R. Holly c. 2002
This spring I finally decided to get off the fence I was sitting on and start looking seriously for a house. Suddenly, every street is an adventure. How about that one? Nice porch, terrible color- I'd want to change that. A garage-now that would be useful. I suddenly pull over at the sight of real estate signs, to the dismay of drivers behind me.
Actually viewing the insides of houses is even more compelling. Each place I mentally try on to fit. Could I live here? I grew up in a lovely old Victorian house on the seacoast. So it is always the older places that really draw me in. Broad friendly porches, wooden floors and spacious high ceilings make a place feel like home.
I went see a farmhouse built in 1850. The listing showed that it had all the things I wanted- a room for entertaining, a garage, storage. I pictured it nestled in a grove of pines. Of course the pines had long since been chopped down to build more houses. It sat in the middle of a city block in an unprepossessing yard. It was covered with ugly 50s style shingles that looked like they needed replacing. But I told the agent I wanted to see inside anyway. It had a character that the anonymous boxes surrounding it completely lacked.
The insides had all the glowing wood and high-ceiling spaciousness I wanted. I was even prepared for doing some fix up work- I'm a fair carpenter, and no stranger to paint rollers. The space was perfect. It had a lovely large kitchen with a hardwood floor, turned spindles on the banisters, a nicely sized living room.. And then the list started to mount. The lovely kitchen was probably state of the art in 1950. The upstairs needed closets. Everywhere needed paint or wallpaper. The large space for entertaining was unfinished. The garage floor might not support the weight of a car. The wiring was at least 70 years old and definitely scary. The house would have to be completely rewired. And the ugly old shingles on the outside were almost certainly asbestos.
I could picture the things that it needed, what a showplace it could be. All it needed was thousands of dollars in repairs- and an owner who could work on it full time. For an entire day, I was obsessed. I really could do a lot myself. But I'd need contractors for the rest. I'd need a real break on the selling price to make it work. But repairs have a way of overrunning even the most conservative cost estimates. Finally I had an attack of common sense. I looked at my calendar. My next free weekend was over a month away. When exactly was I going to find the *time* to renovate a house?
I called my agent and asked to see the next 5 candidates from my stack of listings. Someday that will be a lovely restored farmhouse. But it won't be mine. I just made an offer on a nice bland little ranch. It is comfortable and needs relatively little maintenance. But I still look wistfully at older places. Houses that just need a little- or a lot- of TLC to be marvelous. But when was love ever practical?