Initial Shock

“What the hell did you get us into?”: the first thing my husband said when we finally walked into the home we’d I’d bought online.

Wasn’t like it was his first rodeo. From our initial 1880’s house in Philadelphia close by the art museum, to the 1930’s house in Steamboat Springs, to the two-flat Victorian wreck in San Francisco, and even the 1920 extended craftsman in Berkeley, with its lovely garden, mottled pink stucco. and dark green shutters (later resold as “Giverny in Berkeley!” by our enthusiastic realtors), every adorable pre-used house I set my heart on needed rehabilitation, the San Francisco one so derelict, he wouldn’t sleep there with me. We were always just done with the chaos of a renovation when I fell in love with another antique. Another money-pit, another wreck with potential.

For him, black mold growing through the wall above his head was a hard NO. For me, it was just part of the challenge; I knew that smallish but ornate SF stick Victorian could be gorgeous. When the renovation was done, it was indeed beautiful, a little jewel box, especially our flat, with one bathroom’s William de Morgan fish mural, handmade blue and white tiles as the kitchen backsplash, walls open to graceful arches, and new flooring finished with faux cigarette burns to match the old wood that could be kept. Our Berkeley house was similarly charming but the en suite bathroom had to be gutted and enlarged and the filthy walls repainted, and… here we were again, now in Pennsylvania, gazing down at dead field mice, cabinets disintegrating into sawdust, and a bathtub, painted with peeling wall paint, looking as if it had a skin disease.

As my long-suffering spouse looks online at the bank balance and works in a makeshift office while contractors bang away, he always grumbles, “You like charm, but I like modern plumbing!”

True, but plumbing can be redone and the skilled craftsmanship and charm of the past is nearly impossible to replicate. It has to be conserved.

Blog entry #2

The fall of 2020 was already more than nine dreary months into the coronavirus pandemic. No one socialized—talk on the street was at a distance with the few brave masked souls among our neighbors. Go out without a mask, even alone, or with the wrong mask could result in being dressed down by crescendoing voices, shrill and sometimes even hysterical. Paranoia had overtaken everyone, justified paranoia since no one knew what was killing so many. Our poor dog Wally was baffled that people once happy to see him now shied away, since there was a rumor that animals could be vectors. My always-protective husband shopped for us, disinfecting every item before bringing it inside the house.

Our charming craftsman, once cozy, especially in the large living room large with its fifteen-foot barrel ceiling painted white as whipped cream, now felt claustrophobic. But since the dog was young and needed exercise, almost every day, I took him to a local park that jutted into the San Francisco Bay. Built on landfill, monstrous chunks of cement from a torn-down expressway, the park had winding paths, up and down, bordered by white and pink-flowering wild radish.

Wally loved terrorizing the ground squirrels, which always made it back to their holes safely. Occasionally in the early mornings, burrowing owls, which shared the squirrels’ homes, would poke a little feathered head above ground. They were as wary as the rodents about the white-tailed kite casing an ominous shadow, as it hovered in place above, hoping for a meal.

Wally and I came back from the walk content after the beauty of the Bay glittering in the sunshine. Given a treat, he remained happy. Oh, to be so easily diverted. My own mood quickly returned to depressed at the confinement. Living through the pandemic quarantines was like being back post chemotherapy when I’d endured months in isolation.

As pleasant and sunlight drenched as our house was, it no longer felt like a sanctuary, but a tastefully designed prison surrounded by a blooming yard. It no longer felt like home and California itself seemed alien: too sparsely treed, too dry, too unlike the lush verdant East Coast, where I grew up and where my husband and I met.

 I started clicking through real estate ads online. One caught my eye. It was definitely Victorian, with multiple stairs to confusing floors, a rabbit warren of rooms. Its address had an enchanting name: Upper Mountain Road. My husband took one brief look and said, “No f’in way. It’s in the middle of nowhere and needs a fortune in upgrades.” Though I came back to the listing many times, wheedling and cajoling—as, after all, who wouldn’t want to live on Upper Mountain Road–he stood firm.

I returned to my search. One after another, properties were rejected. Then an agent I’d contacted directed me to a listing. The property was a little over two-and-a-half-acres, containing a white stucco Victorian farmhouse and a barn ready for development. The photos were intriguing, especially the charming exterior.

“Why has it been on the market so long?” my husband asked.

