That floor downstairs has been sanded, and that about sums up the main event of yesterday.
We are in the process of minor renovations in our house. Evangeline has allergies, and we have carpet in the house, a carpet that holds all manner of odors like it holds dust, which is to say very well. In the downstairs carpet we still can smell Sandy, our dog who passed away years ago. We can smell bits of food dropped or spilled on the floor, we can smell accidents by dog and child alike, and we can smell who knows what else.
The carpet is now gone from the living room, from the downstairs hallway and from the study. Gone also is the linoleum we found under the carpet. What remains is the hardwood floor once hidden beneath the linoleum, along with the cement that fills the part of the floor where the wall was removed, and other similar surprises.
So today, while Natasha went to rent an orbital sander from the home improvement store, Rachel and I emptied the downstairs coat closet of coats and games. With those we filled two of the last remaining free spaces in the rest of the house: her bed and the fourth kitchen chair. It is now possible to walk across the kitchen, but not to use anything in it, and it also is possible to sleep upstairs in two of the three beds. But that's about it.
We prepared for the sanding by blocking off every route sawdust could take out of the living room, except for the front door and window. Those we left open. Sheets we hung over the kitchen doorway and across the stairwell, and after that, I put in my earplugs, donned a breathing mask, and shooed the children outside so I could get to work.
Running the sander was a new experience for me, and an interesting one. I started a little after 3 p.m. and ended around 9 p.m., pausing only to eat dinner, sweep up the sawdust, and to change the grade of sandpaper to something finer than I had been using before. (We used 36, 40 and 120 for a progressively smooth coat.)
The finish on the wood took a while to get off, but the hardest piece of all was clearing up the stains where water or other aqueous substances had been spilled on the floor back when it was becarpeted.
There were a couple spots in the middle of the floor where the dog used to lie all the time. I ran the sander over these so long that it seemed like it surely must wear a hole in the floor so that it would fall through, and into the basement.
Not all the blemishes are completely gone. You can still see where the linoleum ended, and there are a few places where vistages of the water marks remain. We assume that a medium-color stain at least will make it harder to see those.
Other remaining tasks include renting an edger to finish sanding around the edge of the room, hall and closet, where the orbital sander couldn't reach. Then we have, what, a week until we put things back into the living room?
This must be why people have their hardwood floors done before they move into a house.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Showing posts with label adventures in home ownership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventures in home ownership. Show all posts
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Adventures with black gunk. Who puts carpet over linoleum anyway?
We decided a few weeks ago to rip up the carpet in our living room and make do with the hardwood floor that lay beneath it.
I'll spare everyone the sordid accounts of how it took us two weeks just to clear out the living room, and the tale (amusing though it must be) of how we chose the colors to paint the walls. I'll even forbear to tell how Natasha and I each on separate occasions managed to hurt our backs so that we took turns being unable to walk for a few days without pained expressions.
Let me instead just say that under the rug in the hallway, we found linoleum.
Our reactions were only slightly mixed. We sang Bert and Ernie's "La La La" song because Bert is reminded in the song of linoleum when he thinks about the letter L -- that's how our minds work, I guess -- but mostly we were annoyed. Who in their right mind glues linoleum directly to a hardwood floor?
Pulling the linoleum up was relatively easy. The glue and a layer of black gunk were different, though. Removing that was how I hurt my back. (Natasha had hurt hers ripping out the carpet.)
The good folks at Home Depot (motto: "No project so simple we can't make it expensive!") sell a chemical that's great at removing adhesives like this. The chief downside, besides the $20 price tag for a quart, is that it comes with warnings like "May cause death or serious injury" in 17 different languages.
The advisories include notices like "Do not allow liquid to touch your skin" and "Do not breathe fumes" and "Looking at liquid may damage your retinas." And I'm supposed to put this stuff down, when? Maybe while the kids are running around the house during the day?
So while my back recovered and I learned to put my shorts on without bending either arm or leg, I pondered how best to remove black gunk without threatening my family or myself with permanent disfigurement. A visiting friend remarked offhand "There must be an organic cleaner," and it suddenly hit me. Vinegar.
Duh.
Spray the black gunk with water. Let it soak, then scrape it up. (And why is it that a stucco trowel is useless with stucco but makes a fantastic scraper, while the scraper is only good for removing nails?) Once the gunk is gone, lightly spoon vinegar onto the floor, brush it around, and then wipe off the glue.
Easy, effortless and no one has to suffer the sort of injury that would have made them a shoo-in for the Jerry Springer Show. No one's eyebrows had to suffer permanent retina damage. The worst side effect is that the hallway smelled like apples for a few hours.
I even got to return the 20-dollar can of cleaner.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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I'll spare everyone the sordid accounts of how it took us two weeks just to clear out the living room, and the tale (amusing though it must be) of how we chose the colors to paint the walls. I'll even forbear to tell how Natasha and I each on separate occasions managed to hurt our backs so that we took turns being unable to walk for a few days without pained expressions.
Let me instead just say that under the rug in the hallway, we found linoleum.
Our reactions were only slightly mixed. We sang Bert and Ernie's "La La La" song because Bert is reminded in the song of linoleum when he thinks about the letter L -- that's how our minds work, I guess -- but mostly we were annoyed. Who in their right mind glues linoleum directly to a hardwood floor?
Pulling the linoleum up was relatively easy. The glue and a layer of black gunk were different, though. Removing that was how I hurt my back. (Natasha had hurt hers ripping out the carpet.)
The good folks at Home Depot (motto: "No project so simple we can't make it expensive!") sell a chemical that's great at removing adhesives like this. The chief downside, besides the $20 price tag for a quart, is that it comes with warnings like "May cause death or serious injury" in 17 different languages.
The advisories include notices like "Do not allow liquid to touch your skin" and "Do not breathe fumes" and "Looking at liquid may damage your retinas." And I'm supposed to put this stuff down, when? Maybe while the kids are running around the house during the day?
So while my back recovered and I learned to put my shorts on without bending either arm or leg, I pondered how best to remove black gunk without threatening my family or myself with permanent disfigurement. A visiting friend remarked offhand "There must be an organic cleaner," and it suddenly hit me. Vinegar.
Duh.
Spray the black gunk with water. Let it soak, then scrape it up. (And why is it that a stucco trowel is useless with stucco but makes a fantastic scraper, while the scraper is only good for removing nails?) Once the gunk is gone, lightly spoon vinegar onto the floor, brush it around, and then wipe off the glue.
