By Susan Hampton

It is the color of a small wildflower called blue flax, which grows in the woods up Senator Highway. Or, if you prefer, it is the exact color of the sky on a Prescott afternoon.

Either way, it is a happy color, and people smile when they look at it, even if they are shaking their heads.

Our house on N. Pleasant Street gets its share of attention. People tend to drive by slowly. Some even pull right up and park to get a better look. Tourists walk by leisurely, stop and gaze.

A neighbor advised: Don't engage them in conversation. You'll never get anything done.

Former residents drop by now and again to offer information. Piece by piece, we are learning about the life of our 1892 Victorian. Piece by piece, we are dismantling her.

The house began as a simple Victorian, built by a doctor, John Martin, for his family. He sold it to Reese Ling, who added the turret, expanded and reconfigured the floor plan, dividing it into apartments. Thus, it is known as the Martin-Ling Residence. After decades of owners and renters, the house is officially declared by the State Historic Preservation Office to be a Renaissance Queen Anne Gothic Victorian. Which is to say, it is a little bit of everything and everyone who ever had her.

The road less traveled When the house became officially ours in June 2002, I started a journal. In the first entry I recorded a local historian saying our house was notable for being in the worst condition of any Victorian in town. "We are undaunted!" I declared. "We choose not to believe it!"

The experience of renovating an old home is one best undertaken with naiveté. No one would do it, otherwise. My husband, Neil, and I were clear from the start what we wanted: a home that was made for children, uniquely about our family. This house had the space we wanted (over 3000 square feet) and the raw potential to work with. Raw potential included broken windows, slumping ceilings, sunken floors, crumbling walls and nightmarish neon pink and green paint. The exterior, as the eldest child described it, was "puke green."

When our real estate agent handed us the key he said earnestly, "It's going to be either the best investment you ever made, or a complete disaster."

Our excitement became dismay as we peeled away the layers of malevolent wallcovering to see what was underneath. The house seemed to be held together by layers of wallpaper, glued to layers of deteriorating plaster, and under that, layers of dust. To live within the house's limitations, whittling away repairs, leaving the major issues for the children to puzzle out later when they inherited the property - that was not in step with our vision.

En masse, an itty-bitty insect made the decision to rebuild, rather than restore. Although a termite inspection came back all clear, termites infiltrated the house. In one room the floor dipped down four inches in four feet, due to termite damage to the supporting floor joists. Over the ensuing months that Neil worked each room down to the studs, removing the decaying plaster and lathe, he traced the termite's long history of occupation all the way to the top.

If Walls Could Talk
It was a relief to see all the plaster and lathe go away, as I was aghast by the thought of living among walls that simply masked an ever-deteriorating world of debris. A boon to tearing out the plaster: it answered many questions. Windows, doors, an original roofline, and a lost pocket door all revealed themselves in the house's skeleton. Every first layer of wallpaper was lovely, richly patterned and exceptionally Victorian. We found the handwritten name of Mrs. Ling on the back of a wallpaper scrap removed from one of three kitchens. Others displayed serial numbers and manufacturers imprinted on the edges.

As the walls came down, out tumbled unexpected loot. Cards, letters, photographs, newspapers and mementoes had found their way into crevices, walls and behind mantels. The oldest newspaper we found is merely a scrap of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but that scrap contains the dateline 1902. Among the most exciting finds: a perfectly intact 1924 program from the World's Oldest Rodeo; a signed and dated 1906 photograph of a party traveling by mule down the Grand Canyon; and an unopened letter, addressed to Reese Ling, postmarked 1905. (We relish the mystery. It remains unopened.)

"I dwell in Possibility - A fairer House than Prose…" - E. Dickinson
Neil is the proprietor of unproven, creative solutions in our old house endeavor. When he proposed hiring a crane to lift the entire ceiling off the house and deposit it in a dumpster, I thought he'd inhaled too much plaster dust. The removal and subsequent re-building of the roof and ceiling were necessary to make the uninhabitable third floor into livable space. In preparation, Neil and his crew dismantled the roof and sliced the ceiling into several pieces. The day the crane arrived, I waited nervously at work, until the phone call arrived that all was well. Instead I heard, "You've got to see this, and bring your camera."

Not many experiences are as peculiar as standing in your own house, looking up, and seeing nothing but blue sky where a ceiling was just moments before. His solution worked perfectly, and the removal of the ceiling was accomplished in a fraction of the time and expense it would have taken to remove it by hand.

The third floor includes a vast open space and one very small octagonal room. The vast open space is for the children and me, to house my lifelong collection of children's literature.

The tiny room in the turret, accessed by a tunnel-shaped five-foot tall doorway, and tiny windows all around: that is Neil's own creation.

The house is not only for children, he says, with that kid-like gleam in his eye.

The neverending story
We lived in the house for two years, hanging on until the ceiling was gone. Then we moved out back into our motor home for "the interim." That was the end of predictions for us; I learned never to inquire "How long?" After six months of backyard camping, we got an apartment.

If you ask Neil when the house will be done, he will look at you curiously and ask, "Done? What exactly do you mean by done?"

The exterior of the home has now been largely rebuilt with new materials, to the extent the preservation office would allow, much of it specially milled to be exact replicas of the original siding, trim and accents. Not done, but close.

The journal has now sat untouched for over two years. Eventually, the apocalypse of unexpected obstacles left me flatly discouraged, and I could not bear to write about it anymore. Neil and I have agreed that forward is the only direction to look. We refuse to dwell on the mistakes because there is just too much work to be done and we need the positive energy to keep us going.

Another neighbor counseled: Make sure one of you has your wits about you, so the other has a chance to go crazy now and then.

Of sidewalk chalk and daffodils
Bless Grandma Jan, who would not abide us living in the house of deconstruction without a flower garden.

Daffodils, poppies, herbs and vegetables grow right up against the house, beneath the rotted porch. In late summer, the children can eat tomatoes right off the plants. They bring me fistfuls of pansies and armloads of zucchini.

For the children, this has all been a grand adventure. They do what kids do best: find glee in whatever is handy. They climb up and down the ladders, swing from scaffolding, and draw rainbows on the cement porch steps. They delight in earning a penny a piece for the nails they collect from the yard.

It would have been a mistake to undertake this in our retirement, as so many couples do. Without the durability of childhood to refocus us every day, our enthusiasm would drown in the summer monsoons and winter rains that continue to cost us months of progress. The children keep us ripe in the moment, like tomatoes on the vine.

One recent afternoon, I sat in the grass with my children and their playmates. A neighbor child, Austin, age five, gazed up at the house.

"Your house is the color of the sky," he observed.

His sister Caitlyn looked up and purred, "It's my favorite color."

It is our fourth summer here. The house remains unfinished, as we are all unfinished. The offensive green is gone, but it is still flanked with scaffolding, not yet habitable. It has not so much as a single light bulb. Through the large front windows you can see where the walls should be, the bare studs.

Unless -- you are a child. Then, what you see is pure heaven.

Published in Prescott Living, Volume One Issue Four 2005