Creating home out of a #fixerupper during a global pandemic
By Vanessa Pollock
Before Photos
After Photos
“All roads lead home as home is where the heart is. So Love. Simply Love. For love is home to all of us.”
In January 2020, my husband and I decided to make an offer on a beautiful property in South Orange New Jersey that was listed by Adamson Ramsey Homes. We had not been planning to move and had actually just renovated our kitchen, but we felt very confident we could renovate this special space into just what we needed for our family of five for the season that (we thought) lay ahead. Being a Realtor, I see every house that comes on the market and every now and then one jumps out at me. The home we wanted checked all the boxes that I had been looking for for years: the opportunity to renovate into my own personal style, land, a pool, walkability into the village for our kids to hang out in town and easily hop on the train to NYC. And I wanted to be close to the middle school for our middle child to walk to and from school. Oh and we needed great space for a music studio for our teenage son, his band and my Broadway actor husband and his colleagues to gather. This house checked every box so we made the offer, went under contract and quickly moved to get our Maplewood home sold. One full dumpster, 22 black contractor bags filled with donations to the Vietnam vets, and two large donation pick ups by a social worker friend later, we had our Maplewood home prepped, sold off market, and we were ready to go. We closed on the new house on March 4, 2020 and tore out walls and flooring, launching our renovation dreams. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit a week later. We literally had a house torn apart and the world stopped. On March 19, 2020, we moved into that construction zone as a family, sooner than we had planned, literally on “shelter in place” day so that we could do just that. I had a very frank conversation with our contractors and told them that we would love for them to keep working on the house, but only if they felt safe. They said that they needed to continue to work, because every other job had been canceled, and as long as we felt safe, they would continue. So, over the course of the next 90 days, we lived through socially-distant renovations with our contractors, as they put our #FixerUpper back together again. The P5 as I call us, Luis, William and Carlos became one big masked up family, and we emerged in the summer with a beautiful home.
The Summer came and went and we thought the pandemic would end any day, but alas it continued. We had started hosting outdoor, safe yoga classes with our “pod” led by Paige (see her article), but as the weather started to change from Summer to Fall, we made a pandemic renovation decision: we needed to continue with our self-care for the pod and the team, and to create a safe space, so William and Carlos came back over to help create a safe space in the backhouse for gathering. We were able to enter the winter as a mighty masked yoga pod, by opening windows, running heaters and air purifiers, and continuing with our practice while helping keep each other sane. I could not know that I needed to put “yoga studio” on the check list for a new house, so what a blessing to have just such a space for our pod and PPG.
One of my first visions for this house was of it constantly filled with friends, clients and family, everyone gathering in the huge kitchen and hanging out by the pool. Truth be told, my word of the year for 2020 was “FUN”. And I guess the joke was on me. But I am holding out hope that the fun will still come in this new home. No, the kids are not walking to and from the middle school yet, and the music studio does not have the band jamming constantly yet, and we aren’t having pool parties yet, and we aren’t all gathered around the kitchen island YET, but I believe that our vision for this home will still come to life on the other side of the pandemic, and that it will be busting at the seams with people. That vision gives me a sense of hope and excitement, and so I have let go of the timing for when it will be realized and cling to the fact that we are still, and may always be, arriving home.
Follow us and Watch all 90 days of renovation in the Fixer Upper highlights on IG @vanessaspollock