Easy, effortless and no one has to suffer the sort of injury that would have made them a shoo-in for the Jerry Springer Show. No one's eyebrows had to suffer permanent retina damage. The worst side effect is that the hallway smelled like apples for a few hours.
I even got to return the 20-dollar can of cleaner.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Saturday, August 02, 2008
The archaeological dig in my house
I never realized what an exciting world archaeology could be until this past month, when we started a dig in our living room.
The dig was a pretty straightforward affair. With the girls attending day camp at one of the theaters downtown, Natasha and I realized that we had two weeks before us in which we could empty out the room and give its walls a long-overdue fresh coat of paint. We could get rid of the ugly carpet, and possibly sand and buff the hardwood floor beneath it. Best of all, we could do it ourselves and save hundreds of dollars!
The walls are painted and the carpet has been removed, but what has been most interesing about this experience is the layers of history we have delicately unearthed on the first floor of the house, and then ruthlessly ripped up and destroyed, like amateur Indiana Joneses toppling ancient relics and statues of Anubis in the Well of Souls.
Our house is going on at least 170 years old, so we knew there were bound to be some surprises. The kitchen and master bath -- and doesn't every house want to have the master bath located right off the kitchen? -- were added in the 1960s, and plenty of other things have been added in the course of the house's history. Electric wiring, for starters, or the roof we put on a few years ago when we also added the new gutters, or the first insulation ever added to the house, just last spring.
Ah, but those are new changes to the house. It is one thing to see your own life's work, but it is another to behold the work of ages past and to let it pass through your fingers. Working on an old house is to be like Belloq, who opened the Ark of the Covenant and stirred the dust of the stone tablets Moses once laid there. You risk being destroyed by the supreme revelation that will pass through your unworthy soul.
It might have been a crystal skull beneath the carpet. It might have been the Holy Grail. But, lo! it is linoleum, a long red sheet of it, glued directly to the hardwood floor by a homeowner of ages past, and on it lay the dirt and the dust of a thousand soles that have passed that way. And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains fair?
It is no wonder that a previous homeowner some 15 years covered the floor with carpet. That red linoleum was about as ugly to look at as the color known as "institutional green," and removing it has left a long black swath of a substance formerly known as glue and a papery substance that may have been part of the linoleum.
Removing that requires an evening with a cleaning agent that is so toxic you're not supposed to touch it, or even to breathe its fumes. I suspect that merely looking at will cause blindness.
On the other hand, we have found that soaking the Gunk from Beneath the Linoleum in water making it easier to remove, and that rubbing what residue remains, with vinegar, also works. So we're trying that, though it means our hallway smells of apples.
The most interesting discovery, though, is the walls -- specifically, how they have changed over the past 170 years. There is a section of baseboard along the back wall of the living room that does not touch the floor. This, we believe, is where a doorway once stood that joined our living room, once a dining room, with our study, once the kitchen. Someone some time ago decided to close the wall up and create two completely separate rooms.
However, due to the Principle of Wall Conservation, in which a house must have the same linear footage of walls when you sell it as when you bought it, this person also removed a section of wall from another part of the living room.
Unlike the new wall that separates living room from study, this one appears to have been part of a load-bearing wall. Nothing has sagged unduly, but there is a place in an otherwise decent hardwood floor where 2-by-4's appear, covered in cement.
Ah, the wonders this old house can tell to those who study its secrets. I just wish that if I have to be Indiana Jones, that I would get the fedora and bullwhip too.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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The dig was a pretty straightforward affair. With the girls attending day camp at one of the theaters downtown, Natasha and I realized that we had two weeks before us in which we could empty out the room and give its walls a long-overdue fresh coat of paint. We could get rid of the ugly carpet, and possibly sand and buff the hardwood floor beneath it. Best of all, we could do it ourselves and save hundreds of dollars!
The walls are painted and the carpet has been removed, but what has been most interesing about this experience is the layers of history we have delicately unearthed on the first floor of the house, and then ruthlessly ripped up and destroyed, like amateur Indiana Joneses toppling ancient relics and statues of Anubis in the Well of Souls.
Ah, but those are new changes to the house. It is one thing to see your own life's work, but it is another to behold the work of ages past and to let it pass through your fingers. Working on an old house is to be like Belloq, who opened the Ark of the Covenant and stirred the dust of the stone tablets Moses once laid there. You risk being destroyed by the supreme revelation that will pass through your unworthy soul.
It might have been a crystal skull beneath the carpet. It might have been the Holy Grail. But, lo! it is linoleum, a long red sheet of it, glued directly to the hardwood floor by a homeowner of ages past, and on it lay the dirt and the dust of a thousand soles that have passed that way. And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains fair?
It is no wonder that a previous homeowner some 15 years covered the floor with carpet. That red linoleum was about as ugly to look at as the color known as "institutional green," and removing it has left a long black swath of a substance formerly known as glue and a papery substance that may have been part of the linoleum.
Removing that requires an evening with a cleaning agent that is so toxic you're not supposed to touch it, or even to breathe its fumes. I suspect that merely looking at will cause blindness.
On the other hand, we have found that soaking the Gunk from Beneath the Linoleum in water making it easier to remove, and that rubbing what residue remains, with vinegar, also works. So we're trying that, though it means our hallway smells of apples.
The most interesting discovery, though, is the walls -- specifically, how they have changed over the past 170 years. There is a section of baseboard along the back wall of the living room that does not touch the floor. This, we believe, is where a doorway once stood that joined our living room, once a dining room, with our study, once the kitchen. Someone some time ago decided to close the wall up and create two completely separate rooms.
However, due to the Principle of Wall Conservation, in which a house must have the same linear footage of walls when you sell it as when you bought it, this person also removed a section of wall from another part of the living room.
Unlike the new wall that separates living room from study, this one appears to have been part of a load-bearing wall. Nothing has sagged unduly, but there is a place in an otherwise decent hardwood floor where 2-by-4's appear, covered in cement.
Ah, the wonders this old house can tell to those who study its secrets. I just wish that if I have to be Indiana Jones, that I would get the fedora and bullwhip too.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Lice, electricity, and death
Everybody's hair came up lice-free tonight, after days of steadily declining numbers. So that's good.
We had a friend out to the house today who knows about electric stuff, to look at the wiring. He determined that the problem isn't with the wiring inside the house -- which means the public utility has to come and fix the problem at its expense, not ours. I called their customer service line today, explained the situation, and noted that we've called several times over the years over concerns about a loose connection that was causing our electric power to flicker. Hopefully we'll get more satisfaction this time. So that's good too.
