I\u2019m house-hunting now. Haven\u2019t found anything yet but it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019d 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 \u201870s 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 \u201c\u201870s\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cWelcome to [Dave] and [Diana]\u2019s Home\u201d, and I remember the backstory and I\u2019m like \u201c…aw.\u201d
And I go in and they\u2019re still living in it so there\u2019s evidence of their lives, like there are two adult-sized motorcycle helmets by the door and all their kids\u2019 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\u2019s handprints on them in white, and I\u2019m like \u201c…aww.\u201d
And I check out the bedrooms, and in the master bedroom one wall\u2019s 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\u2019 room and it\u2019s like this wonderland with bunk beds and a\u00a0\u201cspace\u201d theme and handmade wooden toys that don\u2019t go too far into eat-your-vegetables hippiness, and I\u2019m like \u201c…awwwwww\u201d
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\u00a0\u201cOh, come the fuck on.\u201d