Dreaming too big?

My friends this post is a philosophical post.  Not one about my current restoration but my dreams of more restoration.  So it might not be your cup of tea and you might just feel on passing this post up.  I felt the need to write it to out this energy out into the world so to speak and see what becomes of it.  As I write this blog I am 6,000 miles away from my little jewel box at home.  Riding camels in the desert and surrounded by structures and history 2000+ years old my life at home is so distant and so foreign like the place I am in now.  When I am in a place filled with history I am usually focused on where I am at that moment and not much thinking about the projects that await me at home.  I do however find myself thinking of one place, one dream that I wish to accomplish but fear I can't or that it will never happen.

Because I love everything old why not make a modern photo of my look old?

 

 

So what is this dream that I want to make come true?  Another restoration of course, and this one is a doozy.   Theodor Herzl said "If you will it, it is not dream; and if you do not will it, a dream it is and a dream it will stay."  I take this quote to heart and I am truly  someone who believes that you can do anything in this life that you set your mind out to.  The dream project of mine is a little house in my neighborhood that I "discovered" about 10 years ago and every since it has been an object of my desire, my lust and my obsession.

 

 

 

Built in the 1850s it has had many lives.  First constructed out of rough cut limestone in a wildness so far away from what my city is today it must have seemed a fortress overlooking the bluffs of the Mississippi to those that passed it along the river over 100 years ago.  In a pioneer town like St. Paul of the time, most buildings were built of wood and a large limestone building like this was meant to be permanent, striking and show stopping.  By several accounts it costs nearly $10,000 to build at the time.  Tales of financial woe plagued the first few owners loosing it in failures and foreclosures before becoming a nursing home in the 1930s and stripped of most of its fine details.

 

 

 

 

Today it sits a sad shell of what it once was.  Porches gone, limestone stuccoed, the large lot carved up and modern homes built on once was a fine lawn and the beautiful glassed in belvedere lost to time.  Most anyone who looks at it today sees it as nothing but a really old run down building that is "beyond saving"

 

I however do not.  I dream of allowing this house to breath again, to bring it back to not only its glory but to share that glory with the people of my city and state.  To share the stories of those that loved and lived in the house before and for me to become a piece in this long thread of the history. 

 

My house was occupied by the private secretary of the man that owned this house in the 1890s and so I have felt that this connection means something.  I know more about this house than I probably do about my own house.  I know what the early interiors looked like, I know how the rooms were laid out and functioned, I know how gas light was supplied to the house before the city provided it and where the home got its water from.  I am telling you I know WAYYYY too much about this beautiful home.  Where has it gotten me?  Nowhere.  I have a file as thick as a good book on this house and I know more about this house than probably most anyone does and yet it still sits on the hill decaying, unloved and treated like an ugly old friend that nobody cares about or wants to invest in.  I WANT to care, I want to save, I want to bring back to life but how?

 

I have pondered this question for so many years.  How do I afford it? How do I restore it? How do I make this dream a reality and in the end it comes down to what we all fundamentally struggle to have....money.  As most of us know, restoring an old home takes buckets of money and often we don't get back the money we put into a building.  We do it because we LOVE it.  We do it because we believe these old houses are works of art just as important as an old master in a famous museum and that the talent and effort that went into creating these artworks deserves to be shared with the world.  We are just luckily to live in them for a time before we pass them on. 

 

As I said before that I truly believe we can do anything we set our minds to yet how to accomplish this project has escaped me.  I'm not a rich person and the restoration project I am in the midst of for the past 10 years is far from complete.  Why can't I just be accepting and fully grateful of the beautiful project I have now and be content with that?  Why must I obsess and dream about a project that is so far beyond scope that most anyone whom I mention it to thinks I am mad and will be ruined like the early owners of this building?  How do I let this dream go and do what I can do not what I wish I could do?  Another part of my problem is that I feel I have this so called cosmic connection to this house.  Call it my stubborn nature, but in so many ways I feel that I am the only person who can do this and do it rightly so.  Not some quick paint job and decoration and sell it to the highest bidder, but to make it what is was.

 

I could probably go on and on about why this should be done, why I should do it but I always hit the wall at how and I find myself at the same position I started at...a wall.  The only thing different today is that I write these thoughts here and share them out to the world to see what becomes of them.  I hope that one day I will some to kind of resolution to my crazy dream.  Whether I accept that I cannot achieve this dream and let it die or I find a way to work closer to this dream.  I do hope that at some point one or the other will happen.  I'll never stop dreaming of saving old buildings and bringing history to life, but I hope that one day this dream will become what it is meant to be in my mind.