It all started with my telling everyone that I was moving to Maine. Of course, I only WANTED to move there and had only applied for one job there at the time. Hadn't even interviewed, but I was CERTAIN that I would not only get the job? I would be gone by summer.
Well, you can guess what happened next: I did eventually interview and I did NOT get the job and i did NOT move to Maine. I licked my wounds for awhile, tried to figure out my, or was it God's- plan for me and eventually a year went by, as it often does, and my sister Prim, a real estate agent, told me of a little tiny place on the Randolph Road that "was just for me." She said it had my "name written all over it" and a second sister, Suzette, and I drove over after a few drinks to take a gander.
HOUSE NUMBER ONE
No one was living there, so of course we trespassed, peeking inside and walking around back we spotted paneled walls, tiny rooms, yes, but there was a MUD ROOM and this is Vermont, so I took that as a sign. And there was a garage! Now, everybody knows that in Vermont almost nobody has a garage. And if they do, that garage is filled with junk or wood or crap of some kind and nobody parks in there.
But I was going to be different. I was not only going to BUY this house, I was going to 1) park in the garage and 2) have a mud room with a washing machine in it!
Prim, the aforementioned real estate broker, got the keys to the Mud Room House and walked Suzette and me around, or was it just me? And it was cute. It had two bedrooms, tiny but large enough for a bed or two and it had a little kitchen and a bathroom--you know, more than I'm used to--so with a little paint job here and there I would be able to move right in.
Except that there was ONE TINY PROBLEM: I had no money. No, actually there were two problems: I had no money and no credit. But the woman from Country Wide (they soon thereafter went under with the housing crisis) was willing to lend me MUCH more money than I could afford to pay back--if I just paid off my car, paid all my debt and got my credit scores up to "fighting weight."
Well, I fought with her on the phone--I told her I wasn't stupid. That I had a degree, or a few of them, and that I listened to Kai Risdoll on Market Place every evening on my commute and to Tess Vigland on Market Place MONEY on the weekends and I knew damn well that I didn't want a mortgage of that magnitude. And she kind of hung up on me but very sweetly and I gave up on her immediately.
Until a year or so later.
Prim called with a "cute little place in Hyde Park" that I would love. Well, I couldn't resist. I had to get a look! I went with her the first time and LOVED IT! This place not only had a garage, it had room over it for all my crap and in the future enough space to put in an apartment for rental purposes!
It had a few problems: the garage/barn, for instance? Was kind of falling down. But if you tipped your head to the right about 20 degrees you could line the place right up and not even notice that. So that is exactly what I did. When other people came to see it (at Thanksgiving) they all told me how cute it was and how they could totally see me living there and how I could "fix it up" and it would be great. Just great. My brother, Jean Paul, who had built his own house and barn, assured me that I could "shore her up good and tight" with a cable here, a cable there...you know...no problem!
It had its good qualities: it was two homes down from Suzette's mother-in-law so she could drop Emilie off at the in-laws and hang out with me. Of course, she couldn't be drinking on these trips because a) my sisters may drink and drive but they don't do it with KIDS in the car and b) her father-in-law is a local sheriff and c) he doesn't play favorites with family---in fact, she assured me, just the opposite.
Redeemable qualities, other than the "cuteness", the garage/barn and the outside grassy areas, kind of escape me now but at the time I was enthralled with the place. I went there alone, driving by, but not daring to pull into the driveway...I took friends over, their friends and THEIR friends. I made my sister, Marianne, see it when she came home from North Carolina. I pushed that garage door opener like the proud would-be owner that I would be and I grinned that proud grin and I stood on that stoop and I gazed at the apple tree with its wind chimes and coconut shaped bird feeder. I looked across the road at the mailbox that would be mine with its hand-painted flowers and birds. I was in love.
Until the house inspector, Steve, came and took 50 plus pictures of the situations he came across while humming and hawing and staring and shaking his head (mostly at the rusty doored electrical boxes.) Eventually he popped his head into the attic and said the words NO homeowner or attempted homeowner wants to hear, "Yup. We've got mold!"
Steve's 22 page written assessment showed in living color ALL the issues the "Three Bears Home"--as I began referring to it--had. The crawl space had a few issues, the mold was there for all to see and somebody had pretty much jerry rigged the whole place together over the years. Windows were cracked. Neither of the heating units worked at a greater than 50% capacity...and then there was the electrical system. Mostly, it was so ancient that if ONE MORE MOUSE bit into ONE MORE WIRE the entire property (apple trees and all) would go up in flames.
