house number one was a victorian estate sale that smelled of old person. there was an old fashioned wooden phone booth in the foyer that wouldn’t fit through any of the doors, so it came with the house. wood paneling and family photos from the seventies still hung on the walls.
house number two was a brick bungalow with a two car garage that straddled the property line between it and the house next door. a fence ran up the property line and subdivided the garage. no one was clear on who owned the garage. the basement was empty and immaculate but for a half dozen tubs and barrels used for distilling liquor, and a chest freezer containing an entire side of beef.
house number three, also an estate sale, had the oldest dishwasher in existence, fabulous 60’s wall paper in the bathrooms, and yellow shag carpet.
house number four was a beautifully restored bungalow, a short-sale because restoring the house, combined with a lost job and a crashed housing market left the family unable to pay the mortgage. there was a sauna in the basement.
in house number five the basement was fully finished out and half the living space was on the basement level. the ceilings were so low that my family would have had to walk stooped over when they came to visit. the outside had stone facade treatment our realtor referred to as “barny rubble.” the location was excellent.
house number six was in the perfect location. it was so bad inside that our relator herded us out almost immediately. “not this one, guys,” he said.
house number seven was an enormous two flat in west ridge. right price, wrong location. the basement had the oldest boiler we’d ever seen, and a toilet straight out of trainspotting. a combination of perfume and cigarette smoke hung in the air when we walked in, as though someone (seller’s agent? ghost?) had been there moments before we entered the vacant house.
house number eight was a two-flat with “bedrooms” smaller than my bathroom, and had a tenant living in the illegal basement unit (whom we would have had evict on purchasing the property).
house number nine was a beautiful old farm house, probably the first house on the block before the property was divided up and other houses went in. an extra large lot, a backyard with a slide and a swing set, big trees, shady, mossy. a fat robin sat on the gate watching us. inside it had open walls and no appliances. a capped gas main poked through the living room ceiling where once a gas light had hung.
house number ten we thought might be the one. a brick victorian 2-flat with 14′ high graceful cove ceilings, and unfinished basement for our projects, a second unit to help pay the mortgage. there were some weirdnesses – the staircase to the basement was accessed through a closet in the spare bedroom – but the potential to convert it into a single family home one day was very appealing. then we got the inspector’s report and discovered it was a victorian money pit in need of roof, porch, furnace, AC, electrical, tuckpointing, and bathrooms.
house number eleven was a reminder that, although i sometime joke that we live in squalor based on the infrequency with which we clean our bathtub and kitchen floor, we do not ACTUALLY live in squalor. because now i’ve seen it.the tenants gathered awkwardly on their couch and watched us wander through their home. the landlord was shady about the illegally-rented basement and wherever the attic stairs led to. i couldn’t have gotten out of there fast enough.
house number twelve was an estate sale – a towering brick three-flat. the woman who owned it is sick with cancer and can’t leave her bedroom. she waved cheerfully at us and apologized saying that the chemo made it too hard for her to leave the house when potential buyers came to look. the bathroom wall had no sheetrock, just gaping open holes into the guts of the house. the son who was selling the house had a sickly pale, almost green pallor to his face and radiated gentle sadness.
house number thirteen was a brick two-flat with a strange layout – an enormous living room the full width of the house and tiny bedrooms. there was nothing really wrong with it except that i didn’t like it.
house number fourteen is just 3 blocks from where we live now. someone had textured the living room walls with a spackle so thick and peaked it was like egg whites prepared for a meringue. you could draw blood if you brushed into the wall by accident. the entire house was lit by fluorescent tube fixtures hung on the walls, and the backyard was paved over into a basketball court.
house number fifteen had a basement with 5’8″ of ceiling clearance. i was wearing heels that night and had to hunch over to walk in it. it was like a hobbit basement. the rest of the house was two nice for us to afford.
house number sixteen was a wood frame house that had probably once been a sfh but after WWI when housing was short it was carved into four units. one of the tenants was a little old russian lady straight out of storybooks, complete with headscarf who spoke no english. i peered at a suspicious bubble in the bathroom ceiling in her first floor unit. with hand gestures and enthusiastic russian she told me that the ceiling leaked. the seller’s agent assured me it had been fixed, but when her back was turned, the russian lady shook her head at me.
house number seventeen was a brick three flat. only the unoccupied 2nd floor until was available for viewing. the entire unit reeked of a fridge that had been unplugged and left to rot some weeks earlier. when we tried to access the illegally-rented basement unit, a tiny little dog barked furiously through the door at us.
house number eighteen was a brick two flat with an illegal basement unit. it was in beautiful condition. after looking at so many money pits it was a relief to see a home that’s really been cared for. parking is apparently excellent except on sunday mornings when a neighborhood church dominates the area.
house number nineteen was a brick two flat one block away from our friends Chelsea and Lee. the location was right, the price was right. we SO wanted to like the place, but it just wasn’t right. the bedrooms were the size of a double bed, and no bigger.
house number twenty was a greystone two flat directly across the street from our favorite brunch place. we could literally sit in the living room window and wait for them to call our name when our table was ready. someone had gotten half way through a renovation and ran out of money, so the place had new bathroom fixtures, jacuzzi tubs, but none of the plumbing was hooked up. we were ready to make an offer when we discovered it was already under contract.
house number twenty-one was a cute bungalow in the heart of lincoln square. there were so many couples touring the house at the same time we were there it was like a parade. it seemed like almost a requirement to have a toddler on one hip while inspecting the house. the stench of competitive house bidding hung heavy on the air. two people had made offers sign-unseen by 9am the day it went on the market. i had to get out of there.
house number twenty-two was a brick two-flat with the by-now-ubiquitous illegal basement unit. someone had replaced all the original molding in the first floor unit with plain 1x strips, painted an odd shade of orangey-brown, as if they were trying to approximate wood color but had never really seen wood.
house number twenty-three was another brick-two-flat-with-illegal-basement-unit. they started to blend together at this point. partially because…
at this point, house number twenty came back on to the market. we made an offer and won! if all goes well we will close on january 15, and start renovating on january 16.
