Great Moments in Maine Real Estate: Our House

Well, we sold our house, and we’ve been very, very busy doing it. We haven’t been living on reds, Vitamin C and cocaine. More like coffee, quercetin and saltines. But still, what a long, strange trip it’s been.

Here’s the listing for it on Zillow: It’s got lots of pictures for the insatiably curious.

We lived there a long time. For fifteen years or so I’ve been banging on the thing the way Mike Tyson used to bang on undercard palookas who graduated too soon. You know, before Iron Mike hit retirement age. I’m older now, and can’t bang like I used to either. Luckily, I can’t bang on the house anymore anyway. I don’t own it.

It didn’t look much like it does in the SOLD listing when we bought it. Here’s the front facade on the day we went to look at it in order to calculate our poverty/opportunity/lack of judgment quotient.

I’m a bad photographer. But not that bad. My hands were shaking so hard from the cold I couldn’t hold the camera still. Here’s the way the back of the house looked while we conned ourselves into thinking we could fix the place without calling in an airstrike, after a call to an insurance agent, of course:

My wife is quite sensible, except for that unfortunate incident years back that ended in I do. My personal POLoJ quotient has always been heavily weighted towards the LoJ portion of the dial. But even by my standards, we really pegged the needle on this one. For instance, we needed to lift the entire back of the house between 6 and 8 inches, and slip a foundation under it, because the old foundation had lifted its masonry skirts years ago, yelled eek!, and ran off into the night. I testify to you that it’s not possible to lift a house and live in it, too. But we did it somehow. I stand by my assessment that it’s impossible, though. I’m stubborn, you see. Sometimes it helps. At any rate, it turned out all right:

Of course in its original state, it was loaded with charm. No house is complete without some sort of plunge to your death feature. Millions of homeowners are currently ripping out the balustrades and handrails on their staircases to achieve the totally open plan that a raccoon-eyed harridan on cable teevee demands, but we don’t settle for modest dangers like that. Look for a home with a side yard like this, and you’ll be cutting edge:

Truly, that’s a very short stairway to heaven if you’ve been a good boy, or other accommodations if you’re like me. This house had lots of fun stuff like that. When we moved here, the kids were still young, and we still liked them. With the kind of parental piety that is in short supply these days, we cautioned them to stay out of the yard, and play in the middle of the street where they’d be safe. We did fix it, eventually. By then the kids were taller than their mom and talked in a Barry White baritone and played Halo online, like God and nature and Bill Gates intended.

We did a little work on the interior, too. For instance, I’m informed that murder houses are a “thing” now, and people fall all over each other to get their hands on houses that smell of lime in the basement and get featured on cable teevee shows. They all missed an opportunity at our house. I don’t think anyone was ever murdered in our house, but only because both the murderers and the victims were too afraid to linger in a house with a bathroom like this one. Viz:

We gave it some spit and polish:

If you haven’t sold your house recently, it’s interesting to note that you’re not supposed to have anything to do with any prospective buyers. I’m not sure if the real estate agents don’t want them to talk to you, or you to talk to them. I think they’re either afraid you’ll lie to a buyer, or forget to lie. One or the other. So you have to beat it when anyone comes to see it, while they ask the realtor all sorts of questions about the house they have no idea how to answer. You get feedback from the agent about what was said, which you can take with a cylinder of Morton’s Salt. Our favorite was the buyers who wandered around our house for a good long while, and then asked, “Is this house staged?” The realtor replied, “No, I think they actually live this way.” Yes. Yes we do. Or did, I mean.

So, we’re homeless now. I’m out of practice with sleeping rough. Except for, you know, the inside of my old house for about ten years. I’m finding it plenty difficult to locate park benches that aren’t currently occupied, and it’s near impossible to find a good newspaper printed on real paper any more. As the bums in Boston used to say, ” I like the Sunday Globe. You know, for the coverage.”

[Many thanks to Steve, and another anonymous donor, for their generous hit on our Ko-Fi tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated!]