the house that eats you up
Of course you all know that our house is still slowly murdering us, right? At this point it has transitioned from physical attacks to financial, which in fact is not any different after all. At one point in my childhood, I think it was when they tore down all those nice old houses on 15th Ave E across from volunteer park to make "condos" (first time I had heard the word), I decided that anyone who gives up on a house is lazy. Giving up on a house includes selling it or tearing it down, etc. However, the truth is, each person, each marriage, has maybe one house in them to remodel, and if you have already done yours you have a coldness around your heart that says... goody! condos! no roof to fix! And by thinking that you are condemned by 6th graders walking by said condos dragging their bass clarinets (in their coffinlike black cases) to school behind them on the pavement (making an ill-advised scraping sound as they pass). Condemned, I say. It seemed that around 1981, 15th Ave E and Galer plumb ran out of marriages.
At some point I was handed the link to these folk's site. I can't quite remember if my dh works with one of them, or if they live in our neighborhood, or both. I think both. Anyway I loaded up the site again tonight and am in complete agony reading the torture. And like childbirth there is no running away. You are the one owning this house that is killing you, and you will be the one to write the check with the zeros and the more zeros and then live in your parent's house anyway. You will be the one suspending all expectation for immediate enjoyment of any dollar you might have. The kicker for me is: I don't know why we expect these old houses to have been built so damn well they don't need to be torn down in 100 years. You wouldn't expect a car to last 100 years? And people say: they don't make them like this anymore, and tap the walls like you would a very large football player. The fact is, they did not know how to make a modern house in 1910. They knew how to make a wooden castle like thing out of old growth. More of a fort, really. That's what they knew how to make. But plumbing? electrical? indoor bathroom? indoor KITCHEN? That was for the servants to worry about. The house we live in EXPECTS SERVANTS. Which explains a lot about my own attitude, especially if architecture affects us the way the chinese know it does.
The real kicker, the thing that makes me really mad is that I was personally tricked into thinking that pouring several life savings' into a single structure was in any way worth it, was somehow noble and traditional, would get me into seattle democrat heaven or something. it's just wrong and I would like a condo now please and my money and sanity back. Which is not going to happen.
sigh.
Of course I like my house just fine, and if I did not deserve the agony it gave us I also arguably did not deserve for it to triple in value over that period of time. But the fact is, once you go there, once you remodel one of these old neglected creatures you can never do it again. Not if you have been really burned. Serial remodelers house-flipper types simply don't get very burned.
Anyway, enjoy the read.