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Selling This Old House…

Monday, the real estate sign officially went up on my mom’s house. A small three bedroom, one bath that started living in in 1979, at the age of about 6 years old. We moved from Petaluma to be closer to the family, and for my mom to be closer to her job. A single parent with two young kids, living in Petaluma was an hours drive from the City and too far from family who could take care of us.

There used to be a swingset in the backyard, where we spent countless hours swinging to the point of almost flipping the swingset over. We also had quite a few birthday parties back there on the patio, before it was turned into a deck and then turned into a sunroom. And plenty of family Christmas’s were spent crammed into the living room, before she put the sunroom on. My sister and I also swapped bedrooms a couple of times, so we’ve each been in the smaller and larger bedroom at some point, now used as a guest room and den. There are also memories of my grandmother living with us for quite a few months, after she had a bad fall. She eventually moved back into her own home, where she passed away a few years later. And then there’s all of the changes inside and out.

I’ve always called this house my mom’s Winchester Mystery House, named after the Winchester Rifle heiress’s home that she continously built until her death. For thirty years, my mom has continously made changes to this house from furniture to paint to adding and removing walls. I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t some kind of construction going on—most of it stuff I did myself.

One of the biggest changes came to the front of the house, when my mom moved the front door from the corner near the garage to the center of the house. Because of this move, I added an overhang to above the door, which you can see in the photo above. Throughout the house, we changed all of the trimwork and moldings, adding crown moldings to the living and dining rooms. This was before power tools, for me, so I did it all by hand with handsaws, hammers and nails—it goes so much faster with a power saw and a nailing gun.

In the living room photo, I added the archway between the two rooms. In the kitchen, I put up the beadboard. In the bathroom, I put up the tiles on the walls and floors. In the backyard, I put up the trellis near the pond. There are touches of ME all over that house and although it’s sort of sad to see it go, I know the time has come for her to find a place with less maintenance.

Not everything in the house was done by me, though. The kitchen’s gone through a couple of remodels—the cabinets were originally oak colored but painted white a few years back. The backyard was landscaped quite a few years ago by her gardener, although she hasn’t really done much to keep the plants as lush as they could be. And her most recent addition was the sunroom/family room, which I suggested as a replacement for the deck that originally stood in that place.

Anyhow, the time has come and the “For Sale” sign is sitting in the front yard waiting for the perfect buyer. And what’s crazy is that someone will come along and make the offer of three-quarters of a million dollars that’s being asked in that neighborhood. And then we’ll be on to the next house—which I’ve already informed her that we won’t spend another thirty years doing construction on.

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