A bungalow, a Q-tip, & a cloud of dust

I live in a 966-square-foot bungalow in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina. The house is 22 feet wide and 45 feet deep. It has white plastic siding (unfortunate) and a quaint front porch with a wooden swing (very fortunate). There’s a jasmine plant that swallows the right side of the porch, and every summer, the vines explode into a curtain of white flowers that smell like angels’ laundry. This house is charming, strange, inefficient, whimsical, and honest. It’s also old: Named the Moore-Davis house, this home was built in 1898 and has a wooden plaque from the Wilmington Historical Society hanging between the two front windows. It used to be two stories, but the second story caught fire at some point (likely between 1938-1949), and the owners removed it entirely–which explains the strange layout of the remaining floor. 

When Robby and I bought the house in 2018, we thought we’d only be here for a few years. We had little interest in or reason for home improvement projects. The walls could stay dingy white, the ancient carpet could remain intact, and we’d sell the house soon and be on our way.

Problem is, we fell in love with this house, and with Wilmington. We decided to stay, at least for a little while. This led to a series of haphazard home improvement projects, passionately–and often poorly–executed, that have increased in frequency and ambition, snowballing into what I can only describe as the early stages of addiction. Or, if we’re being rosy about it, a love affair. I am in love with painting plywood walls aggressive shades of rust and marigold. I am in love with ripping up carpet and extracting the staples beneath until my wrist is sore. I am in love with drilling holes for shelves, realizing I did the math wrong, shouting god DAMN it, patching those holes, and starting again.

Robby is less in love with these things, but pitches in when I inevitably get in over my head. The thing is, I’m not particularly good at DIY. I aim high, plan poorly, and budget inaccurately. Of the dozens of home improvement projects I’ve attempted, several have featured a searing moment of clarity in which I realize I’ve done everything wrong and need to start from scratch. Here is the one I think about the most.

Two years ago, I made the very sensible and chill decision to tear up the carpet in our bedroom, sand the paint off the original hardwood floors, and stain them. I had done something similar two years before in the back room of our house when I ripped up the carpet in a frenzy. (“Frenzy” is truly the only word for it–I got pissed about something completely unrelated to carpet, happened to glance at the carpet, and then moved all the furniture and ripped it out.) While that project ended up being incredibly labor intensive–try sanding an entire room of 122-year-old wood with a 5” orbital sander–overall, things actually went smoothly. The floor was raw wood in good condition; I slapped on two coats of tung oil and called it a day.

This beginner’s luck caused me to approach the bedroom with unbridled hubris. I lifted up a corner of the carpet to find thick original floor boards coated with ugly brown paint. All I had to do, I told myself, was rent a sander–an actual, industrial sander this time–and sand up the paint. I’d find a cool stain, or maybe just some polyurethane, and would have the warm, rustic bedroom of my dreams within a day and a half.

Robby wanted no part of this project. I told him I’d do the whole thing myself; he would not have to be involved at all. He did not believe me.

My friend Elly came over to help. We drank boxed wine, ripped out the carpet, and pulled up the legion of staples beneath. It took hours. The brown paint was disorienting (who paints wood brown?) but the floors were in such good shape that it was hard to think about anything else. What could possibly go wrong when this floor–this stunning, ancient floor–echoed so beautifully when we stomped across it in our boots?

The next day, I rented an orbital sander from Home Depot. I placed a box fan–pointed outward–in the bedroom window to create a negative air space. I put on goggles and a standard, covid-era face mask and got to work. I quickly discovered that instead of detaching in the form of dust, the paint was melting. Within five seconds, the three sandpaper discs on the bottom of the machine were gummed up with hot brown putty. I tried different sandpaper grit levels. I tried moving the machine faster, then slower. The paint kept melting. This was not going to work.

I went back to Home Depot and rented a drum sander, designed for tougher jobs. It was still slow going–the floor had at least two seemingly impenetrable coats of paint, and reloading sandpaper in a drum sander is cumbersome. I hacked away at the floors for hours. It was 11pm when I finally called it a day. I showered, went into the back room where Robby and I would be sleeping, and curled up beside him.

It was at this moment that Robby asked a question that will echo through my brain for years.

“Hey,” he said, “is this lead paint?”

We immediately ordered a lead paint test online and called poison control, who advised us not to sleep in the house. Based on the age of our home, this likely was lead paint, and we’d treat it as such until we could get a test. 

We slept in the van for the next two nights while I worked to rectify the home I had just filled with potentially toxic dust. I felt horrendous. Not only had I created a scenario in which Robby, Thelma, and I were possibly inhaling lead paint, but the floors weren’t even done: stubborn swaths of reddish brown were stuck to the wood in random patterns. Robby and I bought lead abatement suits and masks from Home Depot and tried to sand some more, but it became clear that it would take days for us to remove every piece of paint. Days of us sleeping in the van, renting industrial equipment, and working in a cloud of lead. 

After 24 hours of wearing hazmat suits and fearfully trying to finish the project–during which we called every hardware store in the area, none of which had paint tests–the lead kit arrived from Amazon. It was a container of pretty, marigold-colored Q-tips. We ran one under the sink and then rubbed it in a patch of paint dust. It immediately turned dark fuschia: positive.

We looked at the floor. The wood that had been properly sanded was absolutely gorgeous–dark cool oak with strong grain running through it. The floor was a map of six-inch-wide rivers, sporadically interrupted by toxic waste mudslides. We decided to quit. I briefly mourned the room I had wanted to create, then got to work covering the unfinished floor–paint and all–with five coats of polyurethane. We’d researched how to neutralize lead paint, and this is one of the methods.  Five coats was overkill, but we wanted the lead to remain sealed in, even if the poly chipped. The moment the first coat dried, the floor tested negative. We kept applying coats anyway.

Over the three days of this project, I rented four pieces of industrial equipment, took six trips to three different hardware stores–none of which are near my house–spent hundreds of dollars, had roughly seventy-four marital arguments, and cried three times. The guilt was the worst part: I had forgotten lead paint existed. I had exploded it through our house.

The strangest part is, immediately after we were finished, I felt the nightmare had been worth it. Assuming we didn’t have permanently heightened lead levels (possible, but unlikely! I refuse to get checked!), these messy, warzone-ass floors were still better than beige carpet from the early 2000’s. They felt truer to the house itself.

When the dust settled (oof), Robby and I patched things up. We hung more art in the bedroom. We built library shelves. We added a beautiful duvet and a cool rug and a striking longhorn skull, which is now mounted somewhat menacingly above our bed. Our bedroom has become my favorite room in the house: it’s warm and moody and full of treasures.

I believe that the places we live feel the love we put into them. This is true for generational family homes and college dorms, for cramped apartments and childhood bedrooms. Our homes capture the energy of what’s inside, and the act of caring for them or dreaming with them in whatever ways we can–regardless of how long we’re there or how much we’re legally or financially able to alter–means something. I have the privilege of living in a home that other people have loved, and of being able to uncover a new chapter of this house one room at a time. For me, love looks like poorly executed projects that give me searing back pain and possible lead poisoning. For the person who lives here after me, it will look like stripping off five coats of polyurethane and wondering what the hell  happened here. Hopefully, they’ll forgive me. Hopefully, they’ll do what feels truest to who they are in this home.