Old Shit (Here-->)

There are some things I look forward to all week - the very few mornings I have time to jog, pasta dinners on the nights those jogs are long, days off in general...and, my very favorite, trips to the salvage yard!  AHH the salvage yard.

I'll admit it.  Once upon a time when I was really young (talking elementary school young, before I had a nick of taste obviously), I hated antiques.  I hated most old things in fact.  Growing up in Virginia, most of our school field trips were to places in the earliest days of America - Jamestown, Monticello, Williamsburg - and all I could think about while I walked over the three hundred year old floors was how much I wanted to be outside.  I couldn't stand the thought of touching a railing that hundreds of now dead people had touched (I mean how old must those germs be?) or the musty smell seeping from every inch of fabric.  Ick.

But somewhere along the way I grew up.  And grew smarter obviously.  And while I still love to be outside - and am still somewhat (?) annoying about cleanliness indoors - I've really come to appreciate the value in historic things.  Thus, my uncompromising opinion that our first house had to be at least 75 years old.  Maybe it's the older I get or the more I learn about age, but there's something undeniably amazing about a piece of work that has outlived its creator by decades.  And I've become a little creepy so the thought of the decades old skin cells of somebody in an entirely different life is just fantastic.  Yeah...

Now we're not all on the same page here.  My father, on the other hand, moans and groans every time I mention the word "antique" or "craigslist" or "classic" because he is the biggest do-er in this little project of ours and every time I try to get him to install something that wasn't made to standard sizes and bought at home depot this means more doing for him.  But never worry - if I get my mother behind my crazy, antique ideas, I'm golden.  You see, while I've had a number of years tricking my father to get my way, my mother has had nearly 30.  Yeah, she's a pro.

But anyway, today started out with a trip to the land that I love (no, no, not America, but that's good too) - the salvage yard.  Oh junk.  Oh dirty, nasty, cheap and messy piles of junk.  But if you've been, you'll know what I mean when I say that digging through the crap to find the truly golden oldies is half the fun.

Today, my mother and I went with the intention of checking out this gorgeous mantel I had seen a number of weeks back.  (Side note: you can spell correctly mantel - or mantle - two ways, did you know that?)  As I mentioned before, when our house was stripped a few years ago by the previous owner, all the original trim was removed - including the original mantels.  I still don't understand this mindset.  Replacing something that has survived for one-hundred years with something that came off the block yesterday?!  Really?!  Ok, off the soap box.

The mantels (or mantles).  So this particular salvage yard is huge and hugely overpriced, but when the lady said it would run about $1k, I barely batted an eye.  Sign me up.  You can't put a cost on character, right?  And then she said it was....SOLD.  Of course, we had her phone the buyer just to make sure.

The mantel we wanted originally. No wonder it was already sold!

So we made our way through the yard again, to examine some of the other beauties, but nothing was quite as grand.  We did find a couple suitable options of the dining room and den, however.

We came back to the house somewhat bummed...and then I did what any human born after 1980 would do: I looked online.  And thank goodness for craigslist because what I did I see just a few rows into the listings, but an early 1900's columned mantel for - get this - $300 measly dollars.  HOLLER!  And it was fully restored.  And it had beautiful detailing.  And the man was available for us to pick it up that day.  So we drove out to Dickson that afternoon and found our first good treasure! 

(Another side note: on the way we passed about a dozen antique and secondhand shops saying things like "Historic Treasures" and "Unique Closet Finds," at which point my mother and I decided that they should all just state the truth - just a sign with the arrow reading "Somebody's Old Shit."  Wouldn't stop me!)

"Dar he." (Does anybody get that reference?  Anybody?)

 

 The man we bought it from said the thing "was pretty light."  He lied.  Or maybe he wasn't thinking from the perspective of a little lady.

And there he is with Mom, looking just fantastic, the both of them!  This is where he'll be once we, you know, get the walls up.

The One That Got Away

While I was casually surfing the Trulia app today during my always-turns-into-ten-minute-lunch, I so innocently stumbled upon the recently posted photos of an ex-lover, 1209 Calvin Ave.  Re-done and back on the market.  I was crushed.  My soul was shaken!  This wasn't some old boyfriend I'd seen, this was my first real house love - and he'd be ruined!  I was so upset I could hardly finish my cardboard flavored Lean Cuisine, so I hurried back to relay the situation to my student and technician.  I needed a shoulder to lean on, of course. 

