So far, there’s been a lot of talk, and not much action in Ojai. But, as I learned, that’s the way big renovations go. We purchased our house in March of 2023. It took a year of land surveys, permit applications, drawings, proposals, and value engineering before a single hammer was swung. During this time, Tad and I lived in fantasy land. Back in Brooklyn, we did a lot of day-dreamy thinking about how we’d want to live in our first house in this faraway town.

When people asked what we were doing, I’d say our renovation was like a twice-baked potato: we were scooping out the insides of the house, then restuffing it. This sounded clean and simple.

We labored over the budget, getting deep in the weeds of it, but it was all imagined spending and pretend work that lay ahead, ideas that I’d ruminate over at night in bed to soothe myself to sleep.

In March of 2024, demolition finally commenced. And my fantasies got a rude jolt once photos were emailed to us showing a barren interior with studs for walls and not much roof left. What would eventually be a kitchen was nothing more than a foundation. I sent photos to my friend Liz, who replied, “I like your open-air kitchen—that’ll be neat.”

Until demolition, we retained the option to decide that this Ojai fantasy had been a whim. We could have sold the property and walked away with a much sounder balance sheet for the years ahead.

As I looked at photos of our peek-a-boo house, reality rushed in. My dream of a creative refresh was now turning into stacked lumber, port-a-potties (ours was Fence Factory, which was disappointing, as port-a-potty names are almost always terrible puns), and a raging river of bills to pay. ...