My childhood home is up for sale.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I loved the house where my parents lived for 50 years and it really got to me when mother sold it. It went to lovely people who have taken pride in it and kept it looking really fine.

We went back to visit my hometown one day. Mother went inside, but I just couldn’t. I hugged a few friendly trees and sat down on the front terrace. I heard a familiar song coming from a piano in the living room – one my mother used to play. But this was a different arrangement. The man who had bought the house must have liked that song too and it just pleased the hell out of me. His Eye Is On the Sparrow. I could let go after that.

That’s a pretty house, Shirley. You’d never know that it would produce such a weird woman. I would have expected cobwebs in the attic or crooked shutters or some sign…

22

My childhood home was pretty much destroyed in a storm that struck the northern suburbs of Sydney in 1991. My family had sold it and moved out several years earlier. The new owners rebuilt it but it’s no loger the home I remember.

23

My childhood house is currently for sale. Here it is.

I sold it last September after my mother had a stroke and bought the condo where we both currently live. My parents bought it in 1954. Actually, my grandparents bought it, and my parents bought it from them. Funny thing is, my grandparents bought it for $10,000 and then sold it to my parents for $12,000.

Do I miss it? Hell, no. While my father was still alive, he kept my mother’s ‘taste’ somewhat in check. After he died my mother had free reign to do whatever she wanted to it. By the time I got her out of there, it looked like a White Trash Bomb had exploded in it and around it.

That house had reached the age where routine maintenance had become a full-time job. What it actually needed was a major overhaul. The back porch is coming off, the garage is sway backed, and the house has settled to a point where the kitchen walls and living room ceiling have cracks that will soon exceed the capabilities of spackle.

It needs new sidewalks, new flooring (50 years of dogs, cats and kids), new appliances, a new garage, and new driveway. It’s drafty. The furnace is noisy. The water pressure is poor–probably because it needs to be re-plumbed.

If you look at the pictures, you’ll see that they’ve ripped out the old carpeting, and that’s about it. Note that you don’t see any pictures of the bathroom or kitchen. Both are very small.

I just happened to stop by there yesterday to see what they’ve done. Almost nothing. Looking through the windows I could see that they’ve draped the dining room and kitchen for painting, and that’s all.

And they’re asking $196,900! I felt like I should’ve been wearing a bandana over my face when I sold it for $169,000.

Sure, I have some good memories of the place, but not too many in the last 20 years.

Good riddance.

24

The first house I remember living in was the top floor of a two-flat in San Francisco. It was pretty small - although I realized this only in retrospect, it seemed big at the time! - and the two-flat together would probably cost about a million bucks (such is the San Francisco housing market), so I think it’s probably safe to say I’ll never live there again.

My parents still own and live in the suburban house we moved to when I was eight. Every time I go there, though, my parents have rearranged something. My bedroom has become my dad’s office. You really can’t go home again. Unless you want to sleep on an air mattress in the spare room, anyway.

25

He said to tell you he lived about half a block from Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. But being a good Baptist, he never darkened its doors…

26

Sad to say, most people’s childhood homes are razed for new construction, burned, destroyed by storm damage, etc. The percentage of houses constructed 90 years ago still standing is less than half. Every urban area full of big buildings was once a residential neighborhood.

27

Too true. The area I grew up in (where I still live) was part of the post-War building boom. Every day, it seems, the home of a childhood friend is sold and demolished to make for medium density housing or a McMansion. This house, when we sell, will go the same way, unfortunately.

28

My grandparents had an amazing house. They had five kids, the house was big enough that it wasn’t crowded but also designed in such a way that it’s amazingly cozy. A wonderful place really. My grandparents raised me to a large degree and I became truly attached to that house. It was enormous considering all five of the children (one of them my father) had long since moved out. My grandfather had worked hard on the house when they bought it completely finishing the basement and adding on two rooms to fit the kids (although it was gradual, the youngest shared rooms for many years) and of course once they were all gone him and my grandmother never really knew what to do with it all.

The house went up for sale recently and I easily could have bought it, it’d be near where I live and work now and while it isn’t as nice as the house I live in now in many ways that house is my dream home. But I could never live there realistically. Shortly after I graduated high school both of my grandparents died there (only 2 years apart.) I think it’d be too hard to live in that house that for so many years had them in it. I remember after my grandfather died and I’d come home there was always some latent expectation that he’d be found sitting in his big chair in his study reading a newspaper or some book about Roman history which was his passion. I had long accepted he was gone, but subconsciously it never quite felt “real” because he had been such a fixture there for a long time. When my grandmother died the house became an oppressive place as I helped move their furniture off and divvied up the assets amongst the heirs. Them dying was the end of an era in my life, and to have moved back in that home would be a weird mixing of the current me and the young-man me, and I don’t think it’s entirely safe to mix such different phases of one’s life.

29

It can work. :slight_smile: My son bought my mom’s house after she died (in the house). The kids spent a lot of time there when they were growing up, and it was the site of all the holiday gatherings and birthday parties and cookouts.

We’re all glad the house still “in the family”, although my son says it spooks him sometimes.

30

I own my childhood home. I lived in it fulltime for my first 6 years, then summered there with Grandpa and Grandma for the next 15 years.

The old home got moved, it’s about 1 quarter mile from where it originally was. I rent out the childhood home, and live in the house built on the site of the old place.

After it was moved, there was some cognitive dissonance being in the old place, but looking out the windows and seeing different scenery.

31

Take your pick of:

  1. I sympathize with you.
  2. So what?
  3. That’s life!
  4. What? Me worry? A.E.N.
32

I haven’t noticed if my childhood home has ever been up for sale but I have seen a listing for a neighbor’s house. It wasn’t exacly a neighbor anymore, a new house went up between the two a couple of years ago.

33

I sold my childhood home in August. My mother died in May and I was put in charge of everything. I got all the old paper work my parents had and they bought it for around $77k in '79. At the time I sold it it looked like hell, no carpet, holes in the walls. It went to auction and sold for just over 200k. Strangely enough my mother still had ~$72k to pay on it.

34

My folks sold my childhome home and moved to a little house in the country in the mid 80’s. Sad as it was to not think of that house as “home” anymore, I don’t blame my parents for selling it. It was huge and getting to be a pita for them to upkeep. It was a great house to raise five kids but they didn’t need the space any longer. The people that bought it (I know them) still live there. They had four kids and the last one will be graduating from high school and going off to college this year. They’re thinking about selling it in a couple of years for a smaller place. I like to think this house will always be bought by people who want to raise a large family and pass it on down to the next people who want to raise a large family. My folks bought the house from a couple who had raised a large family in it and wanted something smaller for retirement. Kinda interesting to me how the house has been passed on like that.

35

HAH!

Me either. I was a Shriner! (minus the funny little hat.)

36

Hey!

I resemble those remarks. :slight_smile:

37

Not so strange. We bought a house in Seattle in 1970 for $21,500. When we sold it in 1990, we still owed $15,000.

38

After my Dad died I bought out my brother and step mother and live in the house I grew up in. I was just home from the Navy and living there at the time anyway.

Having never moved I tease my friends that they owe me for all the years I’ve helped cart their stuff around. One I’d like to sit in a comfy chair in the front lawn drink a beer and make them carry everything out and back in just once. :smiley: