A reader writes:
When Granny died, the house was the first thing everybody had an opinion about. It is a board house up on posts in the hills above Linstead, built by her father in the 1940s. Cedar and pitch pine, fretwork over the verandah, jalousie windows, a zinc roof that sang when it rained. By the time she passed, the posts on the back side were leaning, termites had been at the floor in the kitchen, and there was a hole in the roof over the room where she used to keep her sewing machine.
My uncle said knock it down and put up a nice concrete house. My mother said sell the land. My cousin who is a quantity surveyor in Birmingham sent a long voice note about how it would cost more to repair than to replace. Even the pastor, when he came to pray at the nine-night, looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, she had a good long life in it.” Like the house had died too.
I was twenty-six. I am a carpenter by trade, mostly kitchens and cupboards for people in Spanish Town. I had never restored anything bigger than a chest of drawers. But I had spent every summer of my childhood in that house, and I could not stand the thought of it going to the bulldozer.
I will be honest. It was not all noble. Part of it was stubbornness. Part of it was that I wanted to prove to my uncle that I was not the boy who only makes cupboards. And part of it was grief. Working on the house was a way to keep being near her.
The family agreed I could try, as long as I did not ask them for money. So for two years, every weekend and most holidays, I drove up the hill.
The first thing I learned is that old houses lie to you. From outside it looked like the problem was the roof. The real problem was water. The gutter on the back had rusted through years ago, and every rain had been pouring straight down beside the posts. Two had rotted at the bottom. The termites followed the damp. I had to jack up the back of the house, a little at a time, and set new posts on proper footings. A mason friend helped me with the concrete. An engineer my boss knew came up one Saturday and told me what I was doing wrong, which was a lot, and I am grateful he did.
The second thing I learned is that the old wood is better than the new. When I pulled up the kitchen floor, most of the boards were ruined, but the joists underneath, big pieces of hardwood, were still hard as iron. I could not have bought timber like that anywhere today. I saved every board that could be saved and matched the rest as close as I could.
The third thing, and this one surprised me, was the paper. Behind the wall of her bedroom, where the boards met the post, I found old newspapers stuffed in as draught-proofing. Gleaner pages from the fifties. And in between them, an envelope. Inside were three letters from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother, written from Cuba where he had gone to cut cane, and a receipt for the zinc he sent money home to buy. I sat on the floor in the dust and read them twice. The house had been built with money sent from abroad, a sheet at a time, by a man who missed his wife. Nobody in the family knew that.
There were bad months. One hurricane season I lost a whole section of the new roof before I had strapped it down properly, and I sat in my car and cried. Money was always short. My girlfriend at the time got tired of me spending every weekend on a hill, and I cannot blame her. Some evenings I asked God whether I was being faithful or just foolish.
But slowly it came back. New posts. A roof with proper straps and screws. The gutter replaced and the water led away. The kitchen floor relaid. I had the wiring redone by a licensed electrician, because that is not something to be proud about doing yourself. I scraped and repainted the fretwork in the same green and cream it always was.
Last Easter, the whole family came up. My uncle walked round it twice without saying anything. Then he sat on the verandah, where Granny used to sit, and said, “It smell the same.” That was all. But I knew what he meant.
I do not think every old house should be saved. Some are too far gone, and some are dangerous. My cousin in Birmingham was probably right about the money. It did cost more than knocking it down. But I think we are too quick, in this country, to tear down what our grandparents built and replace it with something that looks like everybody else’s house. There is timber and craft and history in those old board houses that we will not see again.
I live there now, most weekends. The letters are framed in the front room.
— Andre, St Catherine
Editor’s note
Andre’s story holds a practical lesson and a deeper one. Practically, his first discovery is common: many problems in old timber houses start with water, and fixing the drainage and the posts often matters more than the visible damage. He was wise to bring in an engineer and a licensed electrician. The deeper lesson is about what we inherit. Andre found that his family home was built by faith and sacrifice, one sheet of zinc at a time. Whether we restore an old house or build new, it is worth knowing, and honouring, the story beneath our floors.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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