And for that I paid him $375, thank you very much. He thought the electrical upgrades might be in the neighborhood of 5 or 6 thousand, and done over a number of years, I guessed, wouldn't be too far out of reach.
So the seller's agent, my sister (my agent) and I hatched a plan for a "rent to own" situation that would have worked out had I not done the following---gotten a second opinion of what the electrical upgrades would cost..
I persevered, as I always do. I got another Steve to come and do a free electrical inspection. His quote was between 10 and 12 thousand dollars to "get her up to code." I mean, none of us could believe it when we looked up and saw that the main electric line from the POLE was about 4 inches from TOUCHING the roof. So on top of all the issues the Three Bears had, this one was the clincher.
I had begun working on my credit score but no mortgage company or bank in its right mind would lend somebody with my score a dollar fifty. Especially for a place that was certain to burst into flames that very night, leaving nothing but a slab of charred concrete and a bunch of homeless mice. Now even I know that "smoke alarms save lives' and the ones in this place? Wouldn't matter if they were hard wired in (which they were not) because the amps, I was told by both Steves, weren't sufficient enough to plug in a toaster and a washing machine at the same time, but would fry the hell out of a rodent and crisp me up pretty badly in my sleep, if it got the chance.
So, onward and upward to NUMBER THREE
Camp in Elmore
Just driving past the place and looking at the A frame on the hill put me into a trance. It was tiny with a cathedral ceiling, overhead fan, little open kitchen, bedroom in the back across from the bathroom (very important in the middle of the night)--and it had tons of curb appeal. Gardens, a picnic table, a horseshoe pit, a washing machine in a "man cave" a clothes line, a HAMMOCK, a lawn tractor, a huge porch overlooking the water, white birch trees and the piece de resistance? a FIRE PIT for backyard drinking, marshmellow roasting, campfire singalongs and general reverie.
The hell with The Three Bears! I told myself. I'm TOTALLY in love with this one! More in love than I've been in a number of years with anything or anybody. (Which meant it was not going to work out. No how. No way.)
Again, I went to look at it with people I dragged there. We only went inside with the agent--house rules--but we surely peeked into the windows many times. I stopped by the cam on the way to Montpelier one day and took actual photos of "my" budding spring flowers and the babbling brook that went through the property (and under the house, but who cares?) It was up on stilts just like those places on the Outer Banks of North Carolina! If they could live that way? so could I!
The love affair was tumultuous. First it was the cost. Then it was Steve Three (I am not kidding, all three inspectors were named Steve) not the appraiser or the electrician, this guy was a carpenter. He did an appraisal with his 6 year old son in tow, that I only half listened to...I do recall his saying "if it were me, I'd tear the whole thing down and start from scratch!" I only half listened when he said the land was worth more than the camp. But his photos of what was going on UNDER the floor? sobered me up. And fast.
Rodents had torn all the insulation from under the bedroom. So? I thought. I like a cold bedroom. The stilts the place was built on were at 40 degree angles (ok, only three out of the what? 8?) the ground was frozen and icy...um...it was winter! No kidding! And the broken window in the front? Could be replaced for like $150 bucks.
So WHAT if none of the windows were double glazed! So WHAT if there were stress cracks all over the place! So WHAT if the upstairs bedroom wasn't insulated or finished off---no carpet or flooring of any kind! There was a LAKE VIEW (at least this time of year) and a PORCH (not screened in, but it existed) and birch trees (my favorites!) and a babbling brook---well, one of the 10 times I stopped by, there was one. And that little "man cave"--the Hellmore Hilton? that place was big enough to sleep in! That hammock had my name on it! That clothes line was the first I'd seen since the long lost days of childhood!
Well, you guessed it, by the time the appraiser from the mortgage place showed up, I was beginning to notice that the red flags were fading to white. I surrendered to a higher power (or the assessment) and finally came to realize that the sellers were not going to fix ONE MORE THING, namely the septic system--to the tune of $11,000. No mound system for them. They just wanted to unload the thing and call it a day.
HOUSE NUMBER FOUR
This was a place across the lake from the A-frame, on Loop Road. Now I was raised on Mud City Loop, so this place was my destiny, or so I thought at the time. Although the place was "lock key ready" I had been bitten like twice or thrice and I was shy. that place had BAD KARMA written all over her--the tenants didn't want to move, the seller had had some domestic situation years before resulting in her ex-husband landing in prison and for life, not to mention the fact that Loop Road was part of an Association.
