Writing Sample

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Long before HGTV, Brew and I took on a major fixer upper. Bulrush Farm - a raccoon-infested antique home (with a solid barn!) on seven acres outside Boston. It had been empty and on the market for years. This was 1993 - before Zillow- and home buyers were at the mercy of their broker, the classified real estate section in the local newspapers, and a few blurry photographs crammed onto a single sheet of paper. After walking around the peeling and rotting house, Brew said, “Let’s go in.” The broker fessed-up that Brew was the first person who’d asked to look inside, so he didn’t have a housekey. 

How bad was the house? One side was so rotted that the builder couldn’t understand how it was still standing.  A one-story laundry room had imploded (but we were able to salvage the 6’ antique porcelain sink). The painters worked over 1,500 hours. We gutted several rooms to make an open-concept kitchen, dining and family room that I designed. We rehabbed the formal dining and living rooms and a study with 28” wide floorboards from the 1600s. Of the 5.5 bathrooms, only one toilet worked. We replaced the toilets, converted one upstairs bathroom into the laundry, and renovated the master bathroom which we all shared for a few years. We moved in while four painters were still patching and painting and sometimes feeding our kids breakfast while I raced to get ready for work – they were an awesome group.

For 25 years, Bulrush Farm was where we raised our family, dogs, chickens, horses and cats. Over time we renovated bathrooms, added on to the kitchen, created a master suite, added terraces and gardens, and replaced fallen trees. It was a house that begged for entertaining, and we threw so many parties from Chili, Cheer and Chrees (part of the farm had Christmas trees that we gave to our friends and local groups) to a huge annual Christmas Eve gig that a friend has continued in our absence. We hosted countless birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter dinners for friends and family. We organized a dozen fundraisers in our barn for a variety of nonprofits. It was truly an amazing place to live and raise our family. But after the kids grew up, it felt huge and empty and sorely lacking young ones to run around and sled on its hills. 

We sold it ourselves to a lovely couple who we knew would fill it with their young family and friends. We stay in touch and they sometimes ask us to come back for a visit.  But I can't. With an unbreakable attachment to Bulrush Farm, I even drive out of my way to avoid seeing others living in "our" house.  Then again, how many people enjoy a decades-long love affair with a house?

Portrait by Miranda Updike of Earl and Ralf - on the terrace off the kitchen.