It May Be Worth Something Someday part 2

The funny thing about owning a house on the opposite side of the world is that they still want to hand over the keys to show that you have taken possession. Legally, you own a house once all the paperwork is signed and filed. That can be done anywhere in the world. The passing of keys is purely symbolic. Everyone changes the locks when they buy a new house anyway. I could sign everything myself, but I had to designate a proxy when it came time to getting the key. That was actually pretty easy.

Joanne, my high school boyfriend's mother, went to the house and gave me a full report. She was always in my corner during the bout between my parents and me, and even more outraged when she learned that they stole my grandfather's house. She knew me when I was supposed to inherit that house, so she knows how much I could have used it at the time.

I was surprised to learn that the house is in good shape. I suppose I should not be. If their goal was to sell it, my parents would never let it fall apart. Joanne checked the fireplaces, ran hot water through the faucets, turned on the light switches, and charged her phone in several different outlets. She said everything is in working order. The electricity, gas, and water are still turned on, which is odd since no one has lived in that house since 2006, as far as I know. Our best guess is that everything was turned on while my parents worked on renovating the place. Joanne thinks I should keep everything on so the house will be easier to sell. I think that the longer it is on the market, the more I have to pay bills for an empty house. Maybe she should have some people over for dinner and really test out the place, but I doubt she would want to. She kept telling me how clean everything is, and would worry about doing anything to make it look less attractive to potential buyers.

My grandparents' house was built in 1929, which is both a positive and a negative. The attention to detail is unlike anything you would find in a house made after the 1940s. All the mouldings, arches, woodwork, and brass would be seen as too expensive or too ostentatious today. The fireplaces and some of the doors are definitely more ornate than houses made since the Great Depression. The original exterior windows were all replaced decades ago with glass and panes more appropriate for Minnesota winters, but many of the Art Nouveau mirrors and interior glass remain. I am told that some of those mirrors are more valuable than any mirror really needs to be. Why my parents never sold them, I may never know. With the right staging, the house could easily attract buyers.

Until they look at the details. There are none of the open floor plans today's buyers want. Most of the rooms are completely separate. A few are not ideal to anyone who gets claustrophobic. Too many of the walls have wallpaper that any new owner is guaranteed to remove. One of the bathrooms looks like Art Nouveau and Art Deco got in a fight, and both lost. Some of the carpeting needed to be replaced decades ago. While the bedrooms have huge double doors, the bathroom doors are tiny. The mudroom has plenty of space for coats and boots, but no place to hook up a washer and dryer. The entire side entrance is spotless, though I suppose not much snow and mud get tracked in if no one has lived there since 2006. The original garage can hold two or three modern cars, or maybe two SUVs, but it is not connected to the house. That means walking in the snow or rain to get to your car. Fortunately, my grandparents built an attached garage not long after they moved in. The addition looks natural to me because that is the way I have always known it, but it is also smaller than what people want today.

The exterior of the house was recently cleaned top to tail by commercial pressure washers. Obviously, I can't say anything about how it looks up close. In pictures, it looks brand new, which is where it matters most. Anyone thinking about buying the house is going to be drawn in by looking at real estate pictures. All those ninety-year-old bricks and quoins look like they just came out of the brick factory, or wherever bricks come from. If I had not spent my childhood in that house, I would assume it was less than five years old.

Professional gardeners have been taking care of the front and backyard, and have done an excellent job. What Joanne showed me could be in one of those house and garden magazines. It looks fancier than anything my grandmother would have approved of, but it will look good on real estate brochures. Indoors, the walls and floors are as clean as only an empty house can be. Someone painted recently and polished the hardwood floors. The Persian rugs in the living room and dining room are not only still there, they look spotless. I am genuinely surprised my parents never sold those rugs. I can only see photographs, but they appear in excellent condition. My grandmother's office looks exactly like it did when she lived there, except there is no furniture and the bookcases are empty. That room looks naked without books, most of which were my grandmother's. She was a serious reader and worked for Simon & Schuster as a children's book illustrator back when they owned the Little Golden Books. Her collection included more than a few first editions that were probably worth some money. In all likelihood, my parents threw those books away a long time ago.

Some of the bathroom fixtures are new while some are original, or at least original to what my grandparents had. I will need to check, but I am pretty sure none of the plumbing is truly original. I know the entire HVAC system is far newer than 1929. I don't know what they did in 1929. I doubt they had central air conditioning. Two of the bathtubs have been converted into shower/bathtub combos. I'm reasonably sure the house had no showers when it was built. My grandparents only had one. We always took baths when we spent the night, which I always liked. At my parents' house, showers had to be quick. At my grandparents' house, I could sit and soak.

Most of the upstairs carpet could use some work. Joanne says a good shampoo will do. I think some of it might have to be replaced. The carpet in the master bedroom looks amazing. I really can't tell if it is the same as what my grandparents had or if it is new. I had forgotten how enormous my grandmother's closet was. It is more than a walk-in. That closet is large enough to be an apartment bedroom. It is also carpeted, of course. Thankfully, there is no carpet on the first floor. A little polish takes care of the wood and tiles, and a few rugs here and there fill it out. The basement carpet has to go. It is clean and in good shape, and the ugliest carpet known to man. The best thing about that basement was always my grandfather's music room. Since all of that equipment is long gone, it looks like any finished basement now. They put up walls and remodeled the basement to such an extent that it is unrecognizable.

