Buying Hazel Street

After class today, after Lowe’s, I’m going back to my workplace, the house on Hazel Street,  to continue making it ready for the next tenant.  After a series of renters who had to move in almost before the old ones had moved out, Hazel Street needed a lot of attention.  I’ve been working on it since July – first clearing out the masses of stuff my last tenant left behind, then putting in low-e windows, a new vanity and bathroom floor, checking the electric outlets, painting the woodwork and making it once again, the sort of place I’d like to live in.

I bought the Hazel Street house after my Mother died in 1997.  I did not want to worry about investing my small inheritance;  money as such never appealed to me.  I bought a computer I really didn’t need, and saw how easy it would be to squander this gift from my mother on fripperies.

I am a nest- builder.  I wanted to own a house that appealed to me aesthetically; the house I shared with Ox was too masculine and too slovenly.  Every time I made an improvement to it, he got angry.  I wanted some independence.  Ironically, because the bank wouldn’t give me a mortgage, Ox lent me the remaining $9,000 needed to buy the house; he charged me the going rate – 8% interest.

I loved the small 1950s house, the neighborhood and the neighbors.  I loved owning a place where I could design, plant and nurture a garden.

At first I lent the house to a friend who needed a place to live.  The friend moved out after four months, in October, just before our elder daughter married, and, on impulse, I moved in.  I lived there for three years, dating Ox in the meantime.  I signed over my half of the Crozet house to Ox because I felt that house was already his, never mine.

I loved living at Hazel Street.  I furnished the house with Surr family furniture, salvage from SPCA sales, Salvation Army store, and used furniture stores.  I made curtains.   I painted more paintings when I lived there than I ever had before, probably because I didn’t have a television.  I started to finish the upstairs attic, an open room the size of the house.  I fixed up the small kitchen to my taste, honing the woodworking and other skills acquired early in our marriage.

Beside some years of rent income, Hazel Street has given me independence, quiet, and a mass of growing handyman skills. When I get there today I’ll finish the drywall behind the kitchen sink an put up extra towel bars in the bathroom. I still love the place.