House Hunting

Almost two years ago, I moved with my boyfriend into a charming little rental house smack in the middle of Charlottesville. Our neighborhood is a pleasant walk away from both the University of Virginia and the Downtown Mall, the city's pedestrian center and home to the farmer's market and many of our favorite restaurants. We're a few blocks from the best coffee shop and a huge park with plenty of room for the dog to play.

Our neighborhood isn't the nicest, at least not right now. But it is the most conveniently located, which to me means that it's only a matter of time. The pressures that had renovated and reinvented other parts of town are already coming to bear. I immediately became an authority on the real estate market in our 12-square-block enclave.

The housing stock in our area dates to the early 1900s, and is almost universally in disrepair. Most listings were obviously going to require so much work that the price plus renovations put them way above our budget. But suddenly this February a spacious, quirky home in apparently decent condition turned up, not half a block from our place. We wanted to see it. So we got a realtor.

That home turned out to be a little too quirky for us—an awkwardly-converted former duplex with "four" bedrooms (one tiny, and two accessible only through other bedrooms) and a small kitchen. I could have lived with all that, but the fact that the only bathroom was downstairs was a deal-killer for me.

But now we had a realtor, so we went looking at houses elsewhere.What quickly became apparent was that listings within our budget ranged from tragic to terrifying

 One modest cottage had clearly been added on to as finances allowed, culminating in a haphazard, unintelligible assemblage of tiny rooms. The dark wood-paneled den walls hid a secret door to the basement stairs, which led to a little concrete cave of a room dominated by a gorgeous and hugely out-of-scale stone fireplace. Okay, you wanted a top-secret hideaway. But you spent a fortune putting a showpiece hearth in a dank little dungeon when your kitchen is too small to turn around in, and now no one will buy your house. (This one is still on the market, list price recently dropped by $19,000.)

One home preserved all the stately charm of its turn-of-the-last-century pedigree—gorgeous wood floors, miles of original molding, a clawfoot tub—except in two key rooms. A hideous furnace crowded the toilet and sink in an otherwise spacious downstairs bathroom, and the water heater in the kitchen was positioned such that you had to wedge yourself between it and the wall to reach the sink. And why, really why, was the washer in the kitchen, and the dryer in the bath? This is also the home where the otherwise empty, unusually large and light-filled bedrooms each had a spacious closet filled with the clothes of the former owner. It was creepy.

Now, I have plenty of scope for reimagining layouts and “seeing the potential.” But when it comes to relocating HVAC and problems that can only be solved by moving walls, a home quickly starts to look like more trouble than it’s worth. And those were just the tragic ones. It really does sadden me to see a sloppy retrofit or slapdash addition sucking the charm and beauty out of what was at one time a delightful and elegantly designed home.

We also saw a basement apartment (Yay! Income!) with a walk-through closet—as in, you could walk into the closet in one bedroom and walk out of it in another room (not Narnia). Upstairs, the kitchen appliances stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, to allow access to the laundry area via a giant scary hole floor covered by a giant heavy door. In another house the second bedroom was a converted porch—six feet deep and running the entire width of the house—and absolutely every surface needed to be replaced. For health reasons, not just because of the ugly.

As someone who has been fantasy house-shopping for the past ten years, actually shopping for houses  was turning out to be a lot less fun than I had imagined.

Then we saw this place.

This is the photo from the listing. So, probably belongs to Nest Realty.

It was not scary. It was not sad. The wood floors were in fair condition and the rooms were a very decent size. The kitchen sported an unfortunate late-80s remodel, but behind the wallpaper and the drop ceiling there was plenty of space and a whole lot of cabinets. It had central heat and air, a fenced yard, and a giant back deck.

It was clearly as good as we were going to get. A week later we went to see again and made an offer.

A thousand scans, emails, faxes and phone calls after that, we had a house.

Now we're getting somewhere.

I can't remember when I wasn't crazy about houses.

When I was in first grade, I realized that the kitchen of the little English village house we lived in had once been a stable. It had a Dutch door. I went around asking all the neighbors about our house and how long ago my backyard had in fact been a farmyard.