On the downside, we learned today that Natasha's mother is in the hospital with a broken vertebra. The oncologist found that her lung cancer has metastasized into her bone tissue. That's not so good. Pretty lousy Mother's Day announcement, actually.
My brother-in-law, Kevin, is flying out to Arizona some time soon to see her, particularly if they do surgery to remove the tumor. My brother has enough frequent flyer miles to get Natasha a free ticket to Arizona as well, so we are discussing when best to use it.
To be honest, I'd rather be stuck with the electrician's bill, but it doesn't work that way.
We had a friend out to the house today who knows about electric stuff, to look at the wiring. He determined that the problem isn't with the wiring inside the house -- which means the public utility has to come and fix the problem at its expense, not ours. I called their customer service line today, explained the situation, and noted that we've called several times over the years over concerns about a loose connection that was causing our electric power to flicker. Hopefully we'll get more satisfaction this time. So that's good too.
On the downside, we learned today that Natasha's mother is in the hospital with a broken vertebra. The oncologist found that her lung cancer has metastasized into her bone tissue. That's not so good. Pretty lousy Mother's Day announcement, actually.
My brother-in-law, Kevin, is flying out to Arizona some time soon to see her, particularly if they do surgery to remove the tumor. My brother has enough frequent flyer miles to get Natasha a free ticket to Arizona as well, so we are discussing when best to use it.
To be honest, I'd rather be stuck with the electrician's bill, but it doesn't work that way.
Friday, May 09, 2008
When God takes care you don't get ahead
It's been a bad week so far. I wish, just once, that God would decide "You know, that Dave Learn deserves a break" and send me a financial windfall.
Last week, I borrowed an ax to chop some firewood that's been sitting in our driveway since last fall. I managed to split exactly one log, and to pull several muscles not accustomed to hefting an ax and chopping wood. I've had a steady ache across the top of the chest as a result almost ever since.
On Thursday afternoon, we discovered the girls have lice. This requires combing everybody's hair thoroughly at least twice a day to remove adult lice, immature lice and their eggs. It also requires washing and drying pillowcases, sheets and bath towels every day; freezing combs and hair brushes to kill any eggs that might be on them; and a few other things that have to be done.
On Friday afternoon, the washing machine broke. The repair worker who came to fix the washing machine ended up charging us $70 just to say that he couldn't fix it because the transmission was shot. A few years ago, it would have been possible to buy a rebuilt transmission and install it; nowadays, you have to buy a new transmission, which drives the cost of the repair up high enough that it's cheaper to buy a new washing machine.
Efforts to find a store selling used appliances were fruitless. A Freecycle check turned up something, but it already was taken. So a new washing machine it is. We needed to spend $400 on a new washing machine like we need the girls to announce that they're dropping out of school to join the Hell's Angels. (Side note: Evangeline said this afternoon how cool it would be to have blue hair, since no one else has it.)
Incidentally, did I mention that Natasha is losing her job in about six weeks?
Tuesday the microwave oven stopped working. The lights come on and it makes that cute noise it makes when it's running, but if there are any microwaves being released, they're not warming up anything inside the microwave. It's been around a long time, and it's put in some good innings, but did it really have to quit now?
And then Thursday night, I flipped on the light switch in the bathroom. The bulb blew, which isn't a big deal in itself, but for some reason, it took half the outlets in the house with it. I needed an extension cord to run the washer and dryer tonight, the answering machine and cordless phone are out, my alarm clock has no power, and some nonessentials like the TV and DVD player are kaput for the time being too. (Ironically, the VCR has all the power it needs.)
It's not the circuit breaker. I checked, and not a single one had tripped.
The fellow who owned the house two owners before us did a lot of handyman stuff, and based on some of the repairs we've had to make and still do need to make, he did a half-baked job at a lot of them. The electric wiring was one of the things he did -- we just had no idea how half-baked it apparently was until Thursday night.
We had planned to use the tax rebates for paying down Natasha's college loans some more, or making a bigger payment on the mortgage, and investing a little more. Now it looks like the whole thing is going to be blown on the events of the past week.
I know I shouldn't complain -- I know how much rougher it is in most of the world -- but it almost feels sometimes like God is saying, "Hey! Dave Learn's starting to get ahead. How'd that happen?" I already live a much simpler lifestyle than just about everyone else we know.
If he's trying to teach me something, he doesn't need to do all this. I'm willing to listen.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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On Thursday afternoon, we discovered the girls have lice. This requires combing everybody's hair thoroughly at least twice a day to remove adult lice, immature lice and their eggs. It also requires washing and drying pillowcases, sheets and bath towels every day; freezing combs and hair brushes to kill any eggs that might be on them; and a few other things that have to be done.
On Friday afternoon, the washing machine broke. The repair worker who came to fix the washing machine ended up charging us $70 just to say that he couldn't fix it because the transmission was shot. A few years ago, it would have been possible to buy a rebuilt transmission and install it; nowadays, you have to buy a new transmission, which drives the cost of the repair up high enough that it's cheaper to buy a new washing machine.
Efforts to find a store selling used appliances were fruitless. A Freecycle check turned up something, but it already was taken. So a new washing machine it is. We needed to spend $400 on a new washing machine like we need the girls to announce that they're dropping out of school to join the Hell's Angels. (Side note: Evangeline said this afternoon how cool it would be to have blue hair, since no one else has it.)
Incidentally, did I mention that Natasha is losing her job in about six weeks?
Tuesday the microwave oven stopped working. The lights come on and it makes that cute noise it makes when it's running, but if there are any microwaves being released, they're not warming up anything inside the microwave. It's been around a long time, and it's put in some good innings, but did it really have to quit now?
And then Thursday night, I flipped on the light switch in the bathroom. The bulb blew, which isn't a big deal in itself, but for some reason, it took half the outlets in the house with it. I needed an extension cord to run the washer and dryer tonight, the answering machine and cordless phone are out, my alarm clock has no power, and some nonessentials like the TV and DVD player are kaput for the time being too. (Ironically, the VCR has all the power it needs.)
It's not the circuit breaker. I checked, and not a single one had tripped.
The fellow who owned the house two owners before us did a lot of handyman stuff, and based on some of the repairs we've had to make and still do need to make, he did a half-baked job at a lot of them. The electric wiring was one of the things he did -- we just had no idea how half-baked it apparently was until Thursday night.
