My father's house is a testament to good materials.
My parents bought this 1912 Craftsman-style bungalow in 1972, when I was eleven. My mother left in 1974, and my father let the place go for the next forty-three years.
I almost never visited after I left at sixteen, mostly because I wasn't welcome but also because it felt like you might inhale something in the house that you'd never clear from your lungs. (This is not a metaphor.)
When my father died last month, I inherited one-third of this house, which I thought might well be a teardown. But, no!
The realtor my executor-sister found said that when she first looked through the windows and saw brass sconces with tulip art-glass shades, her heart beat faster. Alongside hired help, she stripped the house of decades of encrustment, pulled up dead rose bushes from the yard, installed dehumidifiers in the basement, cleared the attic of god-knows-what, etc.
This week she has been staging it to put on the market.
Sister sent me photos.
I wish I had "before" photos to show you, but imagine this porch crammed with so many large, broken things you can barely enter it and the windows half-obscured by scraggly bridal wreath spirea that never bloomed anymore.
The realtor hauled the junk away, liberating the rattan furniture my father'd bought in Malaysia when he was teaching there. Those faded batik cushions are thirty years old, but it looks like the layers of cat hair are gone.
The realtor emptied the built-in shelves of moldering books––wearing a mask against airborne mold, I hope––cleared the objects furred with sticky dust from the mantel of the prairie-brick fireplace, and set up butterfly chairs my parents bought in the 1960s. I remember them well. My father must have bought new canvas covers at some point, but those red pillows--they are originals from my childhood.
(The little yellow stickers are tags my sister attached for the estate sale to come.)
You can see the floor is worn, but here's what I mean about good materials: the realtor says the floors and pretty much all the other fundamental materials are OK--with sanding, scraping, painting, polishing, and so forth, they'll come back. It will take a lot of work (and/or money), but someone will have a blast restoring this house.
I thought of this when I was cleaning an expensive, newish (built in the early 2000s?) condo downtown last month. I was on my knees cleaning the kitchen baseboards and I noticed the wood veneer was pulling up.
There's nothing like that in my father's house. It's solid.
And while my father didn't take care of it, he didn't ruin itwith awful modernizations either.
The house does have issues, like no driveway and no possibility of one. And its ancient electrical wiring.
When we were at my father's deathbed, the only words my brother exchanged with me (besides his curt hello and goodbye) was after my sister warned us not to use anything electrical upstairs. They were running a window a/c in my father's room and, she said, anything else electric would short it out.
My brother commented that you couldn't kill yourself by dropping a hair drier in the bathtub.
[Children of suicide, you know.]
I said you could run a toaster up from the kitchen.
"With an extension cord!" he said, laughing.
I had a small flash of missing my brother at that, quite likely the last time I'll see him.
My parents bought this 1912 Craftsman-style bungalow in 1972, when I was eleven. My mother left in 1974, and my father let the place go for the next forty-three years.
I almost never visited after I left at sixteen, mostly because I wasn't welcome but also because it felt like you might inhale something in the house that you'd never clear from your lungs. (This is not a metaphor.)
When my father died last month, I inherited one-third of this house, which I thought might well be a teardown. But, no!
The realtor my executor-sister found said that when she first looked through the windows and saw brass sconces with tulip art-glass shades, her heart beat faster. Alongside hired help, she stripped the house of decades of encrustment, pulled up dead rose bushes from the yard, installed dehumidifiers in the basement, cleared the attic of god-knows-what, etc.
This week she has been staging it to put on the market.
Sister sent me photos.
I wish I had "before" photos to show you, but imagine this porch crammed with so many large, broken things you can barely enter it and the windows half-obscured by scraggly bridal wreath spirea that never bloomed anymore.
The realtor hauled the junk away, liberating the rattan furniture my father'd bought in Malaysia when he was teaching there. Those faded batik cushions are thirty years old, but it looks like the layers of cat hair are gone.
The realtor emptied the built-in shelves of moldering books––wearing a mask against airborne mold, I hope––cleared the objects furred with sticky dust from the mantel of the prairie-brick fireplace, and set up butterfly chairs my parents bought in the 1960s. I remember them well. My father must have bought new canvas covers at some point, but those red pillows--they are originals from my childhood.
(The little yellow stickers are tags my sister attached for the estate sale to come.)
I thought of this when I was cleaning an expensive, newish (built in the early 2000s?) condo downtown last month. I was on my knees cleaning the kitchen baseboards and I noticed the wood veneer was pulling up.
There's nothing like that in my father's house. It's solid.
And while my father didn't take care of it, he didn't ruin itwith awful modernizations either.
The house does have issues, like no driveway and no possibility of one. And its ancient electrical wiring.
When we were at my father's deathbed, the only words my brother exchanged with me (besides his curt hello and goodbye) was after my sister warned us not to use anything electrical upstairs. They were running a window a/c in my father's room and, she said, anything else electric would short it out.
My brother commented that you couldn't kill yourself by dropping a hair drier in the bathtub.
[Children of suicide, you know.]
I said you could run a toaster up from the kitchen.
"With an extension cord!" he said, laughing.
I had a small flash of missing my brother at that, quite likely the last time I'll see him.
4 comments:
what a lovely place...whatever was put in it,you can see why they bought it.
and families? who'd have 'em, you think sometimes
THanks, GZ--I hadn't seen what a great house it was until the realtor did all that work! I'm grateful to her.
Families, yeah. You know, birthrates are falling...
--Fresca
Having been in that house, and breathed that musty air...what a transformation! I almost want to drive to Madison just to go to the open house.
BINK: I know! I also want the new owners to stay in touch and send photos of their makeover of the house!
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