Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Dream home
We’re getting closer and closer to completing starting two major bits of unfinished home remodeling business: the floors and the kitchen countertops. The wife and I kind of like this vinyl Konecto stuff, but there’s a problem. Supposedly, it’s easy as pie to install, so of course everyone seems to think I can install it.
Um. Right.
Whenever we futz with our house, I remember a For Sale By Owner home I viewed in San Antonio way back in ’97. What a place. I bet it’s still on the market.
Back then, I was an academic ENT for UT Health Sciences Center, San Antonio. I had, in all honesty, very little in the way of clinical duties (perhaps 30 hours per week), so I spent my down-time writing grants, designing the departmental website, surfing the ‘net, and doing anything else I could do to avoid playing with my dizzy mice — which, by the way, is what I was supposed to be doing with my free time. Research. You know, the whole reason for going into academics in the first place.
We were renters at the time. One afternoon, I discovered the following listing in the local paper:
For Sale By Owner: WHY WAIT FOR LUXURY? 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath, 3200 sq ft house, outdoor spa, two pools, waterfall, pond, sun room, workshop, and more — too many extras to list! $220K. Must be seen to be believed!!!
That price caught my eye — $220,000 was a steal for a 3200 square foot house, even ignoring all those “luxury” features. IÂ recognized the neighborhood, knew it wasn’t horrible. Even though my suspicions were aroused, I had to see this place.
To this day, I regret not taking Karen along. Why? Because without a witness, no one will ever believe me.
The owner, an ex-hippie chick in her late 40s, let me in through the front entryway. But this wasn’t a real front entryway, but an enclosed porch which stiflingly hot and humid and redolent of decaying vegetable matter and mold. Plants in various shades of brown lined the walls.
“This is the sun room,” she said. “We’ve always loved the fact that the first thing people would see when they came over would be greenery. These plants have fallen on hard times, but just imagine what you could do with this space!”
The sun room opened onto a living room overgrown with creeping vines. You know those plants which climb walls, cross ceilings, and dig their little feelers into everything? One of those, or perhaps a few of those, had long since conquered the room.
“I love it so much,” my hostess said, “I’m taking it with me when I move. I hope you don’t mind.”
The house had grown organically from what must have been a 1200 square foot 1940s-era home. Bedrooms, playrooms, “bathrooms,” and assorted other oddly named rooms (even a “multipurpose room”) sprouted one off the other, each the fruit of a burst of creative activity from years or decades before. You could live in this house for months, I thought, and not be aware of two or three rooms. Each had fallen into various states of shabbiness — nothing that a fumigation tent, power washer, and paint job couldn’t fix.
Mind you, I like shabby places. In my first year of med school, I shared rent with a bunch of other grad students and paid $125 a month for a room in a big dirty place we all loved. I still miss that place. It was comfortable. It was cheap. But this house offended my aesthtetic senses to such a degree there was no way I’d ever be comfortable in it.
I thought: Who knows. Maybe we could level it to the foundation and build anew. There are still those pools, hot tub, pond, and waterfall, right?
“You have to see the back yard,” the owner said, reading my mind.
The back yard was a superfund site. As with the house, every item in the ad was, indeed, present, but had mutated horribly from any rational person’s idea of the same. Pond? Wet sink hole. Spa? Algal arboretum. And throughout the tour, my hostess made everything seemed like a homeowner’s idyll. Dead of summer, nothing like dangling your feetsies in the pool while sippin’ a julep. Just imagine.
I imagined one of Cthulhu’s tentacled arms encirling my footsie and dragging me down to suffer eternally in His ancient kindgom.
When I told her about the place, Karen had a good laugh. But I’ll bet she thinks I made it all up.
D.
A good lesson. We now know “dollhouse” means so tiny, it’s ridiculous. Likewise, in your case, the worded ad was better than the actual house. Here where I live, there was a house for sale where the owners had the nerve to boast the house came with its own peacock. For unsuspecting home seekers who don’t know better, that peacock is just an escapee from the arboretum, and when they get a taste of what it’s like to be woken up at 3 a.m. when one of those suckers lands on the roof of the small house you just paid a million bucks for, they’ll wonder why they didn’t investigate the area further. I rather like the peacock’s mating call; it’s an acquired taste.