We had planned to use the tax rebates for paying down Natasha's college loans some more, or making a bigger payment on the mortgage, and investing a little more. Now it looks like the whole thing is going to be blown on the events of the past week.
I know I shouldn't complain -- I know how much rougher it is in most of the world -- but it almost feels sometimes like God is saying, "Hey! Dave Learn's starting to get ahead. How'd that happen?" I already live a much simpler lifestyle than just about everyone else we know.
If he's trying to teach me something, he doesn't need to do all this. I'm willing to listen.
Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
if you smell a chicken ...
... it's probably me.
This weekend we finally took action to plug up the holes on the underside of our roof. The holes, which measure about six inches across, have been there for about two years and this spring began providing neighborhood squirrels with access to our third-story attic.
Originally the holes served as openings for the downspouts on an ancient pair of gutters that ran along the underside of our slate roof. When we had the roof replaced in 2004, we had the gutters replaced as well, so that we would have something that works and is more or less modern in its design. The downside, of course, was those holes.
The squirrels discovered the holes one fine spring morning this year, when Natasha awoke to the sound of one frantically scurrying about in the attic as it tried to find the way back out. We hemmed and hawed on the subject, and I finally suggested stuffing the holes with steel wool and spackling over it. The spackle alone should keep the squirrels out, but the steel wool would be lethal to any squirrel trying to chew its way back in.
Days passed, then weeks, and finally even three or four months, during which time the squirrels got into a fight with a bird who, feeling in a motherly way, built its nest in one of the holes and defended its home and its eggs with vim and vigor.
This past weekend I borrowed a forty-foot extension ladder so we could settle the squirrels' and birds' fight once and for all.
So why am I a chicken? Because I get dizzy at the mall when I get too close to those cut-away sections of the second floor, where all that stops you from plunging to your death thirty feet below is a glass partition. Because I take the first two or three steps of a ladder very quickly and then my speed decreases along a logarithmic decay curve.
Because I can't stand heights, and I defintely can't stand the idea of standing atop a ladder twenty-five feet in the air and letting go with one hand so I can stuff steel wool into a hole and then spackle over it.
I sent Natasha, and therefore I am a chicken.
Ba-rawk!
This weekend we finally took action to plug up the holes on the underside of our roof. The holes, which measure about six inches across, have been there for about two years and this spring began providing neighborhood squirrels with access to our third-story attic.
Originally the holes served as openings for the downspouts on an ancient pair of gutters that ran along the underside of our slate roof. When we had the roof replaced in 2004, we had the gutters replaced as well, so that we would have something that works and is more or less modern in its design. The downside, of course, was those holes.
The squirrels discovered the holes one fine spring morning this year, when Natasha awoke to the sound of one frantically scurrying about in the attic as it tried to find the way back out. We hemmed and hawed on the subject, and I finally suggested stuffing the holes with steel wool and spackling over it. The spackle alone should keep the squirrels out, but the steel wool would be lethal to any squirrel trying to chew its way back in.
Days passed, then weeks, and finally even three or four months, during which time the squirrels got into a fight with a bird who, feeling in a motherly way, built its nest in one of the holes and defended its home and its eggs with vim and vigor.
This past weekend I borrowed a forty-foot extension ladder so we could settle the squirrels' and birds' fight once and for all.
So why am I a chicken? Because I get dizzy at the mall when I get too close to those cut-away sections of the second floor, where all that stops you from plunging to your death thirty feet below is a glass partition. Because I take the first two or three steps of a ladder very quickly and then my speed decreases along a logarithmic decay curve.
Because I can't stand heights, and I defintely can't stand the idea of standing atop a ladder twenty-five feet in the air and letting go with one hand so I can stuff steel wool into a hole and then spackle over it.
I sent Natasha, and therefore I am a chicken.
Ba-rawk!
Friday, August 20, 2004
requiem to the forbidden love of youth
Have you ever had a relationship so deep and meaningful that when it ended, you felt as though a part of you had died? I have.
For the entire second year of our marriage, my wife and I shared our house, our back yard — yes, our very lives — with a mattress called Spring Air. Initially, I admit, we regarded Spring Air as an inconvenience, a twin-size mattress left in the driveway by the house’s previous owner, but as time went on, Spring Air came to mean something more to me. Something special.
Natasha will always be the love of my life, but I can’t deny that Spring Air came to hold a place in my heart as well. Even now, years later, I still recall it with a sad wistfulness normally reserved for third-grade crushes.
The mattress grew on me slowly, but when we threw a housewarming party that July, Spring Air was there, along with some of our best friends from church and from college. It said little, being shy, and it mostly hung out on the side of the house away from the guests rather than mingle with them.
This behavior didn’t particularly surprise me. Mattresses are not social creatures, and they rarely spend much time with more than one or two people in the course of their lives. This also probably was its first party, so some bashfulness was to be expected.
But there was no mistaking the sensation it caused. In its own quiet way, Spring Air quickly became a conversation piece among our guests, who invariably revered it as the most unusual piece of patio furniture they ever had seen. Our picnic table and every one of our chairs have been used repeatedly, but not one person dared to use Spring Air for an afternoon nap. Such was the respect we held it in.
In time, Spring Air became something of an attraction, or perhaps a celebrity. People came from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, from Arizona and from Vermont and asked to see the mattress. Ours became known as the only house on the block — perhaps in the city or in all Iowa — to have a mattress in the back yard.
Spring Air became like family to us. It stayed with us all summer long and into the autumn. When Tropical Storm Floyd hit New Jersey in 1999, destroying communities like Manville and Bound Brook and wreaking havoc in places like Cranford, the mattress stoically braved the elements and protected our house as best it could.
When our first child was born, Spring Air kept vigil while we were at the hospital. And when we brought Evangeline home for the first time, it was there, waiting for us patiently, and never once reproached me for not telling it when she had been born.
To my knowledge, the mattress never once asked for anything. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Easter all came and went, and Spring Air stayed outside on the patio without once asking to come in and have a bit of turkey, to sing carols around the tree or even just to dry out.
And so the days passed. Snow fell, lingered and melted away. Winter turned to spring, and in their turn, spiders, insects and a few species of mold I’ve never identified made that mattress their home.
From time to time, Natasha, in a surprising bit of jealousy, gently would hint that Spring Air had overstayed its welcome, and she would ask me to escort it to the roadside.
“I think we have to make special arrangements before they’ll take it away,” I would say as I stalled for time.
