175: Blake Hill House - THE Update

I'm Stacy Grinsfelder and you're listening to true tales from old houses, the minisode or something like it.

Hello everyone.

It's just me and my microphone, which feels different, I guess.

It feels really strange.

It's also kind of exciting.

And today I'm going to tell you a story that I didn't expect to be telling.

I guess I could call it that.

I've actually owed you this story for quite some time.

I guess owe is a little bit of a strong word, but I did feel like I should tell you this story because, well, it's something that I've known for a while, but I just haven't really shared it.

Bits and pieces, I guess I have.

But before we get started, I do want to say thank you to this season's minisode sponsors, Sutherland Welles, Brouns and Co. Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co., and the Old House Shop.

And I know I say this every episode, but that's because it's true.

I am so grateful to them because they make the show possible for everyone, and it really couldn't happen without them.

This is usually where Daniel chimes in, and solo hosting is going to take a little bit of getting used to again.

And since we're going all in on shaking things up, I am changing the format just a little.

I'm going to tell you the story first.

I've spent years telling you about Blake Hill House, and today it's not going to be any different.

The house, no joke, changed my life.

It shaped my career.

It has taught me how to think like a preservationist and how to live inside a long-term project without losing my mind.

Some days have been better than others, but today I want to talk about what it's like to pour yourself into a project, a home with an end date in mind.

Because that's hard.

And in some ways, I'm really tired of telling the story.

Not because it isn't important, but because it has been emotionally and physically draining for four years.

If you've been in my life in real time in my community, you've heard probably bits and pieces of it, but I don't really think I've told it from beginning and end to anyone.

So here you go.

Let me start with a small recap.

In January of 2022, Andy actually started working Andy's my husband.

He started working in Salt Lake City, and I remained in New York.

And the goal was clear.

I was supposed to prepare Blakehill House for sale and also keep stability for our daughter so she could finish high school.

And she was a competitive gymnast at the time and a tenth-grader.

And it just felt silly to move her for two years when she was that close to finishing high school.

So we were going to stay for two years.

She was going to graduate, and then I was going to move immediately to Salt Lake City.

Well, two years passed, graduation came.

That was supposed to be the turning point, and it did not happen.

Instead, the workload, it expanded.

She graduated in June.

And by the end of that summer, I mean, I was nowhere near having that house ready for sale.

The staircase balusters were still out.

I had pulled a bunch of windows to restore.

I actually had to go back to Instagram and look to find out what was happening at that time because I didn't even really remember.

That was the summer I was finishing up the small bathroom.

I don't know if you remember that story, but the contractor in the small bathroom, he had done just an abysmal job.

And I ended up tearing all of that out and then redoing the entire thing.

So I was actually finishing the bathroom that summer.

The big bathroom remodel happened upstairs, and I hired a lot of that out.

That was the good news.

I found an excellent plumber and Tyler for that project.

Thank goodness.

Now, in my defense, I was trying to get out of the house that summer.

I did hire painters to do the doors upstairs.

I really tried.

But that was also the summer that I did my first window workshop at Silver Lake, and I hosted a tour with Holiday Vacations.

So I don't know.

I had a lot of stuff going on.

I did a lot of things, but I didn't get the house that much closer to the finish line.

And I guess that kind of began what I think of as, maybe we'll just call it the messy middle.

I wanted to sell the house for the best possible price.

I have been out of the workforce for quite some time, and I saw this house as my contribution to our retirement.

When we bought Blake Hill House, it was in fairly good shape, but there was a lot of deferred maintenance, so there was plenty to do.

And my intention was to bring it up to the next level to maximize our profits while also treating this house with the utmost respect.

I mean, it means a lot to me, you all know that.

I mean, you've heard me wax poetic about it for years and years and years.

So keeping that in mind, I started projects in that vein.

Andy was a little less attached.

He was sort of like, you know, at that point, he kind of didn't care.

We were two years in.

He really wanted me to call people to fix stuff.

But OK, we're old house people.

