I’m house-hunting now. Haven’t found anything yet but it’s been fascinating walking into all sorts of strange homes all around town. High points:

1) Some of these houses built as early as the 1910s have been upgraded by their owners in unusual and ad-hoc ways along the line. Having a bathroom with bathtub/shower directly off the kitchen is odd but I suppose might make sense if you had an older resident who had problems with stairs and wanted to put a full bath on the first floor, near existing water lines. Putting a shower stall directly in the kitchen right next to the sink, though, that’s just bizarre. Saw one house with the stairs to the second floor starting in a bedroom closet.

2) Walked into a house that would be amazing in mint condition. Some floors were tilted by up to 10 degrees, went into the basement and the house was kept on the foundation by bailing wire and hope. My realtor said it was the worst thing she’d seen in a decade and took pictures to show around the office. Upstairs in the kitchen was evidence that someone had tried to flip it - there was the nameplate of a bottom-feeding financing company, and of anything in the house to attempt to fix, they had ripped out the cabinets and counters and replaced them with like the second-cheapest option from Home Depot. With the lean of the house, all the doors were hanging open.

3) Saw one house where some old grandmother had lived for a while, every surface in the house was covered with the most ‘70s treatment you could imagine, it was AMAZING. Busy floral print wallpaper, fake wood paneling, Harvest Gold tile, shag carpeting in different colors in each room - green, white, multicolored hexagonal patterns, brown/orange/red splotches. If a set designer told you to make a place scream “‘70s” and you came back with this she would tell you to dial it down by like 200%.

4) Most depressing house I toured, it was being sold by the owners because they were divorcing. And I walk up to the thing and it’s really colorful, like really playful but nice-looking red/yellow scheme on the house, and a hammock surrounded by these cool exotic plants out front, really fun sensibility, go up to the door and I notice this handmade sign hanging from the porch roof, like “Welcome to [Dave] and [Diana]’s Home”, and I remember the backstory and I’m like “…aw.”

And I go in and they’re still living in it so there’s evidence of their lives, like there are two adult-sized motorcycle helmets by the door and all their kids’ toys, and I can tell what sports they play, and the playful design sensibility continues, and there are two orange canvasases with all the family’s handprints on them in white, and I’m like “…aww.”

And I check out the bedrooms, and in the master bedroom one wall’s like this medley of pictures of them all together being an intact and happy and contented and happy-and-contented-for-being-intact family, and I check the kids’ room and it’s like this wonderland with bunk beds and a “space” theme and handmade wooden toys that don’t go too far into eat-your-vegetables hippiness, and I’m like “…awwwwww”

And then I go into the kitchen and on the counter propped up against like a bottle of vitamins is this note written by one of the kids in blue crayon, like

DadDY I

[big, red crayon heart]

YoU!

and I was like “Oh, come the fuck on.”