object #3

My house. This is the oldest picture I have of the house from the late 1970s.

I bought this house in the summer of 1975 with a Fannie Mae loan and my father, who co-signed the papers and loaned me the 10% of the $19,000 purchase price needed for the down payment. I was 25, had just started my little studio doing etched glass, and was scared spitless that I had just signed a paper that indebted me for $17,100 plus interest. The payments were less than $200 a month. I wasn’t able to take possession of it until October as the old woman needed the time to pack up and move to Arizona to live with her daughter. By then Marc and I were together but he didn’t move in until the following year.

I loved this house on sight. It was about a hundred years old when I bought it and was in good shape, solid, built of first cut timber with shiplap on all the interior walls which was so hard you couldn't hammer a nail into it, had to drill a little hole first; three bedrooms, two baths, 10’ ceilings, 10” baseboards, lots of windows with diamond mullions, deep eaves, hardwood floors; the plumbing was old and Marc spent many years under the house repairing broken pipes, the wiring was inadequate such that in one part of the house if too many things were on I would blow the breaker when I tried to vacuum, and drafty with no insulation. After the first winter or two we put insulation in the attic. But I loved that 1,250 square foot house. We got married in that house, it sheltered us, we raised our two children in that house, we operated our studio out of the two car garage. 

We finally sold it in 2014 for many reasons…nearly 40 years of living hand to mouth on an artist’s income was not good for an old house that needed more attention than we could afford, the ignored inner city neighborhood was getting gentrified and property taxes were becoming unaffordable, the new people moving in felt us long time residents were bringing their property values down, and we basically had been living and working under the radar of the city and the neighborhood was coming under the scrutiny of city inspectors with all the new construction…but those of you who have been reading here for a long time know how hard it was for me to let go of it even though we were spending less and less time here. We had moved out to the house we're in now, coming in only three days a week to work in the studio when we had work.

We sold the property to a small home builder who promised to move the house off the property if possible (it wasn’t), promised to save the trees and build a single family home (he didn’t). He tore the house down but was overextended I guess because he sat on the property for a year and then sold it to a developer who clear cut the lot cutting down all the trees including the 30+ year old magnolia we had planted, and built two ugly lot line townhouses.

mid-1980s, daughter Sarah standing by the front door.

2003

Also 2003, the backyard and the small extension off the garage/studio which we had just finished rebuilding one wall at a time because termites had eaten the bottom 12” of the frame and the only thing holding the walls up was the sheetrock and metal siding.

2012, we were living out in Wharton by then coming in only to work and our son and daughter-in-law had moved into the main part of the house after we closed off part of it for a little apartment while we were there. 

2014, the year we sold it. 

This is from the post back in 2014 after we had gutted the shop, moved Big Mama, dug up plants or taken cuttings, hauled away every brick, paver, and concrete mortar block, and were leaving the house for the very last time.

“I walked through the house, my last time, and touched the walls and thanked it for giving us shelter and holding our family together. We weathered three direct hit hurricanes over the years in that house with nary a creak. I apologized for not taking better care of it and for abandoning it. I told it I loved it. Then I walked out and closed the door.”

a decision, mating rituals, corn

Today Pam and I went to look again at one of the first houses we looked at. She had narrowed it down to three floor plans from what we had seen in person and on-line so far and she decided that this was the one, no need to look further.

Here's the floor plan, 15.2' x 76'. It has some nice features like a small utility room as opposed to a niche or closet, a nice walk in pantry, cabinets that are 11” deep (all the others we looked at the cabinets were 9 1/2” deep), adequate counter space, a window in the kitchen (the only house we looked at I think that had that), double windows (regular window and storm window), air and heat vents are in the ceiling instead of the floor, carpet in the master bedroom and bedroom 3 and vinyl everywhere else. The master bath is arranged a little differently in the house we're buying but essentially the same.

I took these pictures off the website (because obviously this is not her furniture) since the ones I took today weren't that great.

her house doesn't have that wood panel in the middle of the far living room accent wall and the color is brown instead of gray in our house and all the other walls are an off-white

The guy is getting the paperwork together and coming out Tuesday evening to do his site survey...look over the lot and the street and ditches and the cedar tree by the gate that we are probably going to have to trim some branches off of so as to get the house in, and where we have it staked off for the house to go. Next, it turns out I don't really need a pad but it's an extremely good idea so that water won't collect under the house and to make sure the ground is stable so I have to see to that. I thought we could put the meter box on the house instead of having to have a meter pole since there is a pole about 25' from where the house will be but he says that can't be done so we will have to get a meter box pole and I need to check with the electric company to make sure the transformer across the street can accommodate another 200 amp service. As soon as we have the pad we can arrange to have the house moved onto the property, then the meter box pole, septic system, and hooking up the house to all the utilities (water, septic, electricity). Once all that is done the seller comes out and inspects everything and then installs the HVAC system.