We know how hard that is, right?

I mean, the things that I needed help with were plaster repair and putting the staircase balusters back together, window restoration.

It was all very specialized preservation and restoration work.

I just couldn't call somebody and get that work done.

I was happy that I was able to find a contractor, a really good one, to rebuild the bones of the sleeping porch.

I think I talked about that actually.

I know I talked about that here on the podcast.

The sleeping porch off the primary bedroom had been slowly collapsing.

It had never been built right in the 1st place, which always surprises me with these old houses, but it's true, not everything is perfect in an old house.

It had slowly been collapsing, and that all needed to be rebuilt.

So I found a great contractor.

I believe that was the summer of 20/24/2023.

I don't know, these years are blending quite honestly, but they came and rebuilt that really, really nicely and left the finish work for me.

So that was great.

That was more preservation-minded.

But we were really past the aesthetic decisions.

You know, I wasn't looking at this like what paint colors do I want, what wallpaper?

And we weren't staging this home for sale.

These were stewardship decisions, and the better shape the house was in, I felt like the less likely it was that a future owner was going to remove the character-defining features.

Especially the windows.

You all know how attached I am to the windows.

I kept thinking if those were functioning and look nice, no chipping paint, then what reason would someone have to come in and think these all have to go right away?

And then maybe if they got used to having the old windows, then they would develop some sort of affinity for them, the way I have.

They would realize they function just fine, and there would be no need to get rid of them.

These were the thoughts that were going through my head this whole time.

Of course, a lot of windows from that second floor were also sitting in my workshop.

They were not in place.

So this really wasn't about selling during that time.

It was about protecting the house beyond my ownership, beyond our ownership.

So I kept working, and I was steadily working.

I was triaging, and I was planning, and I was doing work, and I was completing some things, and then I was starting the process all over again.

And at that same time, I was parenting, I was podcasting, and I was co-writing The Case for Historic Windows with Scott Sidler.

I don't know.

I just kept saying yes to projects.

I was dragging my feet.

I can see it now.

I was also trying to remain a functional human being.

And the Blake Hill house To Do List, really, it never meaningfully shortened.

You're getting the picture here.

It never got shorter.

Also around that time, Andy and I started talking again about maybe where we wanted to buy a house after Blake Hill House sold.

And the cold, hard truth is that the Salt Lake City real estate market is out of our price range at this stage of our life.

And with two kids in college, we get to be choosy for the first time in our married lives.

And we just aren't willing to tie up all of our money in an inflated real estate market.

I've talked about this some on social media, a little bit here on the podcast about how bleak the market is, what the houses look like, what you get for your dollar.

And it's not great, and we just don't want to do it.

That said, I would like to do another old house rehab.

Andy's willing, but I would like to do it on a much smaller scale.

So we started looking at places to buy, thinking about where we might want to live.

And that's when we talked about coastal Maine, coastal Michigan on the Great Lakes.

We both love the Great Lakes, coastal Washington, which actually I have never been to Washington, but it looks fantastic, and he's been there.

He thinks it looks great.

I know Daniel and I talked about that.

I know we did.

We had conversations about where Andy and I might move.

And so this probably is not new information if you've been a podcast listener for quite some time, but surfing Zillow and sending links to each other became our favorite pastime.

We did it all the time.

Every night.

Andy would send me a link from Salt Lake, I'd send him a link from Buffalo, you know, we'd get smiley faces, thumbs up.

We were really quite excited.

It felt like planning.

It felt like momentum.

I felt as if I knew where all of this was headed, and it gave me something to work towards.

Now, before I tell you what happened next, we do need to take a quick pause.

So hang on, I'll be right back.

True Tales from Old Houses is supported by Sutherland Welles.

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Now I can certainly vouch for that because I've used Murdoch's hard sealer for the wainscoting in my upstairs bathroom, the one I just told you about, Botanical for baseboards, Slicky Wicky, Millies, Teddy's, and I regularly use Clarabelle's mixed with my oil primer.