Trouble began brewing in earnest in the spring. Leaves that had gone unraked over the winter because my time was needed inside with the baby had piled up against Spring Air, and as they rotted around it, the mattress began to make a stink. Its bright colors had faded, and visitors who saw Spring Air began to remark that it should go.
The fateful day arrived early one morning in late May. Coming back from her office one day, Natasha saw something that set her aquiver with excitement. A homeowner a block away from us had put a queen-size mattress and box spring out on the curb with his regular garbage.
I knew as soon as she told me that Spring Air’s days were numbered. Less than a week later, I dragged it out to the curb. Time and the elements had not been kind to our guest. Practically new when we had moved in, it had aged prematurely, and I knew it was time to put it down.
I leaned it against a tree between our house and the one next door in case there was an extra fee associated with leaving oversize items out for collection, and I said my goodbyes.
“I guess this is it,” I said. “It’s best if you leave tomorrow morning. I don’t want the zoning officer to fine us for keeping you outside. It’s probably against a city ordinance.”
Spring Air said nothing, and wouldn’t even look at me. I could tell I had hurt its feelings.
The next morning I watched, misty-eyed, as city workers picked up our mattress and threw it into the garbage truck. Even from where I stood, I could feel its resentment at this betrayal.
“I could have stayed forever,” it seemed to say sullenly. “See how your flowers and picnic table fare. I never would have biodegraded on you.” I watched as it rode slowly away aboard the garbage truck.
It never even tried to look back.
Copyright © 2000, 2004 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Retold from "Mattress of My Heart."
For the entire second year of our marriage, my wife and I shared our house, our back yard — yes, our very lives — with a mattress called Spring Air. Initially, I admit, we regarded Spring Air as an inconvenience, a twin-size mattress left in the driveway by the house’s previous owner, but as time went on, Spring Air came to mean something more to me. Something special.
The mattress grew on me slowly, but when we threw a housewarming party that July, Spring Air was there, along with some of our best friends from church and from college. It said little, being shy, and it mostly hung out on the side of the house away from the guests rather than mingle with them.
This behavior didn’t particularly surprise me. Mattresses are not social creatures, and they rarely spend much time with more than one or two people in the course of their lives. This also probably was its first party, so some bashfulness was to be expected.
But there was no mistaking the sensation it caused. In its own quiet way, Spring Air quickly became a conversation piece among our guests, who invariably revered it as the most unusual piece of patio furniture they ever had seen. Our picnic table and every one of our chairs have been used repeatedly, but not one person dared to use Spring Air for an afternoon nap. Such was the respect we held it in.
In time, Spring Air became something of an attraction, or perhaps a celebrity. People came from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, from Arizona and from Vermont and asked to see the mattress. Ours became known as the only house on the block — perhaps in the city or in all Iowa — to have a mattress in the back yard.
Spring Air became like family to us. It stayed with us all summer long and into the autumn. When Tropical Storm Floyd hit New Jersey in 1999, destroying communities like Manville and Bound Brook and wreaking havoc in places like Cranford, the mattress stoically braved the elements and protected our house as best it could.
When our first child was born, Spring Air kept vigil while we were at the hospital. And when we brought Evangeline home for the first time, it was there, waiting for us patiently, and never once reproached me for not telling it when she had been born.
To my knowledge, the mattress never once asked for anything. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Easter all came and went, and Spring Air stayed outside on the patio without once asking to come in and have a bit of turkey, to sing carols around the tree or even just to dry out.
And so the days passed. Snow fell, lingered and melted away. Winter turned to spring, and in their turn, spiders, insects and a few species of mold I’ve never identified made that mattress their home.
From time to time, Natasha, in a surprising bit of jealousy, gently would hint that Spring Air had overstayed its welcome, and she would ask me to escort it to the roadside.
“I think we have to make special arrangements before they’ll take it away,” I would say as I stalled for time.
Trouble began brewing in earnest in the spring. Leaves that had gone unraked over the winter because my time was needed inside with the baby had piled up against Spring Air, and as they rotted around it, the mattress began to make a stink. Its bright colors had faded, and visitors who saw Spring Air began to remark that it should go.
The fateful day arrived early one morning in late May. Coming back from her office one day, Natasha saw something that set her aquiver with excitement. A homeowner a block away from us had put a queen-size mattress and box spring out on the curb with his regular garbage.
I knew as soon as she told me that Spring Air’s days were numbered. Less than a week later, I dragged it out to the curb. Time and the elements had not been kind to our guest. Practically new when we had moved in, it had aged prematurely, and I knew it was time to put it down.
I leaned it against a tree between our house and the one next door in case there was an extra fee associated with leaving oversize items out for collection, and I said my goodbyes.
“I guess this is it,” I said. “It’s best if you leave tomorrow morning. I don’t want the zoning officer to fine us for keeping you outside. It’s probably against a city ordinance.”
Spring Air said nothing, and wouldn’t even look at me. I could tell I had hurt its feelings.
The next morning I watched, misty-eyed, as city workers picked up our mattress and threw it into the garbage truck. Even from where I stood, I could feel its resentment at this betrayal.
“I could have stayed forever,” it seemed to say sullenly. “See how your flowers and picnic table fare. I never would have biodegraded on you.” I watched as it rode slowly away aboard the garbage truck.
It never even tried to look back.
Copyright © 2000, 2004 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Retold from "Mattress of My Heart."
Friday, July 14, 2000
Ode to the mattress of my heart
Have you ever had a relationship so deep and meaningful that when it ended, you felt as though a part of you had died?
I have. For the past 12 months, Natasha and I have shared our house, our back yard - yes, our very lives - with a mattress called Spring Air. Initially, I admit, we regarded Spring Air as an inconvenience, a twin-size mattress left in the driveway by the house's previous owner, but as time went on, Spring Air came to mean something more. Something special.
It grew on us slowly, but when we threw a housewarming party last July, Spring Air was there, along with some of our best friends from church and from college. It said little, being shy, and it mostly hang out on the side of the house away from the guests rather than mingle with them.
This behavior didn't particularly surprise me. Mattresses are not social creatures, and they rarely spend much time with more than one or two people in the course of their lives. This also probably was its first party, so some bashfulness was to be expected.
But there was no mistaking the sensation it caused. In its own quiet way, Spring Air quickly became a conversation piece among our guests, who invariably revered it as the most unusual piece of patio furniture they ever had seen. Our picnic table and every one of our chairs have been used repeatedly, but not one person dared to use Spring Air for an afternoon nap. Such was the respect we held it in.
