June 10^th, 2002

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. No, wait, that’s Dickens, how about this. It is better than I hoped; it is worse than I remember.

Tonight is my first night in the new house and it is a little over-whelming. The people who I bought the house from spent their days doing three things. They sat, watched TV, and smoked. The room where their TV was is my favorite in the house. It is the room with the raised panel wainscoting and one of the oak and tile fireplace mantles. With 10 and half-foot ceilings and a bay window it is really a nice space but the smell is unbelievably bad. It reminds me of a cheap motel room. They had a plate collection on one wall and the wall is white where the plates where and a dingy yellow from the nicotine every where else. I planned on making this my living room but I’m going to have to move to the front parlor until I can scrub it down and air it out. To be honest though the entire house stinks link an ashtray. It hits you as soon as you walk in the door. I don’t have the time right now to wash ever wall and repaint the entire inside of the house. I wonder what is the best way to get rid if this smell? I’m going to try burning sage and opening a lot of windows.

I think more than ever now that you should wait until next year before you visit. Maybe you have already decided that too because you will be going to Florida in September. The bathrooms and kitchens are a problem. I’ve only been here one day but it seems that only one of the bathrooms is really in working order and even that is stretching the definition of “working”. I’m amazed that the last owners could have lived with it as long as they did.

If you look at the picture of the house I sent there is a series of bump-outs on the left-hand side. The last bump-out towards the back of the house was an addition to the house back in 1922. This two-story addition adds a kitchen and bath on each story. This is how they made it into apartments. This addition is also the area of the house that has the termite problem. I was planning on making the needed repairs to the termite damage of this addition but now I’m considering just removing it.

When you walk around the house it is obvious these rooms don’t belong. Especially upstairs the addition makes for a very awkward floor plan. If I did repair the termite damage I’m not sure what I would do with the space. The two additional bathrooms and kitchens are very undersized. All told these four rooms only make up about 300 square feet of space.

The down side of removing it is I would be changing the house form 4 bedrooms/ 4 baths down to 4 bedrooms/2 baths. I would also be removing 300 square feet of space from the house. Both of these would effect the value. The benefits of removing the addition are: 1) I would not incur the expense of making the repairs. 2) I would not have to remodel two additional bathroooms. 3) I would still be left with a full bath upstairs and a full bath downstairs. 4) I would get a lot of nice vintage lumber out of it. 5) And most importantly, I would be restoreing the house back to its original floor plan.

I was planning on starting the repairs to the termite damaged are in 3 or 4 months so I don’t have to decide right away. I’m sure I will change my mind a dozen times between now and then. To make things worse the working kitchen and bath are both in the addition which means I would have to get one of the other bathrooms and the original kitchen in working order before I started demolition.

Now that I’m finally living in the house it seems very odd to be living in such a large space after being in that cramped apartment for almost 3 months. Today I ran into a woman I worked with about three years ago. We were on the sidewalk out front of the house and I told her I just bought this house. She looked up at it and said, “You bought That house?!”. I said yes and then she said, “You bought the whole thing?”