So at this point, now that I've calmed down (thanks in no small part to this tasty glass of wine), I feel like it's important for you to know a little more of the backstory of home buying process.  Really, I just need to get this off my chest.

Back in December, I signed up for a common foreclosure service so I could scout out interesting bank-owned properties and wait for them to hit the market.  I would see a few every day, think, "Oh that's cute," then quickly file away the thoughts into the other 249081 homes I had scouted.  That is, until I found CALVIN.  (I say that with a serious swoon of course).  1209 Calvin Ave was a rather sizable Victorian in the insanely desirable neighborhood of Lockeland Springs (one of Nashville's oldest and most strangely beautiful), and he was perfect.

Unfortunately, he wasn't on the market.  So, in late January when I received at work an email with his photo from my realtor that said he'd just been listed, I wasted no time excusing myself from the pharmacy to not-so-calmly yell my excitement into the phone.  I met her that evening after work with Todd, and it was love at second first sight (or second, considering my prior stalking).  Calvin had broken plaster.  He had beat up old wood floors and a marvelously awkward floor plan.  He had a dark, dingy stairwell and sky high ceilings.  Stately fireplaces, closed off rooms, and a crumbling space where the kitchen once stood.  He was so perfectly historic and gorgeous and I wanted nothing else but to make him mine.  I was in love.

So we put in an offer.  And so did 8 other people in the first few hours.  And we waited.  And we offered again - highest and best.  I was set.  I was so blinded by love that I thought if I just loved Calvin enough he would be mine, nevermind the other people, nevermind the fact that he's a goldmine. I wanted Calvin for his character, for his awkward and charming personality.  I wanted Calvin for the dead man buried in the backyard (marked by a large and leaning tombstone).  That was my dead guy, I thought, he would be my ghost, my friend.  He, and me, and Calvin.

But some people wanted Calvin for the money.  Some people didn't want Calvin for Calvin.  They wanted his name, his location.  When we started our offer battle, we were told the property was being sold as a Fannie Mae HomePath property so by regulations, investors were out.  Just me and Calvin and some other normal folks, I thought.  I told myself, nobody wants Calvin enough to beat my price, nobody understands him that much.  But what investors understand is money.  And loopholes.

I know that because today I saw Calvin back on the market, a mere five months down the road and $350,000 up in cost.  But he's not my Calvin anymore.  He's been stripped and torn up, modified to the point of no return.  They moved the dingy stairwell.  They ripped out the towering mirrored mantels and replaced them with this cheesy fake stone.  They opened all the rooms but didn't even bother to put in matching trim along the new openings.  He doesn't even look like the same house.  What was once one-hundred and twenty years of history has been wiped clean and made cheap, made generic and unimaginative.

(I mean seriously.  THAT VANITY in a 120 year old house?!)

(They took out the gorgeous mantel and original tilework for THAT?!  They took out the stately double-doors and corresponding trimwork for a set of massive and poorly designed built-ins?! And that light fixture. REALLY?!)

It breaks my heart.  If I couldn't own Calvin, I just wished that somebody would love him enough to treat him right, to renovate him with careful thought and deliberation.  To honor and respect his beautiful detail and undeniable character.

Sigh.  It's over with us.  Facebook is not the only means of ex-lover haunting in these days of social media.  Damn you, Trulia.  

Time to look forward to the one I can save: Cleveland.  Now most of 317 Cleveland's little pieces were already removed when we bought him (the trim, the mantels), but I refuse to turn him into another suburban-cookie-cutter-builder-grade-horror.  He may not have salvageable wood floors or door trim, but he still has his bones - his wide, welcoming entryway, his tall ceilings, his undeniable charm.  Heck, that gorgeous solid wood mantel I saw a few weeks ago at the salvage yard may have been from Calvin Ave, and it would look no less as stunning in our new home. 

And so going forward, I make the vow to respect Cleveland's history, to honor his past.  He turns 100 years old next year, you know.  He may not have a dead guy in the backyard, but he's probably got his share of stories, and ours together begins right now.