A reluctant rehabber finds his dream home and loses his mind
By Matt Crossman
Illustration by Jessica Jenkins
I knew my University City home-renovation project was going to go poorly when the very first thing I did required me to call the police. As I tore out ceiling tiles in the basement, out fell:
1. An empty Sprite can.
2. An empty bottle of bourbon.
3. A loaded pistol.
Too bad it was rusted over. Had it fired when it landed at my feet, I could have avoided three years of misery.
The roof has leaked so many times, in so many places, I can’t remember them all. Water from the shower somehow managed to trickle through the soap ledge, cascade down the side of the tub, flow through the floor and subfloor and gush into our dining room.
Hand on the Bible, I stopped counting when I got to 100 tack holes on one window frame. What sick mix of obsession and compulsion precipitated that? (More importantly, why didn’t I notice the holes the 413 times I walked through the house before I bought it?) The floors are so crooked that when my wife sits at her desk upstairs, she has to brace herself or she’ll roll right out of the room. The few upkeep projects the previous owners did, they botched. They painted over wallpaper on the walls and ceilings, and I’m not lying when I say that the worst month of my life was the one during which I stripped white, green, white, gray, white, brown and white paint from door jambs. My wife cried almost nonstop for the first week we owned the place—but it wasn’t because of anything I’ve mentioned so far.
Her tears weren’t about the leaks and holes, nor were they caused by house-hunting, which was an equally horrific experience. I whined about it in these pages a few years ago, in the process enraging a sizable portion of Florissant. I wrote that you could get a lot of house for very little money in Florissant, the only downside being that you’d have to live in Florissant. Florissanters, it turns out, are a little touchy. I hereby apologize. I’d give anything to have bought a home in Florissant and be living there right now.
Back to the story: It was the squirrels that pushed my wife over the edge. A family of the little brown bastards lived in our attic. We hired a squirrel guy, and he boarded up the entry points and set traps. He said he’d come back to collect the carcasses. Each dead squirrel would cost $40. Lucky for us—and the squirrels—he didn’t catch any.
The squirrel guy is one of the few guys I’ve hired whom I’d recommend, and I’ve hired a ton. I’d recommend my plumber, too—except that he asked me to not give his name to anyone in University City, because of the inspectors.
I began to understand when an inspector came over to review the rough-in of our bathroom. As he was leaving, he told me that the address sign on my porch was “illegal.”
How that falls under a bathroom inspection, he didn’t say.
I looked it up—the numbers must be 3.5 inches tall and half-an-inch wide. Let me be the first to say how grateful I am that University City has and rigorously enforces such laws.
The same inspector returned a month later for the final inspection, pointed to the sign and said: “I thought I told you that was illegal.”
“I thought I told you to shut your pie-hole,” I replied.
Not really, but wouldn’t that have been totally awesome?
My only consolation was the peanut-butter jar full of half-dollars and quarters, all pre-1975, that our carpenter found just a few feet from the loaded gun. My best guess is that the previous man of the house had his stash of guns, money and booze, and when he died, nobody knew it was there. Maybe he was saving up to kill two squirrels. Whatever the case, I’m $62.50 richer.
I’d love to complain more about what everybody else has done, but really, I’m to blame. I hired the idiots—and paid them. I used to think I made thoughtful decisions. Now I wonder whether I ever make good ones. The mistakes haven’t all been mental, either. I’ve also dropped a brand-new ceiling fan, spilled paint in every room, fallen off a ladder and broken a window.
Still, I try to look on the bright side. I own a house in a great neighborhood, with great neighbors and close to lots of cool stuff. (If I weren’t so high on paint fumes, I’d walk to the Loop right now.) Our renovation will eventually be complete, and I’ll have the house I thought I bought. Of course, it will be at that precise moment that my job will require me to move—probably to Florissant.
