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| This is the current Google Streetview of our old house, not quite the same as when we lived there but I can't find a pic |
Our House
(Smyth/Foreman/Woodgate/McPherson/Thompson/Bedford/Barson) Performed by Madness
Father wears his Sunday best
Mother's tired, she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister's sighing in her sleep
Brother's got a date to keep he can't hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Our house it has a crowd
There's always something happening
And it's usually quite loud
Our mum she's so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down and a mess is not allowed
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our (something tells you that you've got to get away from it)
Father gets up late for work
Mother has to iron his shirt
Then she sends the kids to school
Sees them off with a small kiss
She's the one they're going to miss in lots of ways
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
I remember way back then when everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play, simply waste the day away
Then we'd say nothing would come between us
Two dreamers
Father wears his Sunday best
Mother's tired, she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister's sighing in her sleep
Brother's got a date to keep he can't hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street, our house
This week's song is a totally literal choice because I want to write about the first house Dave and I bought -- and I know that Our House is from ten years earlier than what I'm talking about, but I always liked this song and it totally captures the idea of the home we intended to create when we laid out our down payment.
I wrote before about the house that Dave and I were renting when we got married, and I'll just note that that place had a basement suite. First Dave's friend Paul lived in the basement, and then Delight's friend Cuzzy did, and not long before we moved, my friend Curtis moved from our guest room down into the basement. So when we started looking for a place to buy, we felt responsible for Curtis, too, and looked for something with a separate area for him. And I'll also add a note about our limited budget: This was probably 1992, and with interest rates at over 8%, we couldn't afford to borrow very much. Dave's family had always banked with Canada Trust, so we went there first to apply for a mortgage. Because in those days CT also had a real estate brokerage, when we went to the bank we were told that we could borrow however much, but only if we used one of their real estate agents for the house purchase. We hadn't hired an agent yet, so although we knew this didn't sound right, they made us feel like they were doing us a favour by loaning us any money, so we didn't resist.
The agent we were assigned was young and slick, and looking at the amount we were preapproved for, he said we could probably only afford a condo. We didn't want a condo, and told him so. The house we had been renting was just north of Edmonton's downtown, and as we liked the area, and as we knew that houses in the area tended to sell within our budget, we told him that's where we wanted to look. He sighed and printed off some options. And another note: Buying a house was so much harder before MLS listings on the internet; we were totally at the agent's mercy regarding what he wanted to show us.
The agent took us to look at a handful of places -- and a couple of them were gorgeous; century homes that looked beautifully renovated but which we feared were hiding expensive problems because of the low prices -- and after dampening our excitement, telling us we probably would never find what we were looking for at our pricepoint, we eventually found one house that we really liked: a small and solid box on a really large yard, nicely renovated, basement suite, within budget. We were excited enough to say that we wanted to put in an offer right away (a Saturday afternoon), the agent said we could do the paperwork on the following Monday, and when Monday came, he called to say the house had sold over the weekend. This guy acted like our business was beneath him, and he just lost our business.
During this same period, our friends Steve and Libby bought a beautiful old house in our desired neighbourhood -- a house we were never even shown -- and they had liked their agent so much that we decided to give her a call. This agent, Carla, had an in with the Royal Bank, and when we went to meet with her friend there, this bank that we had never before dealt with preapproved us for an even larger mortgage than did Dave's lifelong bank. At that moment, Canada Trust lost all of our business forever.
Carla had a much better understanding of what we were looking for -- and didn't act like our dreams were petty -- and she showed us a few decent options before showing us the one. The house we eventually bought had originally been a rooming house, and we loved the quirkiness of all its little rooms. From the front door you entered a closed-off breezeway -- perfect for Edmonton winters -- and then through another door, you entered a just-big-enough living room (it held a couch, a chair, a TV and a coffee table), off to the left was a little room (could have been a bedroom, but we called it the "music room" and set it up with our wall unit, stereo, loveseat, and Nintendo), the living room gave way to a small dining room, which led to the kitchen. I don't know why the kitchen was in two parts, but the first room had the stove and sink, and through a doorway, you got to the fridge and cupboards (Dave would eventually knock down that wall to make it one big room, despite a contractor warning him that "it might not be load-bearing, but in a house this old, all walls are load-bearing"). This floor had a full bathroom with a shower, for the convenience of the person in the basement suite (which was just a big basement-sized bedroom). There were stairs going up off a long corridor on the main floor which could be locked off from the rest of the house if you wanted to rent out either the up or the down as an apartment, so the upstairs was just as quirky. There was a big bathroom with a shower and an original clawfoot tub, a tiny bedroom right across from it (that Dave called his office and just barely fit his large desk and chair), another smallish bedroom with a sink in it (could be set up as a kitchen, but as my mother said at the time, the sink made it perfect for use as a nursery eventually; as it did), there was a large sitting room (where my bookshelves eventually went), and across the front of the house were two same-sized bedrooms, neither of which would hold our bed and both of our dressers (Dave's went in the spare room). We were on a corner lot -- which was not great when it was time to shovel snow from all that sidewalk -- and we had beautiful big trees (the leaves we had to rake!), a big deck, a vegetable garden (which was planted and left for us to harvest come fall), a fence too high for our big dog, Mo, to jump over, and oddly, a housefront variety store next door that we didn't buy from as much as you might think. We were within blocks of the Edmonton Eskimos football stadium, so while we were amused by the neighbours who would sell parking on their lawns during events, we totally enjoyed sitting out on the deck and listening whenever a band we liked would be performing there; we listened to Pink Floyd and the Stones out in the open air of our own yard.
Dave and I were in our mid-twenties when we bought that house and we felt that by doing so, we were taking the first step towards building a family. This may be old-fashioned thinking, but I look at the price of houses today (the average for our city is currently over 500k), and even with the low interest rates persisting, I have no idea how my own kids will afford to buy their first homes; maybe they'll be happy with condos; maybe they won't equate "house" with "home" like we did, or maybe I'm as wrong as our first real estate agent in thinking that they won't be able to afford a house that they'll love. Because this is true: that first house may have been weird or even shabby in the eyes of others, but we loved it and everything it represented in our lives: laying down roots; acting like adults; grasping at permanence and stability as the foundation for a family.
I remember way back then when everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play, simply waste the day away
Then we'd say nothing would come between us
Two dreamers
