Life As A House

Life As A House is my favourite film.

I’ve watched this movie at least 10x. I watched it again tonight. The plot is simple I guess, but I connect to this film as a son, a father, a man who has learned love isn’t always enough, and a carpenter. The truth is the movie breaks me every time. I know what it’s like to build a home for those I love. I’ve done it 3x. The first home was built start to finish in 3 months. Brooklyn was coming, and we wanted it ready for her. I was so proud of myself.

The second home I worked day and night framing while my family at the time were away for a lakeside holiday. I wanted the roof to be on by the time they returned. All I could think of was hoping they’d be happy when they turned the corner home and they could see trusses on the upper walls. Memory fails but I’m sure they were.

The last one was built to give my kids a home with their dad, and in part for a woman I dearly loved. We had been living in an awful duplex, and that was rock bottom for me, for them with me, and for the woman who tried to be there with us. I built a beautiful, unique home that reflected my desire to give my family somewhere beautiful to live. The materials where inexpensive but I poured my heart into it. I tried to create something with a heritage feel. Now, I have a dream to build myself a warm glass cabin at the river, but not sure I’ll ever be able to leave this house. I’m not a vacation home kind of guy, so two homes is not an option, so I will see. But I think I need to do it one last time. It’ll be a cabin for my family.

I wish every man could build a home for his family. There’s been nothing more fulfilling than building something for those I loved.

I love looking at historic homes. I also love looking at abandoned prairie homes. If you see a home that looks different then all the rest you can bet the story behind it entails a man trying to make a place attractive to a woman who really doesn’t want to be there. I laugh to and at myself every time I tour/see one of these old homes. Many of them were built by men who came from Europe, and were trying to entice a faraway bride to join them. I can relate to this.

I think I love old homes because I imagine a simpler life in purer times. I think most men built there own homes in the past. You took a lift of wood or perhaps a Simpson Sears home kit, built some walls on some timbers embedded in the ground. You had a wall down the middle to hold up the ceiling which was also your second floor. Hand cut rafters at a steep pitch for headroom were hand nailed onto your ceiling joists, which created a nice loft. You built a few dormers to bring light into the loft. You’d build a porch, and a small hip roof above it. Then, you’d build windows in place and hang a few doors. No permits, No architectural controls, No building codes. And you know what? They had better homes, and if you consider the fact they were smaller, used less energy. Often times your stove heated your entire home. You didn’t have 50 pot lights, triple car garages, ensuites, 3 bathrooms, mechanical systems et al.

The houses looked better. They are the homes we all love in the fields. I have long decided that so called progress has become anything but. Then, almost everyone could have a home. Now, homes are becoming a pipe dream for many.

I know we can never go back to those times. I think that’s my curse. I always want to go back to those days. I’ve spent far too much of my life studying how things used to be built, rather than how they are built today, or at least how they will be built in the future. Almost every new home I build now is done under silent inner protest.

What we will see in the future is cubed homes manufactured mostly by machines. They will have even less character. They will be modular. They will all be the same. They will be soulless. Hand skills will be all but lost. No man or woman will know how it feels to build his family a home. Is this really what we want? Ted Kaczynski made some evil choices, but if you read his manifesto, he got some things right. Technological advances have had some very harsh consequences.

We can’t go back to the 1900s. We can’t order a Sears home kit and relive the past. But maybe we could slow down. Build smaller. Make it easier for families to spend more time together and for things to be simpler? I think we really need to buckle down and make sure we do everything we can to give our kids a healthy, sustainable and affordable future.

So, back to the film. There is a line about change that I love, The main character is talking to his son and says this, “ ….change can be so constant you don’t even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don’t even notice that your life is better or worse, until it is.”

It is my wish that my children get the chance to build their own lives, homes, futures, and that the slow and steady change is for the good. It’ll make me happy to try to help build that life. A life as a house if you will.

If you read this far, thank you.

Tris