Review: THE BARN HOUSE by Ed Zotti
Early last month, we at OPC received a copy of Ed Zotti’s just-released The Barn House:Confessions of an Urban Rehabber for review. Being the resident former-English-major, I was delighted when the task fell to me.
Having spent the last month reading snatches of this book whenever I had a spare moment, I am happy to report that I am no less delighted at this end of the reading of it.
The Barn House is the story of Ed’s and his wife Mary’s renovation of a ramshackled Victorian house in a questionable Chicago neighborhood. It follows the years of the project with detail about the work done, but also includes vignettes about the people, history and notable sites in the city, commentary on Chicago’s gentrification - more commonly referred to as “revitalization” here in Baltimore - and fairly comprehensive insight into the nature of city living and those who choose it over suburbia. The book is packed with information. But Ed’s conversational writing style and dry humor keep the story moving along and interesting.
“Give him a house or an old neighborhood, and his first thought is: ‘This will look really nice when it gets fixed up.’ Never mind that right now it looked like Dogpatch. One took the long view.” - p. 18, The Barn House
For most of us here in the Home Improvement Blogging network, Ed is a kindred spirit. The story of his home renovation is a grand-scale example of what many of us have experienced as we’ve started a project with vision, watched that project balloon beyond the original plan, lost hope, redoubled the effort, and then ultimately taken pride in displaying our completed handiwork to every unsuspecting guest in our homes.
Having spent the latter few years of my life before kids as a construction project manager, I chuckled out loud as some of the descriptions of his interactions with the sub-contractors he hired (”I never did figure out what the problem was with HVAC guys. Perhaps it was excessive exposure to chlorofluorocarbons. Collectively they were the most argumentative bunch of people I’d ever met. I had three prospective HVAC contractors…each one told me to do the opposite of what the previous fellow had said… The experience was disconcerting. It was like asking directions to the interstate and having one person gesture across the stree, a second over yonder, and a third at the North Star.” - p. 104) And as I watch my sister rebuild her Baltimore home after last year’s fire, I could personally relate to the frustration Ed described after having materials stolen from his home in the night - setting him back both financially and emotionally.
Admittedly, Zotti rabbit-trails for pages at a time, and I have never read a non-college text other than my study Bible with quite so many or such lengthy footnotes. Many tell whole stories in themselves. Anyone who expects to read through one story line at a time may become frustrated with this quirk to his style. However, the incidental side-notes are often quite interesting and add understanding to Ed’s situation during his project.
Chapter after chapter, Ed’s personal revelations and practical tidbits of advice give the reader a sense of comraderie with this determined man who sinks far more time and money into his rehab than he and his wife ever intended. You’ll find once you start that you look forward to returning to his story. And you cannot wait to find out whether he makes it and whether or not all his efforts were worth it in the end.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who, like us at One Project Closer are on the constant quest for perfecting our homes, however long it takes.
The Barn House: Confessions of an Urban Rehabber was released on September 2nd and is available at Amazon.com.
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October 21st, 2008 9:47 am
Thanks for this awesome book review. I’ve been looking for new genres to read, and this seems historical, informational, humorous, and interesting.