House-hunting and Home-making

There was the house with the swallows' nest above the front door, bird poop shed in a caked heap to welcome guests to an interior even more bizarre--the hardwood floors made handicap-friendly, down to the deck in the backyard with ramps easing gently to the pavement perimeter of the garden. There was an odd spigot sticking out rather grotesquely where the bathtub's faucet should have been, and a fire alarm bell, and illuminated EXIT signs leading to the front door.

There was the house with the wasps' nests, dingy, hardened mud set in hexagonal designs, revealed by the gouges in the drywall, complimenting the ripped-out ceiling showing the water stains of a leaking roof.

There was the short-sale where vents sat half on the wall, half on the crown molding, as if tacked on in a last-ditch effort, Lego pieces that refused to fit.

There was the house with the bad roof and non-existing dining room and a kitchen so small you could barely turn around in it, let alone cook. A weird Alice-in-Wonderland door was built into the fence, leading to the neighbor's backyard . . . and then there were the rodent droppings that came up in the inspection papers.

There was the "probate sale," which is just a fancy way of saying someone had recently died in the house before it was put on the market. A gorgeous house otherwise, but already sold at a price beyond our reach, even if "potentially haunted" wasn't an issue.

There were the neighborhoods too close for comfort to middle- or high-schools where you risked hoodlums coming by to tag your mailbox, slash your tires, or egg your driveway, neighborhoods where kids chased balls carelessly into the streets, where young girls for some reason danced on their rooftops, grinning at cars driving by.

There was the house that looked gorgeous and perfect on Internet pictures, but turned out to be next to a cemetery.

There were flood zones, fault zones, Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUST), radon hazards, lead-paint warnings, freeway and train noise nuisances. There were good real estate agents and bad real estate agents, agents that didn't show up for their own Open Houses, and those who wrote emails in all caps, insisting that you were wasting their time.

There was " the one that got away"--new crown moldings, fresh paint, a gas-operated fireplace, a huge converted living room, professionally-landscaped yards, hardwood floors, and recessed lighting, all in a quiet neighborhood. There was the heartbreak of being outbid on one that finally mattered, and finding the strength to let go and the will to move on after "taking a break" and "being on rebound."

And then there was "the one"--not without its imperfections: a falling back fence, light fixture covers coming apart, a roof reaching the end of its life. And not without its oddities: strangely intense aquamarine bathroom walls, a mechanical pencil sharpener welded into the pantry, painted over in white, a side fence set strangely far back into the backyard's alleyway instead of moved further to the front of the house.



But in a way, it was perfect: already set up to be hospitable, but requiring just enough fixing up so that we could spend time personalizing and making it ours. There were the quaint touches--the new wood-burning fireplace in the living room, the dining table set that was the only piece of furniture in an otherwise vacant house, the Master bedroom looking out to a backyard with an abundance of fruit trees. On a brisk autumn evening when the warmth of summer had started to recede, leaving the nights longer and colder, we set foot in this house for the first time, looked it over, and signed for the bid, the first set of paperwork in an attempt to make it ours. There was a long road ahead, a huge learning curve filled with paperwork, price negotiations, more paperwork, conducting inspections, more paperwork, getting the house appraised, more paperwork, researching homeowners' insurance, more paperwork, getting the loan, and then signing all that paperwork over again at the escrow office.

"Feels like home," our agent had said when we signed for the bid. Without heat and furniture, the interior of the house felt cold and barren, but it had all the potential to be warm and cozy. I could see where the Christmas tree, adorned in lights, would peek out from the front window behind sheer white curtains, and smell baking cinnamon rolls, the sweet scent wafting warmly through the house. The aroma of butter cupcakes baking on a cool spring day, and the clinking of ice cubes against a frosty glass pitcher on a hot summer afternoon. In the weeks ahead, we planned "what-if's"--what color and material for the curtains, whether to go with white or stainless-steel appliances, how to renovate the backyard and re-landscape the front. We pictured where the inherited dining table would look best. . . and when you're debating on where the dining table should go, you're well on your way to committing to make it feel like home.