Cultivating a Maker’s Life is a column that explores creative living expressed in a whole life. Generous, creative living is not something that is confined to a studio or workspace. It is conceived in the garden, gestates on hiking trails, nurtured in cinnamon-scented ovens, and matures at family dinner conversations. Come with me while we explore all the stages of making and living.
Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities.
Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls and a restorer of homes.
Isaiah 58:12, NLT
It was a hot day, and I was already bone-tired at nine in the morning. My punch list for the day included managing five little minion children between the ages of one and nine, feeding my family, a huge amount of laundry, and framing in two new windows and a back door. My prioritizing skills would be stretched to new limits. I would also be called on to make a thousand decisions. My older brother was visiting to help me run new wiring in what would be the kitchen and dining room, and my mom was also visiting to help with construction and general sanity. Even with this help, I was drowning. My construction knowledge and skills were under severe strain, and the stress of managing life in a renovation was breaking me.
In 2015, we bought the oldest house in Tallmadge, Ohio. It was built in 1807 by a man named Reuben Beach who fought alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War. I absolutely adore old homes and have for as long as I can remember. We weren’t really in the market when I first saw the house. We were early to church one morning, which happens about as often as a total solar eclipse.
“Let’s go get a coffee,” I suggested. There was a McDonald’s just down from church.
And that’s when I saw it—a large colonial-style home, sitting quietly back from the road, needing me. Ancient maples flanked the driveway, and a saggy but quaint red barn tucked in behind the house. How charming! I thought quietly, without saying a single word. On the way back to church with coffee in hand, I noticed a very small and unassuming realtor’s sign in the house’s front yard. I still didn’t say anything to my husband, Barritt, but I decided to investigate later, purely out of curiosity. The house had been vacant for nearly five years, which was not great. The interior was almost as much of a mess as the exterior. But I didn’t see what it was. I saw what it had once been, and, I believed, could be again.
Once, this home had hosted parties and guests. Once, it had sheltered children. Mothers had watched through its wavy window panes for their sons to come home from wars. Fathers had followed the fragrant smoke of the kitchen hearth back home at the end of long days in the field. It had certainly been the scene of many bridal processions, birthdays, and funerals. Christmas had danced through its rooms. I closed my eyes and imagined all of these things being restored to its halls and walls.
About a year after I first admired its adorable portico, we bought it.
And now, I was standing on the back porch, wanting to cry, as I tried to figure out first steps in framing windows.
At that moment, an old-but-well-maintained Ford pulled into my driveway. Russ had worked as a carpenter for over fifty years, and while he was technically retired, he never, ever stopped working. We attended church together, and he had looked at our house with me when I was trying to decide if I could restore it to any kind of its former glory. Almost as soon as he got out of his truck, it felt like a cool drink of water to my frazzled soul.
“This will never do, young lady. First, we gotta clean this up. I told my crews every day, don’t work in a mess. If you work in a mess, you’re gonna make mistakes or get hurt.” He laughed, but immediately began coiling extension cords and organizing power tools. In ten minutes, the back porch looked like a legitimate workshop, and we had a cut list for two-by-fours and sheets of OSB.
“All right. What are we doing tomorrow?” For the next months, more days than not, Russ would show up at my house and work half a day, leaving around lunch time, but not before giving me orders for what else I should do that afternoon. He knew more tricks and tips than a library full of construction books could hold, and he shared them liberally. He absolutely loved to teach his trade, and he was good at it. Whenever he held up one finger and said, “I’ve got a little secret for that,” I knew to listen closely.
We didn’t always see eye-to-eye. I liked waterproofing membrane, and he didn’t know much about that new-fangled stuff. He assembled everything with nails, and I think screws are God’s gift to carpentry. I grew up watching “This Old House” from the time I was born, but I learned as much from Russ in three months as I did from decades of Tom Silva.
For that summer, I was a mom, a wife, a restorer of homes, and a very grateful apprentice to Russ Haupt.
Over the next years, Russ would check in with me at church regularly to see if I needed anything. I would ask him to show me how to fix a knee brace in a wall or if he had any advice about a leak in the roof. Once, he chased me down before Sunday School (that is not an exaggeration!). “What in the world do you think you’re doing?! I saw you twenty feet off the ground on a ladder with a bucket of paint this week. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? I’m bringing you my scaffolding this week. Don’t do that again, young lady.” He never asked for his scaffolding back.
Last Saturday, we gathered at church to remember Russ. He had slowed down over the last couple of years, and went to sleep in his favorite chair when Jesus called him. I can only imagine that as Jesus is preparing a place for us, Russ is cleaning up the worksite and making a cut list.
He owed me nothing. Isn’t that the nature of generosity? To see those in need and give and give and give. Between the two of us, Russ and I restored generosity to this old house. It isn’t perfect. There are plenty of floors that tilt and drawers that squeak. But it regularly holds its doors open wide to welcome friends, neighbors, and strangers to our table. Sometimes, we eat and sing and pray. Sometimes, we create and laugh and share knowledge. Russ taught me that.
The featured image, “Thine is the Morning,” is courtesy of Jordan Durbin and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Second-generation homeschooling mom of five wee snickbuzzards, Jordan Durbin is a maker of humble pottery, fine artist, calligrapher, gardener, pickle maker, baker of all things gluten-inclusive and butter-laden, violinist, vocalist, rabbit raiser, wife of one good man, lover of her blessed Redeemer. She has a Bachelor’s degree in fine art from Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. She is an avid coffee drinker, reader, and published children’s book author and illustrator. She aspires to proclaim the resurrection with every moment of her life.
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