The Prussian Green Money Pit
That’s our house. The Prussian Green Money Pit.
When Hambet was born, dh and I were living happily in a little condo within walking distance to a Metro stop. It had two bedrooms (though the second one was kind of tiny) and one bath. After Hambet arrived, though, things started getting a little tight, and we started revisiting the idea of getting a house. It looked as though we were going to be out of luck, though — we really wanted someplace accessible to public transit (dh works downtown), but all we could find were townhouses in the remote suburbs.
We did come across a townhouse in Kensington that we liked, but before we could get our act together to call a realtor, someone else put a contract on it. But now we were hooked on the idea of buying a house, so we decided to go ahead and put the condo on the market. We got a contract very quickly, so now we needed to find a place to live. Nothing we looked at, though, seemed right.
Finally one evening we were driving back from a showing through a neighborhood we hadn’t been through before — slightly older houses surrounded by mature trees — and there was this pale green house (that sixties, after-dinner-mint shade of green) with a For Sale sign in front of it. Our agent arranged a showing and we went that Saturday to take a look.
It quickly became apparent why the house still had the sign: it was a pigsty. Apparently the sellers had missed the memo about cleaning up your house before showing it (and the follow-up memo about leaving the house while the showing is in progress.) The sellers’ little boy ended up showing us around. The front rooms were in pretty good shape, but some of the rooms were so full of junk you couldn’t get past the doorway. For some reason, the kitchen tickled my fancy — it had cheerful yellow walls, a big bay window, and the original copper hardware (and copper-colored ovens!) The family room had a filthy turquoise carpet and was decorated in brightly painted children’s handprints, as if the Blair Witch were running a kindergarten. (We later deduced that the seller was allowing her sister to run a day-care out of that room.) The yard was also a wreck.
The funniest feature of the house was a weird addition stuck on the back of the dining room. It didn’t have windows, like a sun room (one of the windows didn’t even have any glass) and it didn’t have water, electricity, or a finished ceiling. It did have peeling wallpaper and a vinyl floor.
But the house seemed to be talking to us — saying not getttttttttttt outtttttttttttttttttt, like haunted houses, but helllllllllllllllllllpppppppp meeeeeeeeeeeee! The mom was also talking to me, dropping me little hints about how desperate they were to sell (the father had been transferred to Atlanta.)
We were worried about the basic systems of the house, especially the furnace and about the basement, so we were relieved when the housing inspector, a gentleman our realtor recommended, gave them a clean bill of health (“oh, don’t worry about that white powder on the basement walls and that black stuff on the drywall — a little baking soda will take care of that! And the furnace looks about fifteen years old. The addition? Solidly built — you could turn that into a cute little covered porch. The ovens both work, too.”) So we went ahead.
We moved in on Friday afternoon, and that evening turned out to be the first cold evening of the year. We turned on the furnace and…. nothing. The furnace man who came the next day doubled over laughing when he told him what our inspector had said. “Try 35 years old. You may want to consider a new furnace, or else you’ll be seeing me a lot this winter.” We had our new furnace installed in a week.
This turned out to be a recurring theme: “Your inspector told you what?” In the kitchen, the top oven turned out to have no working thermostat and the bottom’s broiler coil could not be replaced (“what color oven did you say it was? Copper? …..um, you’re not going to be able to find a replacement part for that oven, ma’am.”) The little addition turned out to be wrecking the drainage around the yard, and was a virtual monument to code violations. (We dubbed it “they mystery room” and finally had it demolished last fall.) The latest “he told you what?” moment was the basement (it looks like we’re going to be getting a drainage system put in in October).
At one point this house was owned by someone who fancied himself Mr Do-It-Yourself. He really shouldn’t have bothered. He built the mystery room, rewired the thermostat, and did all kinds of other things that must have kept his Guardian Angel busy — it’s a miracle that the house has not blown up or slid off its foundation.
Although having a fixer-upper is a good way to get into a house, in order to fix it up it helps to have a knack with tools or to have a lot of extra money. We have neither, and it seems like every time we start getting ahead something else comes up with the house. I sometimes get really frustrated and regret our decision to choose this house. But at the same time, what else would we have done?
Meanwhile, it’s gratifying when we make improvements. I think this house was “the weird house” for several years (between the misguided handyman and our sellers, who had three barking dogs and about a dozen extra family members living in or using the house.) It took a while for the neighbors to get used to us. But this spring, we finally met our neighbors to the west side. One of them apologized for the overgrowth on their side of the shared fence but promised, “now that we have nice neighbors I’ll cut that all back.” (He did, too, while we were on vacation. They had let it grow to block out their view of the mystery room.)
Our latest little project was a retaining wall in the backyard. Our house is a split-level and our back yard slopes from west to east, so every year a little more of our yard washes down the street. It would stop to rest on our patio in the form of a huge mud puddle. The mystery room had only aggravated the erosion, and the Misguided Handyman had knocked down the original retaining wall.
We built the wall last weekend, and yesterday Hambet and I finished backfilling behind it. Like I often do when I get into the swing of a project, I got a little carried away. We live close to a Home Depot, so it’s distressingly easy to give in to impulses. After we finished backfilling, we graded it and planted ivy — the plan is to establish an ivy groundcover, for the area is heavily shaded. I put in little stepping stones leading up to the outlet and the spigot and then mulched the whole area. At one point, when I was twiddling with rocks, I thought oh no, I’m turning into my dad! (My dad is a little prone to getting into endless landscaping projects involving rocks, terraces, and raised beds. But it was so gratifying!
I wanted to go back and plant the whole hillside in ivy but my dh says no for now (I lost track of time while I was digging, so he came home from to find a filthy wife and son and an empty table. He ordered pizza and even gave Hambet a bath while I finished the work and cleaned up the yard.)
October’s going to be a big month for us because in addition to the basement work, we also have long-standing plans to renovate the kitchen. I quickly fell out of love with the copper handles, because the cupboards attached to them are too small, and with the tile floor, because it’s hard on dishes and little boys’ heads.
So when I complain about my house, or seem to be always working on something, or wanting to work on something, that’s because we live in a money pit. I still have this weird sense somehow that God wants us here, in part to intervene in the life of this house. Although I’m not a great housekeeper, I do feel like God wants us to take care of all His gifts to us, including our material blessings, and I almost feel sorry for the house because it was neglected and allowed to “get sick.”