is your gift to the neighborhood, to the community and to the city. This house will endure long after you’ve left this earth.”

Turns out I was wrong.

Two years after the marriage ended, my ex-husband lost the house to foreclosure. And then last month, a well-meaning friend called to report that the bank had gutted the house. Every *&^% thing I did was erased. Those 100-year-old louvered shutters -  replete with vintage hardware that I’d been painstakingly restored - were tossed right in the dumpster and replaced with some shiny new vinyl shutters. That beautiful wood with its deep rich grain - covered again in some nice latex beige paint. The quarter-sawn oak fireplace mantel is - after a brief respite - again covered in crappy beige paint.  And all those old vintage photos that I discovered after much legwork, the photos that showed the house in 1906, with smiling families standing in the foreground, well all those crummy old photos were pitched, too. It’s all gone.

I tried to interrupt my friend as she told me this.

“Please stop,” I told my friend.

I don’t think she heard me.

“Please, I’m serious. I don’t want to hear anymore. This is heart-breaking. Really heart-breaking.”

And finally, after all the horses and the cows and a couple pigs had escaped the barn, she finally shut the doors.

I look at the house I own today - a lovely 1924 Center Hallway Colonial - and my passion for a pure and faithful restoration has ebbed a bit. What will happen to this house when I’m gone, I wonder.

I wish my friend had kept this news to herself.  I would have been far happier not knowing.