Crazy Stable

This morning, Brownstoner views the agonizing subject of renovation costs from an interesting angle:

The House & Home section [of the New York Times] today uses the quest of the former editor and chief of Dwell magazine to find the perfect house for $100 a foot as a jumping off point to investigate whether in New York City it was possible to do a gut renovation for that number. They look at six renovations across the city that ranged from a Red Hook house…for $67 a foot to a Tribeca loft for $180 a foot. We know first hand that it's possible: We did our house for about $75 a foot… But the way we look at it is that an old house like ours is a lifelong project and, plus, we couldn't have afforded to buy it if a "perfect" renovation was the only option. And, like most things, it looks great by candlelight!

 
I toast your attitude by candlelight, Brownstoner! Because this calculation is a bummer for me. I see the logic of it--correcting for the difference between renovating a tiny cottage and a 4,000-square-foot brownstone (or a 3,000-square-foot CrazyStable). But how on earth would we arrive at such a figure as "cost per square foot"...when this presumes you start with the entire cost of renovation and divide it by square feet? Does this calculation not presume that we are done renovating? Why, that's as much a howler as it was 20 years ago when we bought the place.

We are members of the One-Floor-a-Decade Club, or the equivalent thereof if you factor in the exterior chunks. First decade: Half the first floor and all the mechanicals (boiler, roof, electric--the latter two before we even moved in). Next decade: Most of the second floor (with floor and hallway cosmetics eaten by intercurrent bouts with the porch and the shingles and the fence and the tree)--oh, plus two little rooms (my study and a guest bedroom) and a bathroom on top floor. New millenium: Front hallway and entryway, then re-doing (oh, the irony) some of the stuff we did so long ago that the renovations themselves need renovating. Balance of house? This isn't your decade, and the next one isn't looking so good, either.

However, I do fancy the concept that some particular square feet of the house are responsible for a grossly disproportionate share of what might someday (ha) be the "total cost." I can name these evil square feet right off the top of my head; I dream of bludgeoning them into rubble with a baseball bat. There is the Roof Valley of Death and its dripping outlet in the ceiling of the laundry room (where it rained 20 years ago, and by God, rains again). There is the Sewer Trap of Doom in the basement, where Roto-Rooter over the years has consumed the equivalent of 5 memorable weekends in a picturesque bed-and-breakfast or one full week on a tight budget in London. There are the irascible steam radiators, whose leaking joints, if measured in square feet like the human intestine spread out, would cover an area the size of Argentina.

I guess I got het up over this because, as the 20th Anniversary of Closing closes in, I am grappling with the eternal undone-ness of the CrazyStable. I still cling to fantasies of done-ness: a best-selling book or the largesse of a distant relative's will suddenly dumps enough cash in our laps to just do it. One of my favorite ways to go to sleep at night (this is sort of sick) is to actually "spend" the money in my head...credit card balances evaporated in a blink and then, what? Bite the bullet and do the roof first? Or have some fun with cosmetics right away, doing the wide-plank pine floor in the entryway? Or maybe go crazy and demolish the unused garage on day one--and call our garden-design lady to come over with slate and pine trees, pronto. How long would it take, I wonder, to "finish"? What would it feel like to know that it were possible?

As self-therapy, I've sought out Icons of Eternal Undone-ness for consolation. One is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine here in New York.

They'll never finish it now, they admit as much; they're happy just to keep an intact roof over its nave.

 
Or there's the Golden Gate Bridge; I've heard that, as soon as they get through painting it to one end, they must start again at the other. (Their site claims this is a myth, and they are just engaged in "routine touch-up on an ongoing basis." Oh, yeah.) And of course there was Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel; Pope Rex Harrison would ask him querulously, over and over, "When will you make an end?"

And Charlton, er, Michaelangelo, would resolutely yell down from his scaffold : "WHEN I'M FINISHED!"

(Pope Rex Harrison also warned: "You dare to dicker with your pontiff?" a line I plan to use a lot around here.)

A guy named Dan on "Brownstoner," the site to which I'm currently most addicted, adds this delectable comment to their current discussion of a problematic brownstone for sale on Berkeley Place in Park Slope:

"Sales people suck in general, but real estate salespeople suck the chrome off a trailer hitch."

