The Day We Started Taking Her Apart

There’s something strange about preparing a house to be cut in half.

In order to move her—the 100-year-old home we’re saving—we had to start by undoing some of the very things that made her beautiful: the trim work. Baseboards, door casings, trim. All the pieces that frame a room and make it feel finished.

One by one, we pried them off.

Not recklessly. Carefully. Tenderly, even. Trying to keep the plaster and lathe in place, even though I know much more destruction is ahead.
Arched trim work and quarter rounds- I almost held my breath each time I took a piece off.

The movers told us it was necessary. To split the house to go under all the highway signs and power lines, those layers had to come off. So I kept reminding myself—and her—This is how we bring you home.

Still, I’ll be honest: it felt like total destruction. The way trim splinters when a nail holds too tightly. The sharp edges of progress. The worry, buried in the back of your throat: What if she doesn’t go back together the same? What if we lose something in the move?

But there was something else, too.
Something kind of… magical.

Behind the trim, we found signatures. Names, written on the backs of boards—some in pencil, some faded almost to invisibility. We found a 1928 wheat penny tucked behind a baseboard. And, tucked in a corner near a door frame, an old hairpin.

Tiny treasures from past lives. Proof that someone was here before us. That this house has always been held by hands.

In the quiet of those work days, I started to feel bonded to her in a different way. I wasn’t just admiring her from the outside—I was working with her. Learning how she was built. Touching the pieces no one’s seen in decades. It felt personal. Sacred, even.

And so I labeled every single piece of trim.
Every baseboard. Every door casing.
Each one marked with its room, its orientation, its return location.

Because we’re not ripping her apart.
We’re preparing her to be whole again.

There’s faith in that kind of work—faith in the movers who will carry her 15 miles across the county. Faith in our own hands to restore her. And faith in the idea that what is old and worn can be made beautiful again, without being made new.

She’s not just coming with us.
She is us, now.

And someday, when the last piece of trim is nailed back into place, we’ll know that it’s not just a house that made it through—it’s a story. One we’ll keep telling for years to come.