Sutherland Welles products are also low-VOC or VOC-exempt, and honestly, that matters when you are living in your house while you're working on it.

To get 10% off your first order, visit Sutherland Welles, that's W-E-L -L-E-S, SutherlandWelles.com, and use the coupon code TRUETALES26 

True Tales from Old Houses is also supported by Brouns & Co. Linseed oil paint.

While modern paints rely on plastics, synthetic pigments, and chemical drying agents, Brouns & Co. creates linseed oil paint the traditional way, using slow-boiled flax oil and natural mineral pigments.

Linseed oil paint doesn't form a plastic skin like modern paint.

It penetrates wood and metal, protecting from the inside out, just as it did on historic homes, barns, and landmarks across Europe and early America.

The result is a finish that ages beautifully, never peels or blisters, and lasts decades, not years.

Now look, I had the same questions that many listeners do about linseed oil paint, climate limitations, the learning curve.

So we answered those in episode 164, and then I used Brouns & Co. linseed oil paint on the windows in my sleeping porch and the bedroom at Blake Hill House.

The application was straightforward and the finish cured to a smooth, durable surface. Using it in a real project,

That's what finally made it click.

I understood why linseed oil paint performed so well over time, making it ideal for historic preservation and perfect for modern, thoughtful restoration. Brouns & Co. is trusted by preservation professionals and homeowners who value authenticity. Learn more at linseedoilpaint.com.

I am back.

So where were we in this story?

Andy and I were Zillow surfing, trying to figure out what our next steps were.

Well, let me bring you forward to 2025.

That's when I basically fell off the face of the earth.

The podcast went quiet.

I was barely on social media.

I didn't really even see my friends a whole lot, to be real honest with you.

I just decided I was going to lock in and focus on getting this house ready.

I mean, I was supposed to be gone in 2024, supposed to be getting the house ready for the two years between 2022 and 2024.

So I had 2025 to get ready.

And in Western New York, houses sell during the warm months period.

Nobody wants to move in a snowstorm.

Nobody wants to move when the weather's terrible.

And I don't blame them.

So I sat down, and I made a list because the clock was ticking.

This was maybe February.

And I thought, oh, surely I can get this house done by, I don't know, summer.

I was kind of thinking June, July.

That seemed right.

Now, that was the same year, 2025, that my sweet little Millie died.

That was April.

And actually, when she died, it did make life a little bit easier because you know, her last few months on earth, as anyone with an old dog can tell you, they can get kind of challenging.

Old dogs need a lot of care, and she was no exception.

But I sat down, and I made a list.

And on paper, that list was brutal.

It included all the second-story windows that I had removed.

That was at least 12 sets.

I mean, that's a lot of windows.

Those windows are big too.

It was the full sleeping porch rebuild.

All the rough work had been done, but I had to finish work to do.

It was the staircase.

Those balusters had been out since 20/21/2020.

I can't believe it.

The backhaul, cracked plaster ceilings, walls.

I had never shown that to anyone, not on the blog, I don't think.

I've never really talked about it here on the podcast.

We had a whole sun porch, which that was a full lipstick on a big situation.

There was no way that was going to be restored or rehabbed in any capacity.

Just paint and Polish.

That's all I was going to get to.

But really, what nearly did me in was not the big projects.

It was everything else.

It was touch-up paint in almost every room.

There were wallpaper repairs.

It was the last 10% of dozens of projects that we'd started over the years.

That's always the most annoying, annoying 10%.

Anybody who thinks that they can put their house on the market in just a few months is really forgetting the last 10% of every project that they've started since they moved into the house.

I mean, looking back, there were nights when I would finish a task, and I would just stand in the doorway, and I would realize that it did not make the room look any different whatsoever.

It was so frustrating last year.

It really was the year that nearly broke me.

It wasn't just because of one big disaster.

There was no one big thing.

It was just the accumulation of everything.

It was just long, long hours.

Now, Andy did come back a few times, and he helped me.

He did a lot of the plaster repairs in the back hall.

