You may know that I have helped rehabilitate several sad houses. My sister and I work together sometimes, and other times I help out my husband, the construction genius.
We have bought some forlorn houses together and given them new life. It feels good. Most of the time.
But buying an old house is a little like the first vacation you took together after you get married: you’re not really sure what you’ll discover.
Photo by Tania Melnyczuk on Unsplash
I’m not going to tell you about our first vacation together. It wasn’t as wild as this story.
The house was a foreclosure followed by an eviction – the ugly kind of eviction where a crew entered a packed house and emptied it.
The crew was instructed to remove everything from the house and deposit it in the garage. They left the garage door open, which was a signal in the city to come and take whatever you want.
This house isn’t in the city. It’s in a small town that’s pretty honest. Nobody took anything. Lucky them.
For six months, nobody touched that stuff in the garage. When we bought the house, we got the garage contents, too. Yippee.
The garage was literally (and I am using this word properly) full, floor to ceiling, front to back: overstuffed. We didn’t know what we’d find in there. Treasures, we hoped. Maybe expensive gems? Antiques?
We didn’t really hope for that. We assumed the eviction crew would have pocketed the good stuff.
Still, we needed to get the garage emptied out. So we started tunneling.
We found an end table with a broken leg. We found a brand-new starter that my husband nabbed. We found an old trunk that went to our daughter-in-law.
Some of the kids got to help. Under protest. They called themselves servants. We called it paying off their room and board and clothes. No digging in the garage, no birthday cake. That kind of enticement.
We were on an archeological dig but without the little brushes and shaker screens. We found the obligatory metal bed frame. Those seem to be left in every garage we’ve ever acquired.
We uncovered an old wedding album and a big envelope of x-rays. I might have an imagination, but I couldn’t make that up.
As the kids dug toward the back of the garage, they picked up a scent.
“Maybe it’s a body,” said our son. He’s always hopeful for creative bloodshed.
His sister wasn’t intimidated. “I hope it’s on your side of the garage,” she said.
They tossed aside more trash and kept digging deeper into the garage. “Think we can get this finished today?” I asked. I’m about using conscripted help for all they’re worth.
They ignored me, but they did keep excavating.
The smell morphed from a faint scent to a definite stink. When it crossed over from stink to stench, the kids bailed.
“Your turn,” said our daughter. “You said you wanted to get done today.” Kids are so good at throwing your words back in your face.
I could say I took a deep breath and started in, but I didn’t. Would you take a deep breath with that stench? Me, neither.
I put on a mask and gloves and goggles. I pulled junk out of the way and discovered our treasure.
Some yo-yo (and I’m saying this in the nicest way) had pulled a frozen turkey out of the freezer at the eviction, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and dumped it in a trash can at the back of the garage. For six months.
Foolishly, I compared buying an old house to going on your first vacation. It is nothing like that.
Buying an old house is like an excavation site with a tomb curse.