Grandgirl Autumn finished the last exam of her third year of college and hopped the bus and came to visit her folks for a few days before she heads back Sunday for her Memorial Day weekend 'date' with her he's-not-my-boyfriend male companion who she's been going out with for several months. Relationships/friendships between girls and boys is very different now from when I grew up. They don't date the way we used to. Well, they don't date as far as I can tell, at least they don't call it that and  they communicate by text. Not even my daughter (no cell phones though), just one generation removed. I don't think she ever went on a car date where the guy comes and picks you up and you go out somewhere and then brings you back home at curfew. Or even a double date. They went out in groups or gathered at some appointed place. She went to her prom with two girlfriends. That would not have been allowed in my time. You had a date with a person of the opposite sex or you couldn't go. Wouldn't go! As soon as a girl managed to attract a member of the opposite sex, she had a boyfriend and he a girlfriend, she's looking for the best possible mate, he's hoping for sex. because women, girls had very few choices or options back then. Women's wealth in life was determined by the guy she married since all of our jobs were the same...stay home, have babies, keep house, if you were wealthy you could oversee the 'help'. If you were wealthy you could spend your time on charitable pursuits. That's sort of the future that I was expecting though my parents urged, expected, us girls to go to college, and it was the future for my older sister who like many of our contemporaries went for one year, found a husband, and then started having babies. I was on the same track but then the 60s happened, had been happening, and I embraced it. And then mating rituals changed to say the least. Anyway, I digress.

Autumn was here, her mom working in the city yesterday, so I picked her up and we drove out to Boling, another very small nearby town to get some fresh local sweet corn because their corn guy was set up at the 4-way stop, some to eat now, some to freeze, some for me, some for Sarah. So Autumn and I put up 11 cups of cut corn. 

My vacuum sealer would suck the air out but wouldn't seal so it did actually suck so I had to suck the air out of the ziplock bags with a straw because did the grocery store or Walmart have a new one I could buy? No, no they did not. I'll repackage the corn when the new vacuum sealer I ordered on-line gets here. Marc had been online to see if he could find some repair info but they wanted $5 to text with a tech.

I noticed our corn man, who is usually at the farmer's market which is canceled now because guess why but I don't expect it will come back because it was struggling for vendors as it was, was set up on the way to Walmart so I'll get some corn from him too. Turns out his wife is a cousin of our neighbor Leonard which doesn't surprise me in the least since I swear he and his wife Judy are related to just about everyone in town and are distant cousins themselves. And once again I digress.

Sarah came to pick up Autumn and had grandgirl Robin with her who was also spending the weekend with her folks and we had had enough of no hugs and I hugged both grandgirls and my daughter. I knowhopeknow they have been careful and aren't sick.

done and done

I am terrible about responding to comments. When I do respond, it is via email so unless you make an email address available, I can't respond to your comment. I guess the reason I do it that way is that I rarely go back to a post to see if the blogger has responded (there are a few exceptions). Shoot, I can't even keep track of what I comment on or much less remember to go back and check for responses.

So this is in response to all the wonderful comments and questions I have received about this very long drawn out move, this uprooting literally, from my old life.

As Marc says, we have decamped.

I have dug up so many plants or taken cuttings. I have no idea how much is going to survive, which cuttings will root. I'm still trying to get them in pots temporarily till the weather cools enough to not give me heat stroke while I prepare the ground for planting.

We decided to leave the sandblast booth/Tuff Shed after all as it has termites. Not bringing termites to the new shop.

I didn't take anything from the house itself besides memories. Just the chandelier. How do you do that anyway? I would like one of the diamond paned windows if Kevin decides to deconstruct the house. We'll see.

So yes, I'm OK. I walked through the house, my last time, and touched the walls and thanked it for giving us shelter and holding our family together. We weathered three direct hits from hurricanes over the years in that house with nary a creak. I apologized for not taking better care of it and for abandoning it. I told it I loved it.

Then I walked out and closed the door.

Mostly, I think, I am just glad that it is finally over. I am anxious to get the new shop set up. I don't like not having a shop or work space available to me. I have stuff to do and stuff to make! There are three exhibitions coming up that I want to submit work for. I have agreed to be in a gallery show next year and I need stuff for that. And the open house in December, which I assume will be happening.

Our future is here and before us.

ch ch ch changes...

Change is essential to life, is it not? To live is to change. Without change we become stagnant, stuck in a rut, start to decline eventually.