And if there is one thing I know about myself it is this: I am not a joiner. I am a rebel. I argue. I debate. I am opinionated and people, grown people, are sometimes afraid of me--not children, strangely--but people of the kind who join associations. So when the seller UPPED her price from my bottom to over my top, it took exactly five seconds for me to email my sister/agent and tell her, "all bets are off."
HOUSE NUMBER FIVE
Dunham Road (Yes, by then I had stopped giving properties "pet names)
Now THIS PLACE had no land whatsoever, was on a main street, had no garage (how dare they? What did they think I was? An animal?) The interior! Was fantastic! It had newly finished hardwood floors all around, a new kitchen, a RED WALL in the living room of white painted old wood, crown molding, columns, stairs that invited you to, you know, decorate for the holidays, pose on for a family portrait or run down wearing a cozy flannel robe and LL Bean slippers on Christmas morning!
I definitely loved that place (or the interior of it) and had the woozy feeling in my tummy just walking into the place (or could it have been the newly varnished floors...) Well, that place went bye bye faster than the prior ones, due to the seller/real estate gal, we'll call her Mrs. Leech, who had shown me the Loop Road place and knew what I could afford, and had UPPED HER PRICE beyond what the place was actually worth. And she did this the night I looked at it. A few days went by and I was champing at that bit being told by Prim not to act too quickly. I really wanted it...which meant I would NEVER HAVE IT. EVER. (When would I learn?) So when my offer was laughed at and the price wobbled around like a child's toy, I sat on my bed, fingers poised over the glass face of my ipad and said, "This? Is bullsh**t!"
I heard the BING of an incomng email and it was Prim! Telling me that the seller was willing to do SOME of the items on my list---meaning plumb the upstairs for a little bathroom, return the pellet stove (you know, so my holidays would be cozy) and that was it. No car port? I couldn't understand why Mr. Leech, the realtor's carpenter husband couldn't just slap one together in half an hour on the weekend and leave it at that!
I literally wrote this email to my sister, "Tell the Leeches to kiss my a **s!" to which Prim responded that she wouldn't be using those exact words, but she would end it and end it now.
I had finally tired of the whole year-long roller coaster ride and gone on-line as of late and I had done my own research. I know Prim will never agree that this is her reality, but I, ME, LITTLE OLD YOURS TRULY found the place I now pay a hefty mortgage to live in. It is in my hometown, within walking distance of the library I borrowed books from as a child and still have a library card for. But best of all my nieces and nephew can walk to my place from the middle and high schools...just like I used to when my older sister had an apartment in town when I was young.
They say what goes around comes around? This? Is coming back around. Thanks be to God, Mother Nature, the universe, the law of attraction or whatever you want to call it. Yes, I am coming around to this idea of home ownership after all. And, most days? I could not be happier.
PART B
I’m writing this
years later—five, in fact. I want to say that it’s been a lot of work and money
to fix up this fixer upper. Lots of planning. Lots of cash deals with some
reputable and some not so reputable carpenters and family members. I could write
an entire book outlining the 6 months of work my drunken cousin and brother
spent on the floors, pouring concrete in the winter and building up a wall
between the garage and the workshop, so my car wouldn’t set fire to the house
or the furnace wouldn’t set fire to my car.
About the early Sunday mornings they knocked on my door so I could run
to the bank and hand over hundreds of dollars. About the one New Year’s Eve where
I literally chased them out into the snow while they struggled with a monstrous
section of the old kitchen island. To be fair they kept screwing around all day
saying they would be done “any minute.” Minutes turned into hours and I
needed to tidy the place up for the
party I was hosting. So I set the timer on the stove and told them they had
exactly one hour and when that timer went off they had better be gone. And
there were times when water sprayed all over the kitchen and cellar. My cousin
got “bitten” by a like 500 watt hot wire. They drove to the hardware store for
the 5th time that day promising to return and did not.
But the list
that was longer than my arm is now only as long as my hand. The big cost items
were the furnace that needed to be replaced the first autumn, the hot water
heater that literally exploded and filled up basement up with water up past my
ankles, floors, electrical work, that kitchen island and cupboards and then all
the work in the ensuite. Now I’m tackling (or my landscaper Eliza is) the yard.
It’s amazing how many trees grow on a hillside you stop mowing in four years!
And although last summer I put my house up for sale and it didn’t sell, it
almost did a few times. This year I am confident that it will sell and I will
be happier somewhere else and will no longer be a happy or unhappy homeowner.
The end.
(see more in the Joys of Home Ownership, Parts 1 and 2)
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