This Old House: A Love Story

The conference room was decorated in that sterile version of New England charm often found in banks and dentists’ offices, a family of ducks marching proudly around their wallpaper border in tiny straw hats. Old pewter kitchen utensils hung on the wall just in case the loan officer needed to whip up some Indian pudding for an afternoon meeting. We all separated as distantly as possible into three tiny camps, each at one corner of the richly stained oak conference table. The seller and his lawyer seemed to be very seasoned at the cycle of buying and selling houses. I, on the other hand, was buying my first house and felt a certain solemnity for the occasion. While the seller looked as if he usually goes to a tractor pull after unloading a house, I was the nerdy kid dressed up for a spelling bee. In the back sat the two real estate agents. This was just another day at work for them, and they chatted with each other about their clients. As we settled in, my real estate agent looked up from her corner and hurled a question at me: “You were an easy one. How many houses did I show you? Maybe three?” I looked up from my stack of mysterious papers and tried hard to smile. I was in my corner with my own real estate lawyer, sitting under a muffin tin hanging from the wall. My lawyer sensed my angst – or noticed my tie – and guided me gently through the process. Then, suddenly, a flurry of signing began and quickly ended. A set of keys dropped on top of the pile of documents in front of me. I bought a house.

394-396 Davis Street was an 85-year-old two-family house in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in the sleepy western part of the state along the mighty Connecticut River. The house had been well-maintained throughout the decades. The dark, natural woodwork inside had miraculously escaped generations of tenants with great ideas and a bucket of paint. The walls stood straight and strong, the two furnaces – one for each apartment – fired efficiently, there was plenty of hot water, and I never smelled smoke. The floors were light, shiny hardwood – the kind people pine for every day on HGTV. Still, the old gal needed some love and attention. The 50-year-old aluminum storm windows, with their panes rarely in the distorted little tracks, caused untold aggravation. There was a 1960s flower-power sticker on the side of the upstairs apartment bathtub, and the detached garage had no doors. The garage’s north wall leaned precariously over my car and lawnmower. The cedar shingles on the exterior walls had rotted in places. Though there were some major projects to tackle, I thought I would try my uncalloused hand at the easy and cosmetic.

I already had a hammer, so I started by replacing the house numbers. After pulling off the stubborn old numbers and replacing them with bright, new brass ones, I crossed the street to admire my work. Wow, I was on to something. I was officially a do-it-yourselfer. Then, I replaced the two mailboxes hanging between the twin front doors. Again, from across the street, I could see my future unfold, and I was starting to gain a bit of confidence. Soon, I would advance to installing a dryer exhaust vent in the basement.

But my first and most critical task was to find a tenant for the empty downstairs apartment. This was terrifying, and I needed help. I started by joining the Franklin County Landlords’ Business Association. My first quarterly meeting was in the private function room at Famous Bill’s Restaurant near Greenfield’s busiest intersection. There, as people mingled before the meeting began, I found a lawyer fielding questions about abandoned motorcycles, smelly tenants, hens raised in kitchen cabinets, and of course—everyone’s raw nerve—unpaid rent.

The Association provided coffee and chicken wings. I looked suspiciously at the wings and poured myself some coffee. Standing awkwardly in the moments before the meeting came to order, I watched members greet one another, slap backs, and eat chicken. Suddenly, as if out of thin air, an unusual woman appeared before me, glanced at the unlit, unmanned bar behind us, and blurted cheerfully, “Why can’t I get a glass of wine? Hello! I’M Audra Whipley-Ott.” I liked the way she emphasized, “I’m,” and I particularly liked her aristocratic name. Audra Whipley-Ott was very tall and wispy with disciplined posture and a bubble of hair atop her head reaching even higher. Her voice demanded attention if not curiosity. Audra told me about her eight-unit house on High Street, adding in a conspiratorial murmur, “in the nice part of town.” This left me wondering if 394-396 Davis Street was in, or out of, that nice part of town. With a searing glance and a sweeping, commanding hand motion, Audra magically deployed the catering staff to slide behind the bar, flip the lights on, and serve her a glass of Merlot. She offered me a glass, but I remembered the Styrofoam coffee cup in my hand and declined. There could be undetected dynamics, factions, or coalitions in this room. Although I surely wanted to be on Audra’s team, I was not ready to be identified as the new guy dissatisfied with the fare offered by the Association.

