Dakota's room

Got the keys to the new house Friday. Most of the weekend has been scrubbing walls and ceilings with bleach and TSP, hacking back the waist-high grass and weeds outside, hauling stuff to the dump and scraping unmentionable stuff off the floor.

Did I say it's not as bad as it looks? Actually, it is as bad as it looked. But it looks a bit better already with the new windows in (outside trim to be installed next weekend). Most of the nastiest stuff is cleaned off the walls and floor now. But in some ways the condition of the house is worse than I'd hoped, though it's more or less what I feared.

According to the neighbors, rats roamed the crawl space under the house, and the girl next door still remembers the nightmarish screaming of rabbits being slaughtered in the back yard by the former owner (must get rid of that shed with the built-in hutches.) But the thing that bothers me the most is the thought of the small child who lived here. His name was spelled out in letter stickers over one bedroom door. Even in that room the walls were stained here and there with the fine spattering of dried blood from junkies priming their needles. The thought of this child weighs on me as I work, finding parts of old baby bottles and lost toys scattered around the yard and in the house. I can't stop thinking about what his existence here must have been like, and wondering if he is safe and cared for wherever he is now.

Dry stream

This project started in January, I think, during the apocalyptic rains that seemed to have no end. The south side of the house is at the bottom of a slope and the ground was so sodden that water was running over the sidewalk. I figured it was only one more storm or so before the basement would be flooded, like everyone else's.

So I dug a trench about 18" deep through the mud, lined it with good strong landscape cloth and filled it with 3/8-inch gravel (these are charmingly named "French drains"; it's about as close as I'll ever get to France.)

Today I finally got the drain rock layer fairly evenly spread, then laid down another layer of landscape cloth, then pea gravel, then I threw river rocks around in an attempt to make them look like they rolled down the hill into the stream.

After many weekends out there covered in mud, when people must have thought I was nuts, I'm just so relieved it's done. All the time I kept thinking of that silly rhyme my sister Donna used to sing, "Did you ever see a witch digging a ditch...down by the bay."

Now and Zen

Here's what I'd like the new house to look like, if you can believe it.

Picture this

Nellie says, "Definitely a fixer-upper but you can probably do a lot with the garden to make it look nice."

Cheapest house in Victoria

You've got to know that when an MLS listing says "beware" "house in bad condition" "do not bring children on showings", well, who can resist?

It looks better without the boards on the windows, honest.

And it has lovely coved ceilings and oak floors that should be good with a sanding and varathane, and good layout (all 763 SF of it) and a great lot on a nice street, 1/2 block from spectacular Summit Park.

It's clear that some serious unhappiness was happening inside this house in recent times, though. Filthy, damaged plaster, broken windows, ruined fixtures.

I thought it deserved a second chance.