After that we lived in a young suburban development on the outskirts of Montgomery, AL. I set myself up a little workbench in the construction site next door, gathering scrap wood and nails and "building" with imaginary tools. When the workers were gone, I would wander through the framed mazes of unfinished homes, puzzling out what room each space would become.

I've browsed real estate listings since I was in college. I still remember in great detail a little home I did not purchase when I was living in Tallahassee, FL after graduation. It's just as well. It may have been a good investment, but I would have had to go back to Tallahassee to check on it from time to time.

I began shopping homes and farms in Virginia in 2007. Summers were very slow at the Boston accounting firm I worked for and it was a great way to pass the time, dreaming of all the acres my money could buy. In Boston, even a tiny 1-bedroom apartment was way out of reach. I used to compare living in Boston to dating a married man. You are living a fantasy: in reality that man is not actually available to you.

(Just to be clear here, I have never dated a married man. That I know of.)

Honestly, if pressed I would have to list real estate window-shopping as a hobby; I spend that much time on it. A friend recently mentioned to me that women he knew, at about the age of thirty, suddenly take up with Zillow. I was relieved to know it wasn't just me. I have the Zillow app on my phone and routinely check local home prices and rental rates in any new city or town we visit. Or even pass through. See a "For Sale" sign in front of a Victorian in Nowheretown, VA? Instantly see the price and the horrific 70s kitchen remodel.

In the past couple of years, my shopping has been a bit more...earnest. For one thing, I decided to stay in Virginia (a story for another day). For another, household income, local home prices and mortgage interest rates were finally converging around a point where it was not only possible, but actually advantageous to buy rather than rent.

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I got a realtor. Two weeks later we'd made an offer. We close in just over a week. There's some work ahead of us but, unsurprisingly, I can't wait to finally have my very own house.

FLOOD!

Last night we saw They Might Be Giants at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville. I think that's the fourth TMBG show I've been to. It was a Flood show; they played the 1990 album Flood in its entirety. In reverse order. Plus several songs before hand, an Avatars of They halftime show and two encores, for a total of about two hours.

This is your obligatory fuzzy camera-phone-from-the-balcony photo that proves I was at the show.

M and I had some tacos and beers beforehand, sitting out on the patio across from the Jefferson's entrance. I was happy to see that a lot of the people heading through the doors were neither pushing nor dragging forty. Little groups of high school- and college-aged kids were filtering in, so very early, to stake out spots at the foot of the stage over an hour before the opening act even came on. Because being that close to the band means a lot to them. Or maybe they'd heard that someone within reaching distance might get to play Flansburgh's guitar. Or maybe they haven't been to hundreds of rock shows and have not yet worked out a formula to solve the age-old standing-around-paying-too-much-for-beers vs. getting-a-spot-where-we-can-actually-see-the-band problem. Oh wait, they’re not paying for beers.

The kids who are going to see They Might Be Giants in 2013 are the same kids who were going to see them in the 90s. Those awkward, pimply, bespectacled kids looked so familiar--so much like my friends and I at that age. When I said so to M, his response was along the lines of "the nerd is eternal."

At least half the audience had not been born when Flood was released, but they clearly had the album memorized, and sang along and pogo'd their hearts out to the end (or the beginning, as it were). It occurred to me that this should make me feel old, or that I should begrudge these kids their nostalgia for something they certainly can't remember. But I just think it's awesome. I’m not a more genuine fan of TMBG just because I’ve been alive for their whole career. Flood is nostalgic for me, but it’s as fresh to them as it was when my cousin Paul gave me that ripped-off cassette copy twenty years ago.

Oh, and They Might Be Giants still puts on one of the best live shows around. If they are coming your way, it’s well worth staying out late on a school night.

BY HAND - Spring/Summer 2013 - out now!

When my friend Susan Gibbs launched a little magazine of cooking, gardening, craft and fiber art called By Hand last fall, I immediately came on board as copyeditor. When she asked me early this year to take over the "Grow" section as well, I agreed, because she is my friend and because I figured she would find someone better suited to the job in a matter of weeks anyway. I'm now glad to say that she did not, because I had a lot of fun putting it together and I can't wait to get started on the next one.

The Spring/Summer issue of By Hand is just out online. Please have a look and share with the cooks, gardeners, builders, crafters, knitters and sewers in your life. I think they will like it!