Thank goodness he did help me with that lipstick-on-a-pig project.

Oh boy, it looks OK, but we could have done better.

And I think I called in my buddy Dale, and he helped me with something.

So, you know, as much as possible, I tried to call in people to help whenever I could, but it was just a lot.

And then all of a sudden, at some point, I hit the tipping point.

There was a tipping point.

You thought I was going to say I hit the wall, right?

I'd already hit the wall several times, but I hit the tipping point, and I could see the progress.

I could go from room to room, and I could see it, and I could see the end of the list.

I mean, not, not the end, not the end, let's be serious, not the end.

But I could see good enough.

I could see what it would look like to list the house.

But spring had gone by, and summer had gone by, and fall had gone by, and we had missed the seller's window.

Now, we had decided that we were going to try to do a private sale, but as I'd mentioned before, nobody wants to move furniture in the winter in the snow.

So the more we talked about it, Andy and I just decided, you know what, let's just hold off until spring anyway, no matter what.

And we decided that I would come to Salt Lake City for the winter.

And that sounded great to me because, I mean, what's not to love, right?

I could ski in the winter.

I didn't have any projects to do, so to speak, in the house.

I'd gotten all the windows back in, believe it or not.

I mean, my To Do List was just so small.

I thought, this is great.

I could spend the winter in Salt Lake City.

I could come back in the spring, maybe spend 2 weeks, and get the house ready.

No big deal.

All right, and here's where it gets hard, because as I started planning, I began mourning my community.

Not the house necessarily, but the people.

My buddy Dale, who I have talked so much about on this podcast before and my blog, he's had a hand in helping me on several projects at Blake Hill House, and he's practically family at this point.

I have a plumber and electrician who know this house by heart.

My running group, friends, neighbors I can call.

I had known all along that this was coming.

Dang, I mean, I was not ready to let it go, because if we moved on to another old house in another community, I knew what that meant.

It meant starting over.

I would have to find a new deal, which was going to be absolutely impossible.

A new plumber, maybe a new electrician, possibly, I would have to explain the quirks of a house from scratch.

And then I was going to have to do this mostly on my own again until Andy retired, and it was just going to be so lonely.

And then I got really sad, really sad.

And I looked around at my beautiful house and for the first time in a long time, I really just wanted to enjoy it.

You know, Blake Hill House is special, and even in a town full of very special houses, this house is something else.

And it has a really irreplaceable soul.

And I realized that I wanted to live inside that without it being a construction zone for the first time in 12 years, 12 years.

I was really nervous about saying that out loud because, you know, once you say something like that, it becomes real.

And I was thinking, is this really what I want?

I mean, I knew I was making an emotional decision.

I knew it.

But when I finally was able to say it to Andy, he already understood.

He already knew.

He said, of course, I know.

You know, you were supposed to be here two years ago.

It's, you know, it's 2025.

He just looked at me, and he was like, " You know, why not?

So that's where we are.

I am spending the winter in Salt Lake City, and we are not putting Blake Hill House on the market right now.

We are pressing pause.

It's not forever.

It's just for now; nothing is certain.

We may change our minds next year.

We may change our mind in two years or in six months or whatnot.

At the top of the episode, I said we for the first time can make these decisions that affect our lives in a new way now that our kids are moving on.

But for now, we are dual citizens, Utah and New York. That's the story, the whole thing.

And now you know what I know, and it is time for another break.

True Tales from Old Houses is supported by Heritage Supply Co.

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True Tales from Old Houses is also supported by The Old House Shop.

The Old House Shop is a store I started for people who can't stop talking about old houses.

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Why are we like this?

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OK, well, I promise that future episodes will not be so Stacy-centric, but as I said, I did owe you that story.

Or I felt like I owed you that story, if for no other reason to keep people from asking me when I'm moving.

I get that question all the time.

But right now I'm recording this from Salt Lake City.

There are mountains outside my window, but I am headed back to New York for a visit tomorrow, and for the first time in a while, I'm not surrounded by tools.

