I had often thought that it would be fun to renovate a old house.  I grew up in a house built in the late 1800’s, and spent quite a few weekends of my childhood fishing wires through the crawl space and “helping” my dad, who spent at least 10 years working room by room through the house only to get back around to the first rooms and start over. It was a big old somewhat rickety house that had been inhabited by cats when we bought it (I had just turned 4) and was the only house for sale in town the weekend we came to look.

I loved that house and always looked at it through rose colored glasses.  Sure, it was drafty and the doors and windows didn’t always open and close properly.  Strong water pressure or air conditioning?  Nope, not so much.  But it was full of nooks and crannies and closets within closets that made for great games of hide and go seek.  Stairs in a closet that ended at the ceiling.  Where did they go?  My friends and I imagined secret passages, of course.  Big claw footed bathtubs and a fireplace in almost every room.  A giant yard with a bamboo jungle and an old greenhouse that we used as a clubhouse.  Big enough for the whole family to spend most every Thanksgiving and Christmas – rooms packed full of nieces and nephews and dogs and cats.  My parents sold that house while I was away at college – I could barely make myself come back to help pack and say goodbye.  I took the doorknob from my bedroom and carried it around with me from place to place for the next 20 years.

Every place I have lived since then was much newer. Some places needed cosmetic work only and most of them were rented and not up to me to change.  The most recent house was brand new and while I picked out the finishes and fixtures, other people did the work.  That house had almost everything I wanted at that time, and I worked hard to make it a good home.

When it was time for a change, I wanted something different.  I missed the character that comes with rambling old houses and creaky uneven floors.  I wanted a neighborhood where all the houses looked different and where I didn’t have to drive everywhere.  Something smaller, and (eventually) simpler.  I wanted to embark on a project.  I knew the area I wanted to live in, but there were only two houses for sale in my price range at the time I started looking.  One house was newer, built to look old with a great wrap-around porch. The other was cute and caught your eye when you drove by, but was, in my opinion, way overpriced.  I continued to check the listings and drive the neighborhood for weeks, but nothing else popped up.  I started thinking a little more about the house with the porch, but the inside was laid out too much like a new house and looked a little too much like the house I already lived in.  There  wasn’t that much to do there, and I just couldn’t get excited about it.  Meanwhile, the other house had a significant drop in price.  I knew from the MLS pictures that the house needed a lot of work.  It was confirmed by the agent, when I called to request a showing.  She asked a lot of questions about why I wanted to live in the neighborhood and my experience with old houses and tried to make sure I understood the condition of the house.  I told her about the house I grew up in and what I was looking for, and we made an appointment for a showing.  (It turns out she had showed the house dozens and dozens of times, but everyone liked the idea of an old fixer-upper house much more than the reality.)

When I saw the house, I tried hard to look at both the potential and the reality.  The house hadn’t been very well cared for over the years and needed a lot of work in just about every area.      It had good bones and a lot of potential though.  After the showing, I went a couple blocks down the street to have a drink and try to decide whether I really wanted to get into such a big project.  Mike and my friend Terri both saw the potential and promised to help me fix it up, so I  took a leap and made an offer.  It turns out that the big price drop attracted a lot of interest and all of a sudden there were three offers on the table.  I later found out that story I told the realtor about growing up in an old house and taking my doorknob helped seal the deal for me.  The house had been in the previous owner’s family for over 40 years and she was very attached to it.  She wanted whoever bought it to appreciate it and want to live there for the long haul.

It seems fitting that the doorknob from my childhood house is a perfect match for the ones in this house.