Old House

I have often walked past an old house in my street, & wondered about it. It is an old Queenslander, without the lace, built around the 1940s. It is large & rambling, with an out of control tropical garden of mainly palms & various other creepers & shrubs. Falling down wire grandma fence partly across the front. It is on a large block, about 50 meters from the beach. It is painted pale grey, & I have never seen the doors or windows open.

This is the kind of house I fantasize over, imagining how I would bring it back to life & make it a beautiful home. Obsessing a little. Turning over hypothetical renovation plans in my mind like some sort of mental DIY rosary.

I thought the house was for sale a few months ago & was excited about attending the open house inspection for a sticky beak, but then it was off the market again in about 2 seconds. Oh well. Other things to think of, anyway, busy busy. Spoiler alert: I did not buy the house. Yet..

Saturday morning I was driving past when I noticed a garage sale, at this very house. Needless to say, I swerved to park the car instantly.

The new owners where there; a retired couple with their new project. I asked about a largish, lets be kind & call it mid century chest of drawers, & was told $2. It had been left out overnight in the rain & the drawers had swollen closed. I had to have it, so drove home to get Mr BC so he could help me load it into the car. Mr BC didn't bat an eyelid when I told him what I had bought, but he did look very dissapointed when he saw the drawers. No vision, Darling!

Anyway, we started chatting to the new owners, Fay & Gra, & ended up spending an hour there. They showed us over the house & told us the story of buying it. A crazy eccentric old lady was the previous owner. She had lived there alone for years, & the house was full of bags & boxes of stuff up to the ceiling, to the point where you had to follow a goat track through the rooms to get around. Last year Fay & Gra put an offer forward which the owner apparently tore up immediately, literally. So Fay & Gra went on a 3 month cruise, as you do. When they returned the house was on the market again, for less than their origional offer. So they put forward a new offer at the asking price, with simple settlement terms. The offer was accepted, & the house was theirs!

Except it wasn't so easy to take possesion of the property, because the eccentric old lady wouldn't move out. She stayed past the settlement date by 2 months. She accused the new owners of ripping her off. She accused the real estate agent, the buyers' solicitors, & even the buyers' bank manager of all being 'in cahoots' to rob her blind. She also accused almost everyone concerned with breaking in & stealing things. She had a roller shutter installed over the front door. She abused the pest inspectors & sent them off. She had banked the cheque, but wouldn't hand over the keys. Eventually she booked removalists, who turned up & expressed surprise that nothing was packed; there also seemed to be a lot more stuff to move than they expected. After that was sorted out a team of people came & took 6 truckloads of stuff to the tip; there was more drama when she refused to pay them. Even then she wouldn't go, because she 'didn't feel right' about handing over the keys. When she did eventually leave, she had her solicitor phone the new owners at 9pm that night to say that she had to be let back in as she had left all her medication in the house. Fay & Gra organised a police escort to help her retrieve it.

Walking through the house, I can understand her reluctance to leave. There is lots & lots of room, & the house has a really nice vibe, a lovely flow. High ceilings, very spacious rooms, casement windows, picture rails.  Beautiful bay breezes, lots of natural light. It is easy to see how someone could love this house, their home, so much - even in this state.

This house needs serious work.  In some rooms, the ceilings have fallen down. There are large holes in the floorboards, & some spongy areas that are unsafe to walk on. Wallpaper hangs off the walls. There is an abundance of origional features - including the bathrooms & the kitchen, which look as if they haven't been cleaned, let alone renovated, since the house was built 70 years ago. But still...

Fay & Gra are undecided whether to detonate or renovate. This is a retirement project, not a new home project. They bought the property because the large block of land is in a great location & also is on 2 titles, so ideally they could remove this house, & build 2 new houses to sell. But this house is so special, they are not in a hurry to demolish it. It is the wrong time in the market to sell an old house for relocation. They mentioned moving the house back, cutting it in half & moving the side section to the back, to free up the other title; which sounds like a lot of expensive effort..

I wish I had somewhere to move this house to, so I could restore it to it's former glory. A few acres tucked away in the rainforest, still close to the beach.

But I don't. So I'll just keep playing with the mental DIY rosary of hypothetical outcomes & see what happens.

Here is a photo of the chest of drawers. It was part of the stuff that didn't get to the tip, but wasn't taken by the removalists. Mr BC was probably right, it sure needs a lot of work. But I can't wait to see what is in those drawers. I do love a mystery.