Good one! I think I know that peacock. One morning, he was toodling around on Gladesmore and a cop was trailing him at 2 mph, undoubtedly waiting for animal control to do the pickup. Dear Father said to the cop, “Ridin’ herd, Sheriff?”
If the cop could have busted him for sarcasm, I’m sure he would have.
Male peacock calls sound like, “HELP! HELP!” to me. Here’s a sound clip for folks who don’t know what we’re talking about.
My aunt, in California, had her yard invaded by a peacock. She had to cover all her patio doors with black plastic because the stupid thing spent all day attacking its reflections. Once the windows were covered, it went after the reflections on her car.
Her neighbour thought it was so cool, he bought a peahen, hoping they’d mate. They did. Loudly. Then the peahen took to laying her eggs on my aunt’s roof. Her sloped roof. Their pool deck was permanently spattered with fried peacock eggs.
But they’re sooooo beeeyoooteeefulllll!
But you’re saying they’re not the sharpest beaks in the henhouse?
That story reminds me of a house the ex and I looked at the last time we were house hunting together. He fell in LOVE with this turn of the century brick mansion that had a basement full of mold and other life forms yet to be discovered by the scientific community. Oh, I saw the potential too. With the proper attention it would have been gorgeous. I also saw that buying the house would eat up our entire house purchasing budget and we would have to double our investment in order to get the house anywhere NEAR it’s potential. At another time and place I might have been game, but I had a 14 month-old baby and I was 7 months pregnant with the second. I wasn’t in the mood for any extra projects. The night after we toured the house and after hours of listening to my husband wax poetic about the charms of the house, I spent the entire night and most of the following day vomiting. When I finally felt better he said “Damn, Baby. That was some stomach virus you had.” I said “That was no virus. It was nerves over that brick monstrosity you want to buy.” End of discussion. We went on to buy a lovely, well maintained late 70’s split-level that resold very nicely after the divorce.
Hmm. Reminds me of the house we’re living in now — yes, it has great potential, but it’s taking bloody forever to bring out that potential. I’m not sure we’ll ever have enough money to do everything I’d like to do. As it is, we’re neglecting our master bedroom/master bath, and the baby blue tile and carpet are getting old (in every sense of the word).
Not sure exactly why, but that story made me sad, KariBelle.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you sad. I guess there was a lot of potential that was not lived up to in that story. I like to think that someone perfect for that house came along and now, years later, it is a gem. just like someone will come along for me one of these days too. It really is okay. My children and I are in a good place now. You have to admit, since it was, almost certianly a stomach virus, it took some quick thinking to make that work to my advantage, lol.
Those vine plants are scary! When I worked at the Gap on Princes St. Edinburgh, there were narrow, twisty stairways (servant’s rat runs from the building was grander) up each side of the building. Out of the wall on one of these – fairly dark no direct sunlight stairway – was a triffid tentacle that every spring would reach out and try and touch my as I stepped past it on my way to the stockroom. It went through brick, concrete and about twelve layers of wallpaper and paint to torment me.
I was too scared of it to snip it with scissors, fearing that if I cut it back, it would came back even hardier.
You should go and see it again and see what it’s like now-a-days and pity the poor soul who did get it! And take pictures, ok?
Doug,
listen to this audio clip from John Clarke (Fred Dag) which will explain exactly how real estate descriptions work….
oh, and enjoy….
And apropos of nothing, some more Dag… because it’s on the same site.
I have to write up the strangest house we visited, but it would take too long, so I’m off to my own blg. I’ll link you later.
(I love the idea of the sunporch filled with dead plants. Denial much?)
Your blog is eating my comments. (Three time’s a charm?)
I can’t get the link up, but I blogged about house hunting.
Here’s your link. Go visit, everyone. I command you!
I have no recollection of that happening with our father; I must have been living out of the house by then.
Anyway, my speakers don’t work at home, but I hear these things nightly, and to me, their call sounds like : May AW May AW; it is quite shrill. Read that phonetically with an emphasis on the AW.