THIS Old House was $17,000

Way back in 1988, when I bought my first house, I found a bargain. There was a little old lady living in it, and she was moving across town. I lived in a townhouse at an apartment complex, where I met Hick. He just had a one-bedroom apartment there. Hick's a simple kind of guy.

The $17,000 house is just up the street from Hick House. I took a picture of the downhill side the other day. Every time I drive by, it makes me sad. It has fallen into such disrepair that it's probably just worth $17,000 again, even though we sold it for $44,000, I think.


Doesn't that poor thing make you want to weep? The gutters are going to come clanging down any day now. They've even boarded up the basement windows that were one of my reasons for wanting this house! That's a walk-out basement. The part on the back was originally a detached shed, but Hick turned it into a bedroom. There's an entryway between it and the main house, with a door to the driveway. Convenient for carrying in groceries and a baby.

The little window is over the kitchen sink. The big windows are in the bedroom. This is a double corner lot. There used to be a big tree near the stop sign. To the right, out of frame, is an alley where we got the bricks for our current sidewalk Hick built out front. Those bricks were slick as snot in the snow and ice! That's the way I usually came in, to get to the driveway. The city dug up those bricks and piled them all willy-nilly, when they decided to blacktop the alley. They were free for the taking.

Every time I tried to get a picture of the front of the house, there was a truck parked there. But Hick got me a picture, out the window of SilverRedO.


We had put on all new siding. The basement and window trim was painted Battleship Gray. I still remember going through the paint sample cards to decide. We didn't have that ridiculous little trellis thingy. Our porch was cedar, the natural cedar color, as was the front of the house around the door. As you can see, that's not vinyl siding. It was cedar. Like an accent wall thing. Hick built the porch rails, which were also cedar color.

The bumped-out part on the left of the porch is an addition to the living room we made for a computer nook. It has an octagon window that you can't see. The front door is the one we put in, with a glass storm door for winter, changed to screen for the summer.

That big bushy plant used to be my LILAC BUSH! I actually had two, the dark purple flowers and the light purple flowers. As well as two big rose bushes. Not that I have a green thumb. They were there when I bought the house. The driveway is just on the left of that big bushy thing. It goes all the way through to the alley in back. Very handy for not having to move a car to let the other one out.

Anyhoo... way back then, I had Hick take a look at this $17,000 house with me. He's the one who recommended my real estate agent. I knew Hick would fix up that house for me. For FREE! He's a giver like that. So... I bought the house. Hick updated the wiring, made some improvements in the bathroom, and started looking at what I could do with the basement. Hick must have really liked that house, because he proposed to me before the end of the school year, and we were married by Thanksgiving.

The first major project was building a room for Little HOS (Hick's Oldest Son), and Little Future Veteran, who were 9 and 7 years old. The house had only one bedroom, and the boys would be there alternate weekends, and in the summer. Hick put up a wall in the basement, and built in bunk beds. It was on the back yard side of the basement, under the kitchen.

Even though they had to share their room with the washer and dryer, the boys loved it. It had black-and-white checked tile, like a NASCAR winner's flag, and the bunks were bright red. Hick could have built their room to exclude the washer and dryer, but it would have been smaller, and without windows. I think he made the best design choice. Besides, it's not like I did laundry while they were in their room.

The rest of the basement was what the boys called their "apartment." It had a couch and chairs and a coffee table and TV with Nintendo. They had a wild time down there, playing with loud toys that didn't roll on the carpet upstairs. I can't thank my grandma enough for giving them those toys...

Eventually, Hick gutted an old shed on the back of the house, and made it into our master bedroom. Baby Genius arrived, and took the old bedroom upstairs. The big boys were by now 14 and 12, and weren't about to move upstairs. Not when they had their own apartment!

Sometime between the basement project and the added master bedroom, Hick totally re-did the kitchen. I know the boys were with us when we picked out cabinets, because the three of us sighed so much that we could have shriveled up like deflated balloons. Of course Hick was having a blast, roaming around in Central Hardware and Hoods (probably a local chain). I think he almost cried when Central Hardware went out of business. I don't know if he has the same attachment to Lowe's.

I hope HOS enjoys his $5000 house as much as we enjoyed the $17,000 house.