Hey, Dan, tell us how you really feel! Actually, I couldn't agree more. I'm sure there are some "real-estate professionals" (what's the story with everyone capitalizing "Realtors"? Some lobbyist got it trademarked?) to whom this does not apply. Well, okay, we met one during our search for the CrazyStable 20 years ago.  Mary Kay Gallagher, the doyenne of Victorian Flatbush realty, was a class act--treated us and our grubby little fistful of dollars with respect, and seemed genuinely regretful that she had nothing to show us but a barn of a place next to a feral apartment building from whose open windows music blared and screams punctuated the night.  (Hardly her typical offering, but the only thing in our price range.) The "real estate professional" who showed us the CrazyStable was a slob named Charlie, or as I privately dubbed him, "Charlie Nose-Hair."  (I don't recall much else about Charlie, although a walrus mustache, a pot belly, and the smell of ashtray seem to come to mind.)  In his filthy bucket of a car, he drove us up to the Stable and stood around stone-faced, as we navigated its bizarre maze of rooms. (See "The Bad Beginning" at right for details.)  I suppose one can't blame him for not trying to "sell" the place--it would have taken greater interpersonal and verbal gifts than those of Charlie Nose-Hair to rev up enthusiasm for a house with a plank instead of front porch steps. But I detected an actual whiff of contempt from this sub-Mamet specimen--for us, for Chang and his tenants, for the place itself, for the entire nabe. Then at closing, he and some guy from another agency, who had co-listed the Stable on the "MLS" ("Multiple Listing Service," or "Many Lousy Stables") split a handsome commission, presumbly for having given us a lift after we showed up with a circled ad from the Times.  Had I been Chang, forking over this princely sum from my take-away cash from the house sale, I would have leapt across the lawyer's desk and throttled both of them. As Basil Fawlty told Manuel, while smacking him on the head: "You [smack] are a waste of space."

Well, Brownstoner reminded me that real-estate salesmammal follies are not confined to us bottom-feeders. Apparently the astute and affluent prospects on Berkeley Place have been treated to equally shifty and clownish doings, including putting up with complaints from an agent in teetering high heels about going up and down the stairs. She would have loved walking the plank! 

In honor of my Gorgeous Godchild, I present a special diversion from the hallowed tradition of Cat-Blogging Friday...a baby picture of my Gorgeous Godpug, Bunty of Franklin Square, New York (here having her neck--well, whatever baby pugs have instead of a neck--encircled with assertive affection by Gorgeous Godchild's loving hands):
  

Gorgeous Godchild has been spending part of the week here at the CrazyStable enjoying some New York diversions...a selective report of our rigorously non-renovation-related activities will follow.  

Pugs forever!  

We haven't been this jealous of a house gift since the Pope got a cool velvet painting.  Now comes word that Fidel's recovery has been bolstered by an 80th birthday visit from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who presented him with this awesome bit of sofa-sized goodness after sharing what the deliciously-named Cuban "newspaper" Granma calls a "frugal snack." (The contents of the snack were unspecified, but I'll bet there were no mojitos or deep-fried pork-and-cheese torpedos, pobrecitos.)

Just tell me that, when I'm  80, you'll give me something this nifty...plus a frugal snack!

Our border instability problems may pale in comparison to those in the Middle East, but it was still a kick in the teeth today to lean against the back fence and feel it give way like a sheet of loose canvas.  (The post, not just the fence.) Since the back of our property abuts a day-care center and its play-yard, it will behoove us to replace the damn thing pronto. (With apologies to Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies, "F is for Frannie, felled flat by a fence.") It's hardly surprising; this back border is the last remaining section of General Chang's original perimeter stockage fence, which completely enclosed the CrazyStable's  rubbish-packed 50 x 100 lot when we bought it 20 years ago.

Our fencing struggles in subsequent years were, like all our struggles, desultory and underfunded.  After the first winter here, we had a guy slice the 6-foot-high front fence in half, creating a sort of flat-topped picket fence, and we removed the massive doors that closed over the driveway. (Although they would have served nicely to recreate one of those battering-ram scenes in Lord of the Rings--they closed from inside with a massive iron hasp and lock. Yes, Chang was certifiable.)   

This rickety faux-picket fence served mostly as gymnastic equipment for the hordes of pupils who pour out of the neighboring public school and proved no deterrent whatever to their incursions, so we removed it. We replaced the rotted-out fence on the north border, which Chang had shored up witha spectacular collage that included battery cables and an old extension ladder, all lashed together with a luxuriant overgrowth of deadly nightshade. (Spouse insisted we could get NEA grant funding to have the assemblage declared a "site-specific installation.") Eventually, at staggering cost, we replaced the both north and south fences with a handsome Martha-Stewarty lattice-topped cedar fence, and added a driveway gate.  (Fencing is a lot cheaper if you install it yourself, but I believe this requires using a "post driller," which I think is something like a cross between a rocket launcher and an oil-drilling rig.)  At this point, it would have made sense to finish the job and do the back border too. Or at least, that's the way you think if you have an extra grand or so lying around. If not, you think, "Hey, that's not falling down yet! It can wait!"

The weekend, at least, brought a more positive new benchmark: the firing-up of the heat gun. For 20 years, we've been meaning to rent one, and now BestFriend has lent us one. Gingerly, (hey, at least it's not a post driller), I tried it on an old painted junk table. Oooh! It is very hot, and the paint bubbles up and leaps off before the oncoming putty knife like a sprightly squid! Then I tried it on the big Kahuna--the front door frame, which is covered in a thick carapace of alligatored paint. It's slow going, heating only a business-card-sized segment at a time, but the stuff comes off, the dirty white top-coat blistering and a nougat-like layer of older layers following suit underneath.  Ah, the smell of lead fumes on a summer afternoon!