Back in 2006, the real estate market here was booming. If I bought a house that year, my mortgage broker told me, it would likely double in value by 2016. How could you turn down an investment like that?
And so, that spring, I found the house I now call home. There it was, sitting on a hill, on a tree-lined street, along the 84 bus line, around the corner from a liquor store, in a historic neighborhood in East Point.
From the street, the house wasn’t much to look at it. In fact, it was nearly impossible to see from the street, thanks to the giant sugar maple that devoured the front yard – and the neglected shrubs that had grown so tall they reached the top of the windows.
The inside wasn’t much better: Windows had been painted shut. The ceiling, walls, trim – everything, it seemed – had been painted brown. Laminate countertops in the kitchen had been painted, too. (Obviously, someone got a great deal on brown paint).
In the backyard, the grass looked as if it hadn’t been cut in years. The small back stoop, once considered rickety, had become downright dangerous. As for the garage, a tree had fallen onto the roof; the rotting rafters were so bad you could literally break them apart by hand.
Before it was officially mine, an inspector and I went from room to room, trying desperately to turn on lights. None worked. As it turns out, every bulb in the house was burnt out. For some reason, there was no gas meter outside. In a neighborhood like mine, the inspector figured it had been stolen. Whatever the reason, it meant we couldn’t figure out whether the gas stove or hot water heater worked. When we got to the garage, the inspector gave me a rather sad look. “Guess you’ll have to tear that down,” he said. Even he was afraid to step on the back stoop. “I’d stay off of that,” he warned me.
With all of this negative talk, I actually began to feel badly for the house. It had always been a dream of mine to restore an old house. If I couldn’t save it, I thought, who could?
And so, I made the plunge, buying a fixer-upper in a gentrifying neighborhood in a real estate market that seemed to carry no risks.
My, how things have changed.
Over the years, the house has served as a diary of sorts for the financial ups and downs we’ve all endured.
One summer, a friend and I rebuilt the garage. With the market still riding high, I splurged and replaced every cheap light in the house with vintage fixtures topped with hand-blown glass shades from the early 1900s. When the market took a dive, it felt as if I emptied my pockets to buy antique door hardware – one piece at a time – or strip window hardware covered with decades of paint so that it would gleam in the sunlight, just like it did when the house was built in 1939.
Missing pieces of crown molding were eventually replaced. The brown paint is gone, covered with historic colors that epitomize the true Arts and Crafts movement. The hardwood floors gleam. And broken spindles on the porch have been repaired – and repainted in a three-color paint scheme that would make Michelangelo proud.
In spite of my best efforts to use vintage, salvaged materials, and to do as much work as I could on my own, the restoration hasn’t been able to keep up with the steep decline in home values. Like nearly 48 percent of homeowners in metro Atlanta, I owe more on the house than it’s worth – a sobering fact driven by the large number of foreclosures in my historic East Point neighborhood.
The last few years have been tough on everyone.
Yet, as we reported on a recent Sunday’s front page, we’re beginning to see glimmers of hope – “exhale moments,” as they’re called – in which those knots of dread begin to loosen. The signs of relief are all around us: The unemployment rate is falling; home prices are climbing. Consumer confidence is rising; foreclosure notices are decreasing.
In my neighborhood, homes that have been sitting on the market for months, or in some cases, even years, are selling. And it’s refreshing to once again hear the buzz of saws and the whap of nail guns as renovations and improvements resume.
With relief apparently upon us (we hope), my projects are picking up, too.
After years of delay, the privacy fence in the backyard is finally up; a carpenter just finished the pergola; the patio is now done, too; and the daylilies, Mexican Heather and newly planted grass are thriving, thanks to the rainy spring.
But, as my old house reminds me every day, we still have a long way to go.