The meeting began, and Audra abandoned me for a seat up front. By the end of the evening, I had adopted the landlord’s mantra as my own: Screen. Your. Tenants. I will never forget the day they walked into my life: Chris and Lindsay, recent graduates from the University of Massachusetts, were mature beyond their years. They toured the sunny apartment – the first they would share together – and loved it. Everything I had absorbed about screening tenants went out the old aluminum storm window, and I accepted Chris and Lindsay as my first tenants based solely on my intuition. This was exactly what the lawyer at Famous Bill’s said not to do. Nevertheless, I dodged a bullet. Chris and Lindsay were quiet and tidy, they paid their rent on time, and they were darned nice neighbors. And the best part? Chris was a professional carpenter. Through careful deliberations, Chris and I came to an agreement, a sort of rent reduction in exchange for replacing the rotting sections of cedar shingles.

For my own less ambitious projects, I sought Chris’s advice and, oddly, waited eagerly for his congratulations. I was almost old enough to be his father, yet I wanted to tug his arm and say, “Hey, Chris! Look! I spackled a hole!” After my triumphs with house numbers and mailboxes, I was ready to tackle that basement dryer vent. I would install a tube so that exhaust from the clothes dryer would now blow outside the house, no longer filling the basement with a linty steam that would trigger the overabundance of smoke detectors I had installed.

At the hardware store, I had to make a choice between the white plastic tube stiffened by rings or the aluminum “system” that expanded to the required shape and length. The latter reminded me of Jiffy Pop, and that looked like fun. An easy job for sure: just clamp the tube to the bottom of the dryer, expand the tube, and clamp the other end to the vent already in the basement window. I unpacked the kit and started to stretch the aluminum tube until it ripped in two pieces. Hmm. This aluminum foil material was more fragile than I had anticipated. No problem. The same anxiety that had compelled me to pepper the entire house with smoke detectors also drove me to buy a spare “system.” I unpacked the parts, intent on being more careful.

Working with a surgeon’s precision and bomb diffuser’s unease, I finally clamped the tube at the dryer end. So far so good. Then I gingerly expanded the tube to make my “S” shape. “Aha. I’m getting the hang of this,” I said aloud to no one. However, while trying to clamp the opposite end to the window vent, all hell broke loose. The aluminum arm was suddenly aiming a punch at me reminiscent of the robot on Lost in Space flailing its arms and crying, “Danger! Doctor Smith! Danger!” Unanchored by gravity, I had become the bungling Dr. Smith. I was on a distant planet wearing a turtleneck and slacks gasping for air. Hours later, hands scraped and spirit broken, I turned the last screw on the clamp at the window vent end. Around both ends were curls of excess aluminum ribbons mocking me, but I was finished.

Returning to more remedial projects, I became the Goldie Locks of Greenfield’s three hardware stores. Rugg Lumber was too advanced (for contractors, really), Home Depot was too soft (though really where I belonged), and True Value was between the two, which I optimistically decided was just right. My first trip to Rugg Lumber left me very confused because I didn’t speak the language. I felt like a child on the first day at a new school cafeteria: I didn’t know which line was for ordering, which was for paying, or even where the snack bar was. Inevitably, I ordered something I didn’t want, paid too soon, then turned the corner to see the chocolate chip cookies and Doritos displayed right behind me. The Rugg Lumber clerk rang up my purchases sympathetically. Surely, he was thinking to himself that I belonged at Home Depot. Weeks later, while chatting with Chris about my next trip to Rugg Lumber, he used the phrase “contractors’ hours” to indicate that they open very early in the morning. “Contractors’ hours.” I liked the term and felt as if I had been given a secret password or a fraternity handshake. “I’ll show up at 6:30AM and wear my tool belt,” I declared with new confidence. “Well, um, contractors don’t wear tool belts,” Chris said, just in case I wasn’t kidding.

Months later, during a routine check of the dryer project in the basement, I noticed a neat seal of aluminum tape around the tube at the vent end that had given me so much angst. Had the tube created its own skin graft making the seal tight, strong and tidy? No, Will Robinson. It had likely come undone and begun to flail frantically behind the dryer while Chris and Lindsay did a load of laundry. Chris must have fixed it without a discouraging word to me. I had never heard of aluminum tape.