Somewhere along the line, my parents put in new kitchen appliances, which is great news for me. The oven is top of the line and looks brand new. The subzero refrigerator and dishwasher are maybe a few years old. They added an island in the kitchen, which is odd because it already had one. They did not replace it. They put in a second island, which just looks out of place. The kitchen is not big enough for two islands, and the second one eats into the dining room. There is no kitchen sink, for some reason. Maybe that was the next thing they were going to replace. I have to assume they had some kind of island plan that involved a sink or two. The washer and dryer in the laundry room are relatively new looking.

One thing that really steamed my broccoli when Joanne showed me pictures was the swimming pool. My grandparents never had one because the house is on a lake. A private pool is safer and more controlled, but you can do a lot more on a lake. They thought a swimming pool would be redundant when they were so close to a large body of water. But they did put in an in-ground spa/hot tub after they retired.

I spent my entire childhood begging my parents for a swimming pool. Their house was not at all on a lake, or even a pond you could swim in back in the days when the algae levels were low enough. Their neighborhood has far fewer swimming pools than it could, making any house with one more attractive. Someone once told me that most people did not have pools, even though almost every backyard was large enough for one, because there are so many lakes and ponds all over the place. I never really bought that excuse. It was Minnesota, so the nearest recreational lake was less than two miles away, but a swimming pool would have been the greatest thing I could imagine when I was a child. I was an excellent swimmer. Even my brother, with two left feet and all thumbs, could keep afloat. Safety was not an issue. Their only objection was that it was too expensive. When I was younger, I had no idea how much anything cost. When I got a little older, I thought they could afford it. The fact that they eventually put in a swimming pool at my grandparents' house kind of supports my theory. The real issue was probably maintenance. Not taking care of a pool is infinitely easier than taking care of one. The only greater insult to seeing that pool at my grandparents' house would be if they had another daughter and paid for all of her dance and music lessons.

The new swimming pool is smaller than what I would have done. On the one hand, there is plenty of room to put a larger pool farther away from the house where there is more open space. On the other hand, they put it right next to the spa and a detached structure that looks like a pool house. To me, it looks like they screwed up. To someone who never saw the house before, it probably looks completely natural. The pool matches the spa, as if they were both built at the same time. The landscaping around the pool is alien to me, but was obviously done by professionals who knew how to take advantage of the gentle slope heading toward the lake. When I get past my white hot rage, I can admit that the entire installation was well done.

The detached pool house was never a pool house, at least for the eight decades before there was a swimming pool. My grandfather called it the BBQ pit. It is almost the size of the original garage and was obviously designed and built with the house. No one knows its original purpose. It faces away from the road. Driving around the house to park inside it would be horribly inconvenient, while the original garage is the first obvious place to park as soon as you turn in from the street. It was most likely never meant to house cars. Plus, it has a fireplace. One theory is that it used to be a small horse stable, but it only has three walls and there is no evidence that the open side ever had any doors. Leaving a horse that exposed in the winter would be criminal. It was most likely meant to be a place to sit and look at the lake, though there are currently trees blocking the view. The house's back patio has a direct line of sight and is closer to the water. Whatever it was meant to be, the open space was ideal for grilling without suffocating, so my grandfather used it for any outdoor cooking. Now that there is a swimming pool, it looks like it was always meant to be a pool house.

If the house were almost anywhere else, I would worry about selling it to developers who would cut up the backyard and divide it into subdivisions, where the dreamer or the misfit is alone. Today, the lake is where the upwardly mobile of Minneapolis go to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Or the tiny town of less than half a million people. When I was young, I thought Minneapolis was large. Now, I think anything under five million people is a village. Regional differences aside, the last thing anyone wants to do is make the properties on the lake smaller. If anything, people want to go bigger.

After the resorts and hotels of the late 19th century went out of style, people came in and bought all the land around the lake that used to be owned by companies and robber barons. Some built grand mansions, while most, like the people who built my grandparents' house, aimed smaller. For whatever reason, the plots of land stayed the same size. This house is not nearly big enough to be a hotel. Maybe a B&B. But the lot used to hold a hotel. You could easily build two or three more houses on the land, as long as you do not need an upwardly mobile lakeside mansion, and you really enjoy cutting down trees.

My grandfather bought the house when interest in the area was probably at its lowest point since the Mdewakanton tribe was forced out. At the time, people were building cottages and small houses in the area. No one wanted the larger plots of land that required more upkeep. What he paid for the house could buy a new car today. It was not until the 1980s that everyone rediscovered the lake. Ever since then, houses have been getting bigger and the prices of everything have gone up. Today, it is a seller's market. Despite few of the modern conveniences people want, I should be able to sell it quickly. If not, paying for the gardeners, pool cleaners, utilities, insurance, and taxes will destroy me.