I resist change. We all do, I think, to one degree or another. Moving out of the city was a long drawn out process and we are still not completely out. Still have the city house. Still go there to work two or three days a week, when we have work and are doing fabrication, which is really three or four days a week when you account for the travel there and back.

And our kids are there, the boy and his wife in the house, the girl and her family in the one next door.

The girl and her family want to sell, need to sell, are going to sell this year. That house is tiny and there are six adult size people living there with one bathroom, 4 of whom are teenagers. There's no place for any of them to escape the pressure.

When they bought that place from us we made a casual verbal agreement to both sell at the same time to maximize our profit, the idea being that one large plot is more valuable than two smaller ones but that was supposed to be several years down the road yet.

So we've been resisting.

Because selling means moving the shop and wherever we move it, all the options have negatives that have to be solved. It means months of disruption. Not only for us but for the boy and wife.

But, the thing is, this land is getting ridiculously valuable and to get the big bucks, we need to sell together.

I've sort of felt out a couple of realtors in the area. We have a figure in mind, the offer we would have a hard time refusing, that we will, albeit reluctantly, sell for and it may not be out of the realm of possibility. It's high but we have a good location and no deed restrictions and people we know in the real estate market that we casually mention it to start salivating.

That someone might actually give us a contract, that's a little scary to me and I do not look forward to moving the shop regardless of where we move it to and if we stay and our daughter sells we will have a new neighbor to have to acclimate to the noise of the compressor when we work.  No way to tell how successful that will be.

More troubling than moving the shop is that the family will be scattered. We are all here, close together. We may not see everybody every time we come in but they are there. The boy and his wife in the house, the girl and her family next door.

That's a hard thing to leave behind.

But leave it behind we must.  We've decided to put the property on the market in May for a very high price.

This is me contemplating all the full size art and fabrication we need to finish before summer in case the property sells right away.

house home

I've written many posts about this house, mostly about our difficulty in leaving it. This is the story about how I acquired it.

I bought my house in the city when I was 25. I was between marriages, though I didn't know that at the time, and was back living with my parents. I was jobless due to the fact that I had quit my job to move out on some land in east Texas with my now ex-husband in some sort of half hearted attempt to rekindle my affection for the rat bastard.

It didn't work.

So here I was at 24, back in the city, back in the house of my parents that I had married the rat bastard for in the first place to escape. And although they didn't hassle me about going out and finding work and my own place or maybe even going back to school and actually getting the art degree I had started on, I really wanted out again. They didn't keep their disapproval of my lifestyle secret.

They did allow me the space to figure out what I wanted to do though and for that I am grateful.

By the time I had got the idea to see if I could buy a house instead of renting an apartment, my most likely future abode, I had started my fledgling etched glass business and was even making a little money.

I don't remember how the idea of buying a house came up, if it was some cock-eyed thought of mine or came from a friend or my parents, I can't say, but my parents supported the idea. A friend of the family in real estate found half a dozen or so little cottages in the run down Heights area that I had selected to live in based totally on a regret mused by a friend of mine at the time who had bought a place in a different neighborhood. It turned out to be one of those serendipitous utterances that had a major impact on my life, much like the one that sent me on my career path.

I had a budget of $15,000 in mind, which at the time was a huge amount to me, a scary amount, and we looked at 3 or 4 run down cottages and then we looked at this house. It was beautiful, beautifully kept with 10' ceilings and hardwood floors and wood frame double hung windows with a pattern of diamonds across the top and a porch and deep eaves, nearly a hundred years old, but I liked that. The owner was firm on the price, $19,000. But this was the house. This one. I could live here and work here.

If you have ever bought a house, you know what a sobering experience that is. My father agreed to co-sign the Fannie Mae note which is a good thing because I'm sure they would not have given me the time of day otherwise. Being a young, female, self employed artist was as good as being unemployed as far as they were concerned. Hell, I couldn't even get a credit card.

a little rundown but in it's heyday

And so that is how I got my house. This house was my home for 35 years and our shop is still there. Over half of my life was spent in this house. It was my own safe place, Marc and I got married in the living room, we worked hard and built up our etched glass studio there, we raised our kids and pampered our grandkids in it. And though we moved from it, it has never really stopped being 'the' house and in a deep sense, home even though we like living out here in the country very much and we like this little house we are in.

The plan was to build a shop out here and move the business but we have not been able to, so far, get that done.

Our son and daughter-in-law have been living in the city house for the past nearly two years, taking care of minor repairs and, most importantly, occupying the place, breathing a little life back into it. We have our little apartment in the back corner and we seem to have settled in to returning to the city when we have fabrication to do.

We've always known we would sell the place eventually, but that's always been 'down the road'.

Only, maybe the road is shorter than we thought.