Easy answer, “The pandemic.” That wasn’t affecting other houses, though. I told my inner voice to shut the hell up. To not notice the clever angles that could distort the rooms, the ‘70s appliances, the weird layout of the kitchen. To stop pondering why a Victorian farmhouse, my favorite kind, had a huge cooking fireplace, complete with crane, when the Victorians already used stoves, especially at the stated date of the house, 1894. The more obstructions in my way, the more determined I grew. A lifelong issue and part of the reason I’d become a doctor.

Despite any misgivings I had, and certainly despite any misgivings of my spouse, I began the process of making that house ours.

Blog #3

Hell, I should just hop on a plane in California, land in Philly, and drive up to Bucks County. See if the house is a good purchase, not costing too much money or needing too much work!

But my husband refused to consider flying an option, since COVID raged on. Daily reports of people our age languishing in ICUs before succumbing. He ranted about the stupidity that it would take to travel on a plane filled with coughing, sneezing, infected strangers. I couldn’t shake the image of myself, having gotten sick after—and so presumably from—a flight, my last days spent in immobile in a guard-railed bed, intubated and so unable to speak, listening to him say he told me so.

The only way to vet the house, and a few comparison properties, was from a distance. I found a recommended realtor. He gave me the names of inspectors, a general one for the structure, for the septic, for the well, for the roof. Pennsylvania wasn’t like California, where we were selling a house newly painted, and completely cleared of any problem. In Pennsylvania, the onus was not on the seller to make sure there were not issues, which turns out to mean be completely honest, but on the buyer to not be cheated.

If I were there, what difference would it make? What the hell did I know about home inspections, anyway? We needed professionals. We paid for inspectors to come inspect. They did.

Every report returned with only minor problems, easily fixable. My husband’s brother went down from New York to look at that property and a few other possibilities. He found the horse facility property unfixable in its layout and the others not worth seeing. The farmhouse had “character” but the kitchen “needed work.” I was so eager for the move that I put aside his chronic rivalry with his younger brother, my husband.

Through our agent, we negotiated back and forth with the seller, finally arriving at a price that seemed completely reasonable to us… but then we were moving from a place where housing was unreasonable. California.

Blog post #4

This was going to be our fifth house, our fifth home. That many moves are not so remarkable in the U.S., not for the length of time we’d been married. But this was also our fifth renovation. It was DIY time again when DIY would again mean overseeing contractors.

The first house we bought was the redbrick rowhouse in Philly. It wasn’t far from both the fortress of Eastern State Penitentiary and the Art Museum with its statue of Rocky Balboa. The house had a small stoop where I let the local kids play cards, a tiny entrance Victorian-style vestibule, and a long hall along the living room, leading to the kitchen. We had almost no money then as I was in med school. The down payment was borrowed from family.

But it was still free-wheelin’ informal-living hippie times, so we bought huge stuffed dark-brown cushions seamed in the middle that, up against the walls, turned into couches that only the young and limber could use. Which we were, then.

The room’s deep shag carpet, multicolor flecks dispersed throughout its dominant reddish orange, came in handy when our little daughter, not yet old enough to walk, became obsessed with Froot Loops, crawling around in her diaper, balance on her knuckles, the precious little circles clutched in her damp fists. Vacuuming deep shag carpet doesn’t really work. Later, I’d be down on my hands and knees pulling cereal from between the long strands.  The carpet hid the rainbow stains.

Eventually, the kids grew older and we DIY’d the living room, breaking though the old lathe and plaster, taking down the wall that divided it from the hall, painting the walls, and having professionals lay oatmeal-colored Berber carpet. We also exposed a beautiful interior brick wall in a bedroom and, in another bedroom, one with a stunning black marble fireplace mantel, installing a platform for our bed. We pondered, discussed, and fought over changes.

When I finished medical school, my husband’s work moved him to Colorado. Wanting the children to have the community and safe freedom of a small town, we moved to Steamboat Springs. We bought a modest house in town, though the realtor told me that, as a doctor. Nothing special, one built in the 1930’s with no particular style. added a room in the front of the house with a huge stone wall to act as a heat sink and rotating the kitchen out toward the backyard, installing custom cabinets and Corian countertops.

Tech boomed in California and most of my husband’s contracts were there. Traveling from the mountains was time-consuming and difficult and, in the winter, at times impossible. We moved to San Francisco. And, thank goodness, HGTV, that magical site of make-overs in a weekend and for only $1000, busted out Trading Spaces to give me ideas and angst that our renovations dragged on for months and years and broke the bank.

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