The old adage about people and their shoes applies equally to real estate. You can study disclosure statements until your eyes blur, but you can’t really know a house until you step inside and live there for awhile. In my neighborhood, people tend to notice my home, and they sometimes stop to tell me that they admire it. I always just thank them, biting back my litany of reasons why their admiration is misplaced.
I understand their enthusiasm. I’ll never forget the first time that my husband and I saw the place. Expecting our first child, we were about to outgrow our tidy bungalow, and we’d been prowling the city for weeks, looking for an upgrade. We loved our little house, with its pleasing lines and rock-solid craftsmanship, and so our standards were high. We wanted a yard big enough to accommodate my horticultural ambitions, room for his workshop/art studio, Old World charm, and kindred spirits for neighbors. And, naturally, we wanted it all on the cheap.
Eventually we wandered into Northeast Minneapolis, where housing prices hadn’t yet leapt into the stratosphere. While searching for a nearby address, we suddenly saw it. Set back in a corner lot, on an obscure, meandering street, stood a dignified remnant of another era. With its vast yard, open front porches, and intact historic exterior, the house would have caught our attention anyway. But miraculously, at the corner of the lot was also a sign: “For Sale By Estate.” As we climbed out of the car into the hush of the morning, my husband reverently whispered, “There’s our next home, Lu.”
Six weeks and a bidding war with five other couples later, it was all ours: the palatial one-third acre, the stunning, leaded glass windows, the parquet floors, the crystal chandelier. Oh, and the mold in the basement, the peeling lead paint, and the open bags of asbestos-laced vermiculite insulation in the attic, which also housed severely charred trusses from a massive fire that had engulfed the place seventy years earlier. Shell-shocked and overwrought by what we’d done, and how much we’d paid to do it, I remember sitting in the hallway after we closed, crying piteously, “I can’t raise a little baby in this poisonous place!”
Worse, we quickly discovered that the house was, in a word, catawampus. Built around 1895, it was moved to its current location in 1910. Unfortunately, the new foundation was poured just a bit small. Like a foot too large for its sandal, the front edge slopped over the foundation wall, causing the living room floor to slope visibly. Compounding the problem was someone’s unwise decision back in the 1950s to cut through a floor joist while installing new ductwork, which led to mild heaving and buckling in the house’s midsection.
To top it all off, the guy we hired to refinish the floors swore that one day, while sanding, he’d felt a “presence.” Toxic, crooked, and haunted—not exactly the magical qualities that one seeks in a real estate investment.
But the baby and winter were coming, so we bucked up and took on fifteen years’ deferred maintenance, pouring money into abatement, repair, and cosmetic improvements. Before we knew it, our second child had arrived, and concerns about structural integrity had faded amid the cacophony and whirlwind of raising small children.
Now, five years after my moment of panic in the hallway, I’ve relaxed quite a bit. After all, despite its decades of warp and tilt, the house is still standing, stoic and impassive through even the fiercest windstorms. The lead and asbestos are just bad memories, and the charred beams in the attic are covered with space age insulation, fresh drywall, and banks of custom cabinets, handmade by my husband in his basement woodshop. Although haphazardly tended, the yard is filled with flowers and comfortably holds a treehouse, a sandbox, and the assorted paraphernalia of early childhood.
It helps that the house and its resident spirit have warmed to us. The previous owners lived here for fifty sedate and childless years, and the house was probably taken aback by our antics at first. Now, though, it seems to welcome the action. We still can’t afford a proper table, so the formal dining room is empty playspace, and its chandelier presides over spontaneous ballroom dancing and rowdy games of “human bowling.” When our son launches himself down the stairway, the house groans in admonishment, sharing our worry about the impact of his landing on everybody’s bones. Meanwhile, in a little bedroom tucked under protective eaves, our daughter happily plays with her dollhouse for hours, exhibiting a budding domesticity that few houses could resist.
We have achieved rapprochement, my house and I, and I don’t scan the real estate listings for greener pastures anymore. And sometimes, in the early morning, when everyone else is still asleep, I carry my coffee over to the living room windows. Ignoring the draft and the crooked sashes, I step into the peaceful light that pours through the wavy, century-old glass, and I know the comfort of familiar, beautiful imperfection.