In time, Spring Air became something of an attraction, or perhaps a celebrity. People came from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, from Arizona and from Vermont and asked to see the mattress. Ours became known as the only house on the block - perhaps in the city or in all New Jersey -- to have a mattress in the back yard.
Spring Air became like family to us. It stayed with us all summer long and into the autumn. When Hurricane Floyd hit New Jersey last September, destroying communities like Manville and Bound Brook, the mattress stoically braved the elements and protected our house as best it could.
When our daughter was born, Spring Air kept vigil while we were at the hospital. And when we brought Evangeline home for the first time, it was there, waiting for us patiently, and never once reproached me for not telling it when she had been born.
To my knowledge, the mattress never once asked for anything. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and Easter all came and went, and Spring Air stayed outside on the patio without once asking to come in and dry out.
From time to time, Natasha gently would hint that Spring Air had overstayed its welcome, and she would ask me to escort it to the roadside.
"I think we have to make special arrangements before they'll take it away," I would say as I stalled for time.
And so the days passed. Snow fell, lingered and melted away. Winter turned to spring, and in their turn, spiders, insects and a few species of mold I've never identified made that mattress their home.
Trouble began brewing in the spring. Leaves that had gone unraked over the winter because my time was needed inside with the baby had piled up against Spring Air, and as they rotted around it, the mattress began to make a stink. Its bright colors had faded, and visitors who saw Spring Air began to remark that it should go.
The fateful day arrived early one morning in late May. Walking back from the university one morning, Natasha saw something that sent a thrill up her spine. A homeowner a block away from us had put a queen-size mattress and box spring out on the curb with his regular garbage.
I knew as soon as she told me that Spring Air's days were numbered. Less than a week later, I dragged it out to the curb. Time and the elements had not been kind to our guest. Practically new when we had moved in, it had aged prematurely, and I knew it was time to put it down.
I leaned it against a tree between our house and the one next door in case there was an extra fee associated with leaving oversize items out for collection, and I said my goodbyes.
"I guess this is it," I said. "It's best if you leave tomorrow morning. I don't want the zoning officer to fine us for keeping you outside. It's probably against a city ordinance."
Spring Air said nothing, and wouldn't even look at me. I could tell I had hurt its feelings.
The next morning I watched, misty-eyed, as city workers picked up our departing tenant and threw it into the garbage truck. Even from where I stood, I could feel its resentment as this betrayal.
"I could have stayed forever," it seemed to say sullenly. "See how your flowers and picnic table fare. I never would have biodegraded on you."
I watched as it rode slowly away aboard the garbage truck. It never even tried to look back.
Copyright © 2000 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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I have. For the past 12 months, Natasha and I have shared our house, our back yard - yes, our very lives - with a mattress called Spring Air. Initially, I admit, we regarded Spring Air as an inconvenience, a twin-size mattress left in the driveway by the house's previous owner, but as time went on, Spring Air came to mean something more. Something special.
This behavior didn't particularly surprise me. Mattresses are not social creatures, and they rarely spend much time with more than one or two people in the course of their lives. This also probably was its first party, so some bashfulness was to be expected.
But there was no mistaking the sensation it caused. In its own quiet way, Spring Air quickly became a conversation piece among our guests, who invariably revered it as the most unusual piece of patio furniture they ever had seen. Our picnic table and every one of our chairs have been used repeatedly, but not one person dared to use Spring Air for an afternoon nap. Such was the respect we held it in.
In time, Spring Air became something of an attraction, or perhaps a celebrity. People came from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, from Arizona and from Vermont and asked to see the mattress. Ours became known as the only house on the block - perhaps in the city or in all New Jersey -- to have a mattress in the back yard.
Spring Air became like family to us. It stayed with us all summer long and into the autumn. When Hurricane Floyd hit New Jersey last September, destroying communities like Manville and Bound Brook, the mattress stoically braved the elements and protected our house as best it could.
When our daughter was born, Spring Air kept vigil while we were at the hospital. And when we brought Evangeline home for the first time, it was there, waiting for us patiently, and never once reproached me for not telling it when she had been born.
To my knowledge, the mattress never once asked for anything. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and Easter all came and went, and Spring Air stayed outside on the patio without once asking to come in and dry out.
From time to time, Natasha gently would hint that Spring Air had overstayed its welcome, and she would ask me to escort it to the roadside.
"I think we have to make special arrangements before they'll take it away," I would say as I stalled for time.
And so the days passed. Snow fell, lingered and melted away. Winter turned to spring, and in their turn, spiders, insects and a few species of mold I've never identified made that mattress their home.
Trouble began brewing in the spring. Leaves that had gone unraked over the winter because my time was needed inside with the baby had piled up against Spring Air, and as they rotted around it, the mattress began to make a stink. Its bright colors had faded, and visitors who saw Spring Air began to remark that it should go.
The fateful day arrived early one morning in late May. Walking back from the university one morning, Natasha saw something that sent a thrill up her spine. A homeowner a block away from us had put a queen-size mattress and box spring out on the curb with his regular garbage.
I knew as soon as she told me that Spring Air's days were numbered. Less than a week later, I dragged it out to the curb. Time and the elements had not been kind to our guest. Practically new when we had moved in, it had aged prematurely, and I knew it was time to put it down.
I leaned it against a tree between our house and the one next door in case there was an extra fee associated with leaving oversize items out for collection, and I said my goodbyes.
"I guess this is it," I said. "It's best if you leave tomorrow morning. I don't want the zoning officer to fine us for keeping you outside. It's probably against a city ordinance."
Spring Air said nothing, and wouldn't even look at me. I could tell I had hurt its feelings.
The next morning I watched, misty-eyed, as city workers picked up our departing tenant and threw it into the garbage truck. Even from where I stood, I could feel its resentment as this betrayal.
"I could have stayed forever," it seemed to say sullenly. "See how your flowers and picnic table fare. I never would have biodegraded on you."
I watched as it rode slowly away aboard the garbage truck. It never even tried to look back.
Copyright © 2000 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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Thursday, September 09, 1999
Mattresses, maintenance and guests: the downside to home ownership
There are many stops on the passage from boyhood to manhood that we all know and celebrate: attending college, choosing a career, getting married and starting a family, and earning the Arrow of Light in Cub Scouts.
Another important step is home ownership. It's not hard to buy a home -- anyone can buy one who doesn't mind slaving away for 30 years to get out of debt -- but home ownership is rife with responsibilities.