I kind of like it, but I also don't like it.

It depends on the day.

It's very different.

I often times don't know what to do with my hands.

But on that note, it is a good time to talk about what is changing for season 13.

At first, you may have noticed I shook up the format a little because why not?

That is the beauty of a self-produced podcast, and I probably, I think I'm just going to keep it this way.

I also want to mention that there's now a video version of True Tales from Old Houses on YouTube each week.

Now I know I have been threatening this for the last two seasons, but it is really true this season.

Episodes 173 and 174 are already there, and going forward, every episode will be there.

It usually goes live maybe a day or so after I shoot for the Monday that the audio version drops.

But one person doing everything, I'm doing my best.

If you've always listened to the podcast on a podcast app, it's just another option.

You don't have to switch to YouTube.

It's up to you.

I also want to take a minute to talk about where I am showing up online because that has changed a little, too.

And it's intentional.

I can't be everywhere all at once.

And honestly, I think a lot of us are feeling like we could use a bit of a brain break.

So I am actually stepping back from Facebook, and I'm focusing on two places, Instagram and Substack.

I've officially moved the True Tales from Old House's newsletter to Substack, and I'm building a small old house community there at Notes from an Old House.

I'll put the link in the show description wherever you are listening.

Now, the interface on Substack is so nice, so clean, and you will not get bombarded with ads, which is fantastic.

To the best of my knowledge, here's how Substack works.

If you subscribe to Notes from an Old House on Sub Stack, the newsletter lands in your e-mail inbox.

And if you follow me on Sub Stack, then you'll get notifications whenever I post anything there, like notes or maybe if I go live.

Or we can open a chat there to talk about old house things.

Eventually, I may, I may, haven't determined yet, offer paid subscriptions, but those will be extras.

Anything that's free now will not be moved behind a paywall later.

I just want to make that very, very clear.

I'm not going to give you things now and take them away.

Anything that's free now stays free.

So if you are looking for a quieter place to keep up with the show, that's where you're going to find me.

That's where I am creating a small, hopefully active, old-house community.

And if you were already stretched thin with your online time, I get it.

There's no pressure.

There's always True Tales From Old Houses here where you're listening right now.

So one more thing before I let you go.

For years, Daniel and I called these shorter episodes the minisodes, which let's be honest, that was never accurate.

They were not mini, they were just slightly less long.

And now that the format is shifting a little with me as a solo host, I was thinking maybe it's time that they had a real name.

Not instead of true tales from old houses, but something that kind of lives alongside it, like a subtitle.

Now we can't use Front Porch because Scott Seidler already uses that for his Friday chats online.

But I would love your help.

If you have an idea for what these episodes should be called, then send it to me.

You can send me a direct message on Instagram, reply on Substack, you can use the contact form on the website, whatever.

Let's play with some ideas this season, and if one really sticks, then I will send you something from my old house shop as a thank-you.

There's no need or no pressure to be clever, just cozy, honest.

That works just fine.

But it would be something like True Tales from Old Houses, and we've always called it the minisode, so it's a subtitle.

Think of it as a subtitle.

Anyway, let me know.

Let me know what you're thinking.

Thanks for being here with me.

Maybe you're in your car.

Maybe you're painting, glazing windows in the workshop, or maybe just folding laundry.

I can picture you.

I can just picture you out there.

But whatever you're doing,

Thank you for listening to True Tales From Old Houses, and thank you to our sponsors, Sutherland Welles, Brouns & Co. Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co., and the Old House Shop.

To continue the conversation, follow True Tales From Old Houses and me at Blake Hill House on Instagram and subscribe to Notes from an Old House on Substack.

Check the show notes where you're listening right now for a direct link.

I love hearing from you, so feel free to send me messages on Instagram and Substack or emails and voicemails through the True Tales From Old Houses website.

And now I need a favor.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a rating and review wherever you're listening right now.

It's free, and it helps more old house lovers find this show and hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Take care of your old houses and yourselves until next time.