On my way to class at the Art Center I noticed the For Sale sign across the street. I stopped and looked over at the building that had first captured my imagination 12 years before. The little six-story midcentury modern with one entire side of windows. Hmmm, I thought.
That night, I searched realtor.com, and there it was. On the fourth floor, with a view of the park, in the shadow of the locust tree. Affordable, too. Small, but workable. The kitchen needed updating, but we know how to do that. I showed it to Joe.
“Want to look at that?” I asked.
He studied it. “Looks really cool,” he said. “Sure.”
I emailed a realtor friend and within a day we were inside. We toured the place, which didn’t take long. It had two bedrooms, a bath and a half, kitchen, and great room. It was well designed, with bedrooms in their own little wing and the living area down a small hall from that. The brick and concrete building was remarkably quiet. The rooms were good sized—the master almost the same size as in our house, with ample room for our king-sized bed. The living room was spacious and airy.
But the view enchanted us. Literally. We were under its spell. Twenty-four feet of windows with trees and a mesmerizing expanse of sky, with a locust tree within touching distance of a six-story locust tree. We stood at the windows and stared out. We couldn’t see the river, but we could see the cloud formations that changed above it. We would be able to see the sun rise on the left and set on the right.
“Too small?” The agent asked, breaking our mood.
“No,” we answered in unison. That was a first. Usually, one of us is more enthusiastic and has to bring the other one along. Not this time. We were both there, right away.
We checked to make sure we could add a washer and dryer. We could. We nosed around the garage. I did not like it. It was too far from the front door and required backing carefully to avoid a retaining wall. But that didn’t stop me. It felt like we belonged here. I was energized by possibilities. We could put the table by the windows and fill these walls with paintings. Joe imagined one wall of books. The galley kitchen was packed with cabinets, with the far wall a huge window framed with the tree. It would be a pleasant place to cook, and Joe loves to cook.
I could have an office space in the living room and a reading nook in the master bedroom. The second bedroom could double as a guest room and Joe’s lair. The utility closet was big enough to handle suitcases, seldom used appliances, and bathroom and kitchen supplies. We called it the basement. All the closets had organizers, increasing their useability. The floor was porcelain and would last forever.
It made sense logically. Without the upkeep of a house, we could travel more easily. We would take up less space on the planet in the meanwhile. And we didn’t have to worry about snow or fallen trees or siding.
By this time, Joe was doing only minimal woodworking, making cutting boards and cheese boards for a small gift shop. When the shop went out of business, he didn’t look for another outlet. He was ready to sell his tools and just have a little workbench in the garage. He could sign up for the maker’s studio downtown if he wanted to dabble. One of my consulting jobs had died; I quit the other. I no longer needed a dedicated office. The living room corner would work.
We loved the location, which was within walking distance of our doctor, dentist, and favorite restaurants. We’d slice our mileage by at least half. The park had miles of trails and a tranquil pond. And the view!
We ran the idea by our kids and close friends, imagined possibilities and discussed drawbacks. We’d been looking for so long, we knew how this stacked up against a country full of other options. I waffled a bit and Joe reminded me this was the first time we both fell for the same place. Solid point.
We made an offer, and it was ours.
Because we had been looking forever, we had already cleaned out our basement decently, asking our kids each time they visited to go down there and take what they wanted because what was left would go to charity or the dump when we moved. I had mentally ditched most of our furniture years before when we thought we might move across country. Much of it originally came from a consignment shop. I was looking forward to new stuff for a change.
I measured all the rooms and the furniture we planned to take and used graph paper to determine where everything went. We kept the furniture Joe made and almost all the art our sculptor daughter had created, plus my favorite paintings, and artifacts Josh brought back from his travels. The people who bought our house bought some of our daughter’s art and the swing Joe had made, plus a lot of furniture. Of all that we left, that swing is the only thing I really miss. And the porch it was on. But we had another swing at our cabin, with a mountain view, so we were covered.
We shopped for countertops and a new sink for the kitchen. We bought matching chairs for our dining room table to replace our artsy mix-and-match set, several of which were falling apart. We got deep, cushy area rugs for the bedrooms and a cool cotton open weave rug from India for the living room.
We christened it The Treehouse.
It was February 2020. What could go wrong?
In Part 4, the final installment, we’ll share the bumps and bruises of our move.