There are obvious ones common to homeowners: set up the baby's room, cut the grass, water the garden after the lettuce dies, replace the basement stairs before they collapse, add a banister to the main stairs before someone falls, remove the world's ugliest hedge and hire an exorcist to drive out the ghosts that torment guests and do weird things to the toilet.
The work is never-ending, but I am proud to say that Natasha and I finally are making some headway. The baby's furniture has been arranged, we have plans for the banister and basement stairs, and the hedge, while still in our front yard has been trimmed and is not quite as ugly as before.
Natasha and I don't live in Amityville, so we don't have any ghosts to deal with; instead, we have a queen-size mattress. The mattress doesn't drag chains across the floor, it doesn't give me nightmares, and it hasn't ever gone to the bathroom and forgotten to flush the toilet, but in its own way it's just as disconcerting.
When we moved in, the mattress was leaning against the fence in the back yard. Natasha and I left it there, under the impression that someone was coming by to pick it up. That was three months and one hurricane ago.
The mattress now sits out of view on the side of our house, covered with leaves, cobwebs and other indescribables. If the owners wait much longer, it won't be useful for a bed anymore.
We could get the trash collectors to pick it up, except we don't want to pay the extra pick-up fee. We could ignore it, except there's probably some obscure law on the books in New Jersey that says mattresses must be kept inside the house.
Our best hope for disposing of it appears to be saving it for kindling at our Y2K "Collapse of Civilization" extravaganza this coming Jan. 1.
The mattress lingers on my list of "Things we must get rid of," along with that hedge and the collection of branches, brambles and other yard debris stacked up in the back yard. My mind dwells on that unholy triune with all the obsession a dog gives a well-gnawed bone.
"Maybe we could bury it in the back yard," I told Natasha. "We could dig a shallow hole, toss the mattress in and cover it up. After the grass goes to seed, no one would ever know it's there."
If you think about it, it makes sense. In "Arsenic and Old Lace," Teddy buried 12 bodies in the basement at the behest of his aunts, and no one objected. Compared to that, a mattress in the back yard is nothing.
Natasha wouldn't go for it. She put her foot down immediately. If she had been on the basement steps at the time, they would have collapsed.
"You're not going to bury a mattress in the back yard, and that's final!"
This is in keeping with my track record on other holes in the back yard. Longtime readers may remember that earlier this summer I dug a compost pit for the garden out of a sense of family tradition; that is to say, my father had a compost pit when I was growing up, and by gum, I wanted to have one too.
Well, I did. For about four weeks.
The compost pit was filling nicely with corn cobs, potato peels and other sundry organic matter, except for what the squirrels stole. I was thinking there might be hope next year for our garden, which this year produced about $1.25 worth of tomatoes before the bugs ate them.
(According to one school of thought, the value of those tomatoes should be equated with the cost of the house since the tomatoes are all we've received from our investment so far. In that case, we had more than $100,000 worth of tomatoes this year, far more than my father harvested the first year of his garden.)
The Monday before Labor Day, Natasha and I had some friends up for dinner. My friends, who I won't identify here, except as "Dan" and "Kathy," brought along their three children, whom I'll call "Tim," "Tyler" and "Anna" to protect their privacy.
While Dan and I barbecued chicken on my grill, Tim, Tyler and Anna gave me a dramatic lesson on childproofing homes. Their lesson took the form of a game that involved kicking Natasha's basketball around the back yard and bouncing it off various stationary objects and the odd person or two.
The only complete write-off was a flower I had planted by the patio. My hosta plants, sufficiently large to withstand the judgment of the flying basketball.
I was secretly disappointed when the basketball plowed into garden, not because it killed anything, but because it didn't. If they had aimed a little more to the left, Natasha and I would have lost our entire crop of brussels sprouts. Now we have to eat them.
(I tried to get the kids to kick the basketball into the hedge and mattress, but my attempts were unsuccessful.)
The compost pit became a magnet, first for the ball and then for the children. I don't think any of the trips into the hole were accidental, but just to be safe I filled the pit that week.
With the compost pit filled, there are no more jokes about the grave in my back yard. All that's buried there are half-rotted vegetables, and if a mad scientist stitches old potato peels together and reanimates them, just give me a deep-fryer. I'll have Frenchenfries eaten out of my hand in a matter of minutes.
But that mattress won't go away. At least, it hasn't yet. Nor have the sticks and fallen branches.
"I wish we had a wood-chipper," I said one day, my imagination filled with images of mulch I could put on the flower bed out front.
"You're not going to mulch a mattress!" Natasha protested.
"I was talking about the sticks," I explained, but immediately I began to warm to Natasha's suggestion. "That's not a bad idea. The wood-chipper could grind up the stuffing in the mattress, as well as the fabric and we could mix it in with the rest of the mulch, or blend it in with the garden. It'll biodegrade eventually."
And so it continues. The hedge remains. The mattress is slowly growing a crop of mildew on the side of the house. The pile of sticks in our back yard is growing steadily larger, and other chores are starting to pile up as well. There's no escape.
I have only one regret: I wish I had finished my Arrow of Light while I was still in Webelos.
Thursday, July 01, 1999
house shopping
There are times in life when madness overtakes the best of us.
The first time I had a brush with insanity was when I decided between my junior and senior years of college to write an honor’s thesis on the religious themes of classic Star Trek. It cost me the respect of all three of my friends, but fortunately Mr. Spock appeared to me in a vision and showed me the Vulcan way to peace.
Then there was the time I asked Natasha to marry me, even though I knew there was a risk that she might squeeze her toothpaste in the middle of the tube. (Actually, I’m so in love with her that I still pop the Question on a regular basis, especially since she uses her own toothpaste, but she tells me she's already married me once, and that was enough.)
The most recent dance around the fringes has been with buying a house. I’m not sure why we thought we needed to buy a house, but we closed recently, and so we are now the proud owners of a 30-year adjustable-rate mortgage.
The first step we had to go through was deciding whether we really wanted to buy one. Conventional wisdom has it that buying a houses is better than renting an apartment.
When you rent, you pay large sums of money on a monthly basis to some megarich cementhead with no idea what life is like for ordinary people on a tight budget. With a house, you have to pay money on a monthly basis to some megarich lending institution with no idea what life is like for ordinary people on a tight budget.
It’s a remarkable improvement.
Additionally, houses come with a lot of extra responsibility. As a new homeowner, it is my responsibility to procrastinate fixing the basement stairs and cutting the grass. When I rented an apartment, it was always the landlord’s job to put off that sort of maintenance.
