Monday, March 3, 2008

It's been real.

Goodbye, old house.

It finally happened. After 4 long, long days of moving, the nostalgia hit last night during our final Swiffering and key collection. You know, it wasn't a bad house. As mid-century houses go, it certainly had a lot of the things I don't like-- small, louvered windows and outdated appliances, low ceilings. It had rental grade hollow core doors, and years of floor abuse (ours included). But for the first time, I could see some potential. The floors could be beautiful, and the rooms would benefit tremendously from some crown molding. A kitchen update would go a long way, as would central air so that the tiny windows aren't entirely occupied by A/C units. It's been a solid little house.

I know, however, that there's not a great likelihood that someone will renovate it. All the houses in the neighborhood are falling one by one to be replaced by apartment complexes. Our house has an empty lot beside it, so I imagine it'll start looking pretty good to a developer soon. And that makes me sad for the house and for the neighborhood in general.

During our 3 day epic cleaning spree, we discovered all kinds of things we'd never paid attention to-- like the fact that the used refrigerator that we got to replace the avacado green monster, was the same brand as the rest of the appliances.

Lots of good memories in that house.

A few neat little mid-century details:

The Roper brown range and oven, with pink Formica surround:



Louvered picture window:


Thanks, little house.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Sigh... it's always bittersweet to leave somewhere you have spent that much of your life in! Goodbye, old house.

Joanne said...

You made me a bit sad for the old house, thinking its fate wasn't looking very rosy. In my old neighborhood (Uptown Chicago) we had the same problem of old homes being torn down rather than renovated, only to be replaced by condos. (Our own condo replaced a 110 year old frame house).

It really does drastically change the character of a neighborhood.