door Alice Rush
AFTER our visit to the Netherlands, it seems to me that maybe there is less exterior home maintenance there. Everything is built quite solidly and/or is very old and built to hold up for a long time.
Dutch exteriors don’t appear to need as much care as the wooden built homes in the United States. Even brick homes in the United States need re-pointing, filling the spaces between the brick when the original filling cracks or falls out. Of course, in either country there is the job of exterior painting, and potentially Holland would have a fair amount of painting and repainting because the salt air really wreaks havoc on paint.
Now that we’re back home, we’re reviewing what needs to be done before winter, and going over the endless wish list of tasks and changes that we would like to make, someday. On the interior, we’re anticipating a new furnace installation in a couple of weeks, and that is very important before the dead of winter. Our old furnace still functions, but it’s not burning properly, and is likely not efficient. It’s the original that came with the house, and we’re not sure how the previous owners cared for it, so it’s time for a new one.
OUTSIDE, together we have replaced the boards in our back steps as they were rotting through and threatening to break. No one needs that kind of hazard, especially not over the winter. We have also straightened up our mailbox at the end of the driveway, which wanted to fall to one side a bit if the mail carrier didn’t treat it very gingerly.
I have written before about seeing the re-thatching of roofs in the Netherlands, so I realize that there are truly some home maintenance issues that appear very challenging. And of course all of us like to improve our homes as we can. A new roof is on our wish list before too much time passes. It just seems to me that maybe the construction of buildings in the Netherlands offers lighter general maintenance.
The durability and strength of old structures is one of the characteristics that I appreciate about Europe, and Holland, because it’s the country with which I’m more familiar. To the old structures that remain, and the care and detail with which they were built so that we can still appreciate them today: I’m impressed!
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