Once we decided to buy a house, we had to find a good Realtor. A Realtor’s job as a superfluous middleman is to complicate unnecessarily what might otherwise be the rather simple task of finding and buying an affordable house.
Our Realtor took us on a wild searching spree all over Middlesex and Somerset counties at breakneck speeds to look at houses that cost $20,000 more than we could afford.
"You need to tighten your belt a little to get a good place," April told me when I objected to the cost of some of the houses she wanted to show us.
"I don’t mind tightening my belt a little," I said. "I just want to have a waist after it’s all over."
(I’m willing to bet April does squeeze her toothpaste in the middle.)
I soon learned that finding the right house is more difficult even than finding the right spouse. Before I met Natasha, I dated at most a half-dozen women, and went steady with none of them. During the week April was running us ragged, we must have looked at close to 20 houses. We saw townhouses, condos, tool sheds, caves with doors on them -- you name it, we saw it.
Some of the houses were downright frightening. One in North Brunswick was a two-story house selling for something like $120,000. That’s not so bad, but the second floor was really a converted attic, and every room was built on an angle -- a different angle. Oddest of all, the only way to the second floor was the staircase that was built in the bathroom.
"What were they thinking?" I asked once we made that discovery. I pictured our child bursting through the bathroom door to go upstairs or down while I sat there reading a magazine.
"They’d have to lower the price to $60,000 first, and I still wouldn’t take it," Natasha said, after we finished touring the place.
Fortunately, Mr. Spock appeared to me in a second vision, and showed us the only logical course of action. We settled on a two-story Colonial less than a mile from the apartment we had been renting.
The next step was easily the hardest. In a civilized arrangement, we would have called the sellers, dickered over the price and some minor repairs, settled everything, and then been able to close after a few weeks.
But I live in New Jersey, and civilized arrangements are usually against the law. Both the sellers and we had to hire attorneys to represent us during the discussions over how to handle minor repairs -- there was no railing on the stairs -- and major ones -- the roof wasn’t capped correctly.
Imagine coordinating a discussion with one middle party. Now picture two. Now picture four -- two attorneys and two Realtors. Then for good measure toss in a home insurance company, a mortgage lender, an entire religious order, a woman named Edith, and 27 gallons of tapioca pudding. That should give you a rough idea what we endured.
Somehow -- I still don’t understand how -- Natasha and I managed to close. Most frightening of all, we’ll probably have to do this again in the next five years as our family grows.
I’ve stopped flirting with madness. Mr. Spock is here to stay. But at least he assures me that Vulcans squeeze their toothpaste at the end of their tubes.
The first time I had a brush with insanity was when I decided between my junior and senior years of college to write an honor’s thesis on the religious themes of classic Star Trek. It cost me the respect of all three of my friends, but fortunately Mr. Spock appeared to me in a vision and showed me the Vulcan way to peace.
Then there was the time I asked Natasha to marry me, even though I knew there was a risk that she might squeeze her toothpaste in the middle of the tube. (Actually, I’m so in love with her that I still pop the Question on a regular basis, especially since she uses her own toothpaste, but she tells me she's already married me once, and that was enough.)
The most recent dance around the fringes has been with buying a house. I’m not sure why we thought we needed to buy a house, but we closed recently, and so we are now the proud owners of a 30-year adjustable-rate mortgage.
The first step we had to go through was deciding whether we really wanted to buy one. Conventional wisdom has it that buying a houses is better than renting an apartment.
When you rent, you pay large sums of money on a monthly basis to some megarich cementhead with no idea what life is like for ordinary people on a tight budget. With a house, you have to pay money on a monthly basis to some megarich lending institution with no idea what life is like for ordinary people on a tight budget.
It’s a remarkable improvement.
Additionally, houses come with a lot of extra responsibility. As a new homeowner, it is my responsibility to procrastinate fixing the basement stairs and cutting the grass. When I rented an apartment, it was always the landlord’s job to put off that sort of maintenance.
Once we decided to buy a house, we had to find a good Realtor. A Realtor’s job as a superfluous middleman is to complicate unnecessarily what might otherwise be the rather simple task of finding and buying an affordable house.
Our Realtor took us on a wild searching spree all over Middlesex and Somerset counties at breakneck speeds to look at houses that cost $20,000 more than we could afford.
"You need to tighten your belt a little to get a good place," April told me when I objected to the cost of some of the houses she wanted to show us.
"I don’t mind tightening my belt a little," I said. "I just want to have a waist after it’s all over."
(I’m willing to bet April does squeeze her toothpaste in the middle.)
I soon learned that finding the right house is more difficult even than finding the right spouse. Before I met Natasha, I dated at most a half-dozen women, and went steady with none of them. During the week April was running us ragged, we must have looked at close to 20 houses. We saw townhouses, condos, tool sheds, caves with doors on them -- you name it, we saw it.
Some of the houses were downright frightening. One in North Brunswick was a two-story house selling for something like $120,000. That’s not so bad, but the second floor was really a converted attic, and every room was built on an angle -- a different angle. Oddest of all, the only way to the second floor was the staircase that was built in the bathroom.
"What were they thinking?" I asked once we made that discovery. I pictured our child bursting through the bathroom door to go upstairs or down while I sat there reading a magazine.
"They’d have to lower the price to $60,000 first, and I still wouldn’t take it," Natasha said, after we finished touring the place.
Fortunately, Mr. Spock appeared to me in a second vision, and showed us the only logical course of action. We settled on a two-story Colonial less than a mile from the apartment we had been renting.
The next step was easily the hardest. In a civilized arrangement, we would have called the sellers, dickered over the price and some minor repairs, settled everything, and then been able to close after a few weeks.
But I live in New Jersey, and civilized arrangements are usually against the law. Both the sellers and we had to hire attorneys to represent us during the discussions over how to handle minor repairs -- there was no railing on the stairs -- and major ones -- the roof wasn’t capped correctly.
Imagine coordinating a discussion with one middle party. Now picture two. Now picture four -- two attorneys and two Realtors. Then for good measure toss in a home insurance company, a mortgage lender, an entire religious order, a woman named Edith, and 27 gallons of tapioca pudding. That should give you a rough idea what we endured.
Somehow -- I still don’t understand how -- Natasha and I managed to close. Most frightening of all, we’ll probably have to do this again in the next five years as our family grows.
I’ve stopped flirting with madness. Mr. Spock is here to stay. But at least he assures me that Vulcans squeeze their toothpaste at the end of their tubes.
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