This Old House, Part 1

 

My landlord gave me notice. I had to be out by the first of May. Coincidentally, my daughter had also received notice to vacate her home by the same date. The housing market was nuts; rent and home prices were skyrocketing. I needed wheel-chair accessible housing. She had two cats, and a son. We could see that our only hope was to pool our resources and move into something, somewhere, somehow, together.

And so began the search. No rentals could be found to accommodate our combined household; the tight market meant landlords were not interested in feline tenants, and I needed stair-free access. Buying something, anything, became our only option. Our budget was tight; we could only afford a place at the lowest end of all the listings -- obviously, we would no longer be living in El Dorado Hills. We cast our net 25 miles in all directions and found that anyplace affordable to the west was in a scary neighborhood, so we looked eastward, higher into the foothills, and zeroed in on Placerville.

The idea of Placerville appealed to both of us: not too remote, charming historic downtown, and deep ancestral roots. By combining our resources, we just might possibly qualify for one of the least expensive listings on the market. I only cared that it was affordable and that I would be able to navigate in my wheelchair, other than that, the choice was entirely up to Colleen. I’m 82 years old and it’s not likely I will spend many years anywhere. Colleen on the other hand, could end up spending decades in the place we landed.

At least I thought I didn’t care about anything else. When she told me she had found the place and made an offer, I thought our troubles were over. And then she took me to see it.

The 131-year-old Annie Jaeger House, listed on Placerville’s directory of historical homes, is located on Spring Street, AKA Highway 49, just four houses from Highway 50. Spring Street is a narrow two-lane road, with no shoulders for parking and a constant stream of traffic. When she took me to see it, we waited for a break in the flow before she pulled into the driveway. I began to absorb some of the details. A scabious residue of dead ivy covered much of the baby diaper yellow front of the house. The sagging and unusable front steps led to a porch with a rotting balustrade that brought to mind the meth mouth of the pedestrians who passed in a steady flow on the sidewalk. The sense of dental decay was reinforced by the fence sorely in need of numerous picket transplants. A huge sycamore tree planted in the middle of the front yard laced its limbs through the utility wires and draped its boughs over the roof thirty feet above ground level. The lush green front yard was filled with some sort of lily-like plant with small white blooms. I broke off a bit of one of the flowers and inhaled deeply. My eyes watered and I began to crave a hamburger. The entire front yard was a patch of wild onions.

The clapboard siding was nearly intact, the porch and entry near the driveway appeared serviceable, but steps made it inaccessible to my wheelchair. We passed the three towering locust trees shading the porch while shedding leaves in the rain gutters and made our way to the back of the house. The back yard presented a vertical climb of around 20 feet over 30 feet of horizontal space. Through a masterful engineering feat, it was terraced into five usable levels, three of them paved while weeds flourished on two. The hillside seemed sound even though a huge dark brown house loomed menacingly just ten feet on the other side of the back fence. The hillside had held for more than a century with no evidence of slippage.

We entered through the back door, unlocked because apparently no skeleton key could be found to fit. Surprisingly, the interior was empty and undisturbed, no one else seemed to have discovered the ease of entry. I worked my way over the threshold in my wheelchair with some assistance from my daughter and made a mental note that some accessibility accommodation would be necessary. Old house smell came flooding into my nostrils and opened chambers of memory. I had spent my teen years living in a derelict 1890’s Victorian farmhouse. The olfactory sensation was a smoky blend of cigars, wood fire, dust, and more than a century of human habitation.

 In front of me the original wood floor extended through the dining room to the living room with nearly opaque windows facing the street. Some of the windows were original glass, others had been replaced. The floors were as wavy as the old windows. Rising over the hump in the floor between the dining room and living room took a bit of effort, but I coasted down the other side with ease. Gaps between the floorboards had been filled at one time, but chunks of the filler had broken loose in places leaving small trenches perfect for collecting debris of all sorts.

I made a right turn through the doorway at the far end of the living room and found myself in the entry hall. The front door, with its broken stained-glass window was straight ahead. To my right 15 stairs with a wobbly banister rose to the second floor – territory that would forever remain an inaccessible mystery to me.

Just a bit further along to my right, next to the staircase, the door to what was to become my bedroom stood open. As I scooted into the room, I noticed at just below eye level the beautiful rose-colored intricately worked hardware of the door latch and hinges. The door itself was solid, and although scarred, still beautifully crafted. In the room, charming details in the woodwork, picture rails, and window frames lay beneath the grit and grime of the surface. The flickering blue pilot light of the propane stove standing on a brick hearth at the far end of the room indicated that it was in working order. It stood against a dark green wall that made the 12 by 15-foot room appear smaller. No closet existed. A door in the green wall led to the lowest terrace of the back yard.

I retraced my path toward the back door we had entered, but instead of exiting, I made a right turn into the kitchen. This room was a one-story annex obviously added to the original two-story home. Further, we had been told, it was completely rebuilt in 2008 after a tree had fallen from a neighbor’s property smashing it and a car parked in the adjacent driveway. Granite counters, lots of cupboards, stainless steel appliances, and great lighting, while not in keeping with Victoriana, held promise of a good working environment.

Oddly, the only bathroom downstairs opened directly into the kitchen, an arrangement today’s building codes would not permit. The cramped bathroom with its tiny shower had been rebuilt and seemed to be in good condition. The toilet was too low for my convenience and would have to be replaced before I could move in.

How could I tell my daughter what I really thought? She loved it and only saw charm and potential where I saw decay, insurmountable defects, and unaffordable repairs. However, the alternative seemed to be couch surfing or living out of my car; this was clearly an instance of Hobson’s Choice.