Move Again?? NEVER

Move Again?? NEVER


It all started when my wife decided we needed a bigger house. We had been in the same one for less than five years and it was just coming together. When we bought it, it was somewhere between a handyman’s special and a fixer-upper. We had cleaned, fixed,painted, fixed, added on, fixed, repaired and replaced until it was almost up to “just needs some TLC”. My wife insisted we could sell it and get something bigger. Since she is the cook and I hate going hungry, we started looking.

The first thing we had to do was learn real estate-ese. It is similar to legal-ese
without all the wherefores. You may have noticed, I used three phrases from real estate-ese already, but you might not know what they mean. A handyman’s special is a house that will take six months and nine thousand dollars to become a fixer-upper. A fixer-upper is a house that might have a roof and three walls or four walls and no roof. “Just needs some TLC” means that most of the visible problems have been patched. Things you can not see easily, like the drain line that spews things that are not talked about in mixed company, or the furnace that wants to become a nuclear melt down, are still there and waiting until you sign the papers.

Other phrases are “cute little cottage” meaning you have to back out of the living room to turn around. “Wonderful neighborhood”—meaning - There is not much we can say good about the house. “Updated”- meaning-- Most of the house dates from 1915, but we added a new sink. “Remodeled” meaning—The fire really made some changes. “Light and airy” means a large part of the wall is missing. “Tri-level” means the living room floor has fallen into the crawl space. I really do not have time or space to translate all the common phrases. If you believe campaign promises and used car salesmen, descriptions of houses will be a snap.

After four months and viewing every home for sale in a fifty-mile radius, we found our dream home—meaning “ If we give up everything but food, we might make the payments.” The ad said “immediate possession”. Right away my alarm bells went off. This usually means you buy the house and you can spin your head in a complete circle and projectile vomit that night. In this case, it meant we waited for two months for the foreclosure to wind its way through the legal maze. That was really in our favor. It gave the vermin time to starve to death.

We began the move. There are two schools of moving. One is to pack everything that will go in a particular room in boxes, label them, and put them in the right room in the other house. The other is to grab stuff, throw it in the back of a borrowed pick-up and on arrival at the other house, open the tail gate, back up very fast and slam on the brakes as you get close to the driveway. I am of the second school and my wife is of the first. We compromised and did it her way.

It was only after we moved that the real fun began. This house was several steps below a fixer-upper. I think it is a burner-downer and start over againer. Since we had just bought it, there were concerns about how much the insurance company would believe.
We started to try to make the place fit for human habitation. First thing was to clean the place up. This involved scoop shovels and 55 gallon barrels of bleach.
We started the painting. You would think that this would only mean getting brushes and rollers and putting paint on the walls. It doesn’t. It means getting thousands of little strips of different shades, hues and intensities and looking at them in each room at different times of day and lighting conditions. Now, to me, as to most men, (quiche eaters excepted), peach is a fruit, not a color. Not to worry. While my wife was carrying little paper strips from room to room, the city, which did not want to take on the bank that owned the house previously, told me to fix the fence or they would hang me to the nearest tree and shoot my buttons off. This was February in Colorado. The ground was frozen to within three feet of Hell.

I had two options for digging postholes, a hot air gun and a teaspoon or several small thermo-nuclear devices. Since special permits were required to set off atomic bombs, I dug them the hard way. I finished it just in time for a heavy snow. This gave some soccer mom an excuse to drive her van not only though it, but down it for the entire length. There was nothing left but splinters and firewood. The code enforcement officer laughed and got out the rope.

Because I had so much practice, I finished the fence at the same time my wife made her final decision about colors. Well, one color. She wanted the ceilings, ceiling white. I thought the color they were, mud brown, was nice. It was not paint. It was really just what the name implies, mud. I still have not figured out how a ceiling can get that dirty. The only thing that makes sense is that the house was upside down in Noah’s flood.

I soon learned that it takes a heavy coat of ceiling white to cover mud brown. It also became clear that a heavy coat of ceiling white causes the pop corn texture to fall off the ceiling. If you ever come to our house, just don’t look up unless you want a good laugh.
We started on the walls. They ranged from pinto bean juice brown in the kitchen to flungdung brown in the bathroom. I wore out several roller frames and caused a nation-wide shortage of roller covers. Soon, some of the walls were almost all the same color. I was pleased with the neo-modern caveman affect. I still get a monthly check from Sherwin-Williams just to tell people that I did NOT use their paint.

After we moved in, the little fun surprises started. We found out the furnace started with a boom that shattered glass. Washing a load of clothes also meant shop vaccing the water out of the basement. Flushing the toilet required lifting the tank lid twice; once to flush it, once to stop it. The water softener had the beginnings of a new life form growing in it. You could have the kitchen light on and use the microwave, just not at the same time. The unusual smell from the oven was a family of mice that used to live happily in the insulation. This is a very small part of the list and new things are still being added, even after more than a year.

We have survived and most of the necessary repairs have been made. After the exorcism, the house really felt like home. I am used to all the oddities, like the light switch that does nothing and the drip in the shower that comes and goes. The thing that is really starting to bother me is my wife looking in the real estate ads in the newspaper.