I have been fixing up a fixer-upper for over six years. That wasn’t the original plan. The idea back in 2002 was to take a year—two, tops—and turn the potential of the place into reality. A romantic, I saw big possibility when I saw the old farmhouse with the odd contemporary addition. It was a big house, plenty big enough for me and the two dogs I lived with. I wanted a home. I was almost 40 years old and, after years of a nomadic existence (an occupational hazard in broadcasting, my chosen profession), I wanted to settle into a place of my own. I was single and starting to think that it that might be okay if it ended up that way, as long as I had a place to call my own, near places I loved to be and doing things I loved to do. So I left the metropolis—again. It was my third northern migration in 10 years and I was intent on making a final stand this time. The Catskills, and all they offered, beckoned and I would heed the call. Times were tough though; I was just beginning a new work venture, having barely survived the euphoria of the first Internet boom, and my options were limited, so I set my sights on what I thought would be an affordable option: a fixer-upper (or “handyman’s special” or someplace needing “TLC,” according to realtors). I had seen a few other places that seemed interesting: some were fire damaged, some were abandoned and had suffered from years of neglect and some, the ones just beyond my price range, just needed some paint and maybe a roof.

It was a chilly, gray March day when I first saw the house. A porch with stone pillars was attached to the house and was the first view I got and I was impressed. Also attached to the old house, by a short, flat section of roof, was a contemporary addition. The effect caused by the combination of styles was, at first, jarring. The gentle lines of the original structure seemed overwhelmed by the sharp, modern lines of the newer construction, like a skyscraper looming over a building next to it that had refused to move for the sake of progress. As I walked the property, however, I began to see what the architect (he was also the owner of the house at that time and the builder of the addition) had in mind: from certain angles, all the angles worked. The financial aspect worked too. The house was cheap and the current owners, unsure if the place could get a mortgage, agreed to hold the note. There was a healthy balloon payment due five years into the deal, but I wasn’t worried about that: I figured by then the house should be worth double what it was then, based on the work I was going to do.

Now, I should say here and now that I am not a contractor or a carpenter. The bulk of my experience swinging a hammer was in the mid 1990’s when I took a year off from radio. I worked with a friend putting in replacement windows and hanging vinyl siding (it was this same friend who had inspected the house with me on a subsequent trip, saying he thought it “was all there”). Nevertheless, most of what needed to be done didn’t require, I thought, major carpentry skills. The first order of business was to make it livable for us, so I fenced in the yard and put a dog door into the backyard slider and that took care of my canine housemates. Next, I cleaned out the old six-burner stainless steel stove (it came with the house and may have been the thing that sealed the deal for me) and fired it up. Now I could eat. I cleaned up some dust and debris too, and set up some living spaces. It was almost autumn and I figured I’d lay low until spring before I really tore into the place.

My work situation then was promising: I had a monthly show for a small cable television network and it afforded me the time, though not necessarily the finances, to do a lot of work on the house. It was a fair trade, I thought: put in some sweat equity until the show took off and then I could hire some help. Except the show didn’t take off and by early 2003 I found myself working full time locally to make ends meet. Not to worry, I thought, I could work on the house on weekends. It had been cold in the house that first winter—there were many two dog nights—so when the weather eased up I decided to replace the insulation in the old part of the house. I stripped the interior down to bare studs and was surprised (and not so surprised) to find out that there was no insulation at all between the wallboard and the exterior siding. I had moved back upstate to take advantage of the outdoors, though, and so put off insulating until the first chilly air of autumn nipped at my nose. The new insulation kept things warmer inside, though had I actually put wallboard up then, it may have been even warmer. It wasn’t until late winter 2004 that a group of my triathlon friends got together and in one weekend helped me sheetrock the place. I had been living in the house now for almost two years and had done some heavy lifting—knocking down walls and opening spaces, in addition to the insulating—but it was going to take a lot more effort (and money) than I originally thought to get the job done.

In the spring of 2004 I met my wife. I didn’t know she was going to be my wife then; I only knew that I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could and so the renovation came to a standstill, again. I was between jobs again—occupational hazard, part two—and while that afforded me the free time to work on the place, it didn’t afford me the money to do the same. So I fell in love and planned to resume the project when circumstances permitted. And then I noticed something. In the evenings, when I was out walking the dogs and headed back to the house and the warm lights burning within, I started to notice something about the place: It had become a home. Oh, it still needed a lot of work—a leaky roof, siding, new windows—but Rome wasn’t built in day, right?

A year later, when my wife moved in (she still wasn’t my wife but had, to my everlasting good fortune, agreed to marry me), that home feeling grew beyond my expectation. She saw, too, the potential in the house and immediately went about the task of making some more improvements, painting rooms, putting down carpets, hanging shades and planting a small garden. We married in the fall of 2006.

The balloon payment came up last year and was satisfied. It was a milestone. Five years had passed. The house, while better off than when I found it, was still far off from where it needed to go. Our home felt good, but the house, well, it still needed a lot. I started to think, too, that I had overestimated my home repair abilities and my desire to continue the task began to wane. The value of the house had increased—the work we had done had made some difference—and we started thinking about having weekends free from worrying about what we had to do on the house. Our thoughts turned towards letting go of it and letting someone else see the potential and finish the work. We had to put in a new well pump and a new oil burner last fall and while we continued to sheetrock and paint, some major structural issues remained. We started cruising neighborhoods we thought we’d like to live in and visiting the Web sites of local realtors. And then we’d pull up to the house—our house—and it felt like coming home and we’d make plans to do some more work on it.

On an unseasonably warm night in mid-September I was working on the house, sweating over some more sheetrock. My wife was in the kitchen working on the home, making dinner. The dogs—one had died in 2005 and we rescued two others last year—were gathered near her and hopefully thinking that maybe some of the salmon being cooked on that old stainless steel stove might come their way. The cat (my wife moved in with two; one passed away in 2006) was around too—and hopeful for fish as well. I was in and out of the house, doing the cutting of the wallboard outside. In the gloaming, I walked a few feet down the road and turned to look back at the house. Those odd angles still looked odd but the dusk masked the obvious places that needed attention—a new garage door, some siding—and it looked good in a fixer-upper, handyman’s special, needing some TLC kind of way.

It felt okay to be still working things out here. Whether we stay and see it through or not remains to be seen.