house of my dreams

This is the "Old House" that goes with yesterday's hibiscus located at 39 Elm Avenue in the Wollaston section. This colonial was built in 1900 and has had its luster restored over the last decade. It gleams with ownership pride on the outside and I imagine on the inside too. It is for sale . . . it's time for the owner's to move on in their lives. I wish them all the best and hope the new owners keep the shine on this one!
There she is. The ‘house of my dreams.’ Right? I mean, doesn’t it sound lovely- the whole buy-an-old-house-in-an-even-older-town, fixer-upper, quaint charm and high ceilings thing? And it is. Some days. Other days, I wonder if the insurance would be enough to pay the mortgage if it (ahem) accidentally burned to the ground.

We bought it 8 years ago this month. I said it would take a decade to fix it up they way I envisioned it, and it sure has. I guess we only have two years to add central air conditioning, fix the leaky old wraparound-rain-gutter thingy, and add that master bath.

Why a master bath? Well, when we first bought the house (for $185,000 because it was on the market for EIGHT YEARS since no one wanted its termite-munched house ass) it had ONE SHOWER on the first floor. The inspector said the only thing holding the toilet up was its pipe, and that was right before he fired up the furnace in the cellar and it shot flames all over the place. So we added a shower kit (complete with sunflower shower head and sucking-to-your-wet body round shower curtains) to the original clawfoot tub on the second floor and ripped out the first floor bath. There were 22 toothbrushes behind the sink when we ripped it out of the moldy wall. Ew.

The second floor bathroom, though, is on a landing in view of the front door. It has two little French doors that lead to it, which are constantly being opened by the children in the household to cut through to the laundry room. So, potentially, you could be either a.) stepping out of the shower or b.) dropping a deuce in full view of the guest who has just stepped through your front door.

“Hi, Guest! I’ll be right down to serve your iced tea as soon as I wipe my ass!”

This is why I want my own bathroom, with a door that not only locks, but includes a knob which sends an electric shock to any small hands that attempt entry.

Suffice it to say that the mortgage on the house is wayyyyyyyyy more than it’s original purchase price (the house ‘totaled itself’ years ago) so a new bathroom is not in the budget. And should our second mortgage be paying for a non-leaky roof instead of an inground pool? Absosmurfly, but we all love the freakin pool, dude. I don’t know what I’d do with four kids all summer if I didn’t have it.

I could regale you all day with stories of fixing up this old house, but I don’t want to bore you- plus, I kept notes and photos of the renovation and want to publish them as some sorta book (I have been thinking about putting a series of e-books or Kindles on Pajamas and Coffee in case any of you would like to read more of my random rantings. Would you guys pay like $5 to read ebooks by me? Cuzzzz, then I could save up and maybe one day take a crap in peace.)

Until then, here’s a list of additional miscellaneous mini-old-house stories:

* the foundation sill of the house had to be replaced because its termite-murdered ghost was haunting us: the kitchen was 8 inches lower on one side than the other. The only thing holding up the back of our house were the termites holding hands, plus what we fondly refer to as ’structural plaster.’
* the old (not 1881 quaint old, 1972 FUBAR UGLY old) kitchen featured a single light bulb’s illumination, actual icicles hanging from the faucet on cold mornings (we used the oven to heat the room), and bugs that should never be seen on the inside of the place where a person lives and were outnumbered only by the mice.
* the mauve and blue Country ducks/geese/pineapples/hearts were highlighted by the mauve and blue wall-to-wall carpeting and blue ruffled curtains throughout all three floors. And blue trim. I think in one room the air was 1982 Country blue.
* Things We’ve Removed: the color blue, 2 non-original walls put up when the house was 2 apartments in 1939, all wall-to-wall carpet, the godforsakenly ugly ‘popcorn plaster’ on all ceilings, drop acoustical tile ceilings (including bonus shower of unopened condoms and 80s porn), the ugly wallpaper from throughout, THE KITCHEN, the white asbestos tiles that covered the exterior of the house, and the termites (sorry, gluttons!)
* Things We’ve Added: original exterior paint colors, a shower to the 3rd floor bathroom, a new kitchen (including discovery of old brick fireplace behind the wall!), a 19th century copper gargoyle (better known as our Gaygoyle) because our house looks like the Addams family house and I am a Halloween maniac, 2 children to the 2 we had when we bought the five-bedroom house (one room for everybody if you include the 6th bedroom-converted-to-laundry room/my closet, where I hide when I am not hiding in my car from the kids), 3 working fireplaces on the 1st floor, a ton of freaking debt, and a partridge in a pear tree (they eat less than mice).
* Favorite finds: 1896 quarter, the original front door in the cellar (bye-bye, 90s Lowes’ door!), original 1881 wallpaper samples, old metal Snuff can, old bottles, old greeting cards, 1939 flashlight, a 1920s love letter and most of all, DOLLY, a lady who was born in our bedroom in 1917 and lives a block away- she’s given us original photographs, linens, vases, and my favorite: the infant dress her mother made her in the house when she was born (now framed in parlor). She gave it to us as a gift when my third daughter was born while we were living here.

It’s not all as charming as it sounds. We never did get to stripping and restoring that 3-level winding mahogany staircase with it’s George Bailey-loose newel post top. My husband hauls window unit air conditioners in and out of windows each summer which sucks donkey, it’s a money pit like that old 80s movie (whenever I take a bath in the claw foot tub I think I’m going to end up in the cellar like Shelley Long), it has more drafts than the Vietnam War, and the paint on the exterior is already peeling and we can’t afford a new paint job. Also it’s a smidge haunted, but I’ll save that story for another day.

But whenever I find myself in someone’s cookie cutter, vinyl-sided, I-can’t-find-your-house-because-it-looks-like-all-the-other-houses house, I find myself glad to be living in a home that, built 130 years ago, is solid, has 44 windows (some of which are over 8 feet high), has gorgeous slate mantels, the original polychromatic slate roof and tons and tons of that hard-to-define, easy-to-recognize CHARM that makes us love her no matter how much heart and wallet-ache she causes.
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