Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Zang It

Well, that's it!  It looks like we got the house.  Barring any freak occurrences at inspection, in thirty days, we'll be living in a new space in a new town.  So it's getting time to say goodbye to this place.


Here's what Vine St. looked like when we moved in:



There was no kitchen to speak of--only a big, empty, canary-yellow room with a small metal sink on one side.  There was paint splattered everywhere, the carpets were new but so cheap walking on them left huge indents that didn't go away.  There was sticky linoleum peeling up over the wood floors.  The house had been stripped; there was almost no hardware or light fixtures.  The only appliance left was the hot water heater, and it died a few days after we moved in.  And there was the corpse of a cat in the crawl space under the backyard.  Vine St. was your quintessential money pit.


Except it wasn't.  I mean, it took us a long time to fix up, but it did eventually fix up.  And we have a lot of memories here.  It was the first house either Eric or I owned; I went into labor in this house more times than I care to count, and we brought both Addie and Nolie home from the hospital here.  Burley lived here with us.  We know our neighbors, and we know all the neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops and parks.  We're just a few blocks from the zoo, and minutes from downtown.  We're close to dear, dear friends. 


There is much to speak for this house.  It's over a hundred years old now, and still has sheltered us and kept us warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  We believed in it and in this neighborhood, and leaving will be bittersweet. 


When we first moved in here, there were stickers on every surface, little girl barrettes stuck in odd places, and doll remnants in the backyard.  I liked finding these treasures, liked thinking about all the families and all the little girls who had lived here before us.  I don't know if it's true or not, but our realtor said he heard the young woman who is buying this place talking about how she loves this house, and wants to bring her babies home to this place someday, to raise her kids here.  It doesn't really matter if it's true.  I'm going to believe it anyway.



4 comments:

  1. Congrats on the Zang house! (I figured I had to look at the blog to get the news...Biotch, you totally kept me hanging.) That's awesome. I'll miss you guys being close but am delighted for your success!

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  2. I enjoyed reading your blog & I must congratulate you.. this is a work of art!

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  3. Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.

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