Our First House

Tom and I went looking for our first house together during a very hot real estate market in Southern California. We had our measly down payment ready. Our realtor, CJ, said there were only three houses in our price range and she would take us to see them all. We got into her car and she drove us to the first house. Aside from the fact that it was in an unattractive neighborhood and was missing the front wall… I’m sure it was perfect for someone… else. We went to the second house and had just stepped inside when a loud rumble began. I grabbed the doorway thinking that maybe this was the big one. It turned out that the railroad tracks where a dozen yards from the backdoor. We moved on to the third house, CJ said that the tenants had just arrived home and we could only get a quick peek inside. It was the worst house on the block, always a good investment choice. It had been rented for many years and suffered from obvious neglect. The carpets were avocado green, the yards were overgrown and we never saw the bathroom because someone was in it. We made an offer the same day. Well, at least it had a front wall.

For a couple of gay boys, Tom and I plunged in with uncharacteristic gusto. We tore out all that old carpeting and had the hardwood floors refinished. We replaced the hardware on every door with the best that Home Depot had to offer. We painted everything inside and Tom’s dad painted the entire outside. The kitchen was paneled in that knotty pine so popular in the 1950s and we thought we could modernize it by sanding it down and bleaching it. So we got a belt sander at Sears. We discovered that when you press a belt sander against the wall it has a tendency to travel. So we struggled for a full day trying to keep the belt sander from leaving the kitchen on its own power. At the end of the day the walls were sanded, albeit with several deep gouges- and there was sawdust all over the house. For weeks thereafter our favorite exclamation was, “How did sawdust get in there?”

There was no hardwood on the floor of the third bedroom, so we decided to purchase a carpet for that space. Back to Home Depot we went and purchased a very modern charcoal gray floor covering, like you might see on the floor of an Amtrak train. I measured for the new carpet keeping in mind what they say, “measure twice cut once.” So imagine my surprise when we got the new carpet home and I unrolled it in the bedroom. I had to look up from the floor at my husband and say “really- I measured.” Since the carpet was about 3 inches short of the wall we determined the best course of action was to paint that strip of the floor the same color as the carpet. Problem solved!

A year later Tom got a fabulous job offer 200 miles away. So we reluctantly said goodbye to the new flooring, freshly painted walls, gleaming doorknobs… I could go on but I can’t see through my tears. Our first house together turned out to be a glistening jewel of our mutual labor embedded in our memories forever.