1984: The South Wall

It was a case of two wrongs making a right. I didn't much like the house when we bought it. My friend Morrie, who was also our real estate agent, was little more blunt. "You can't buy that house," he said. "It's too ugly."

I liked the way it looked from the street. I liked the pink brick. And I was sold on the yard. For about three weeks I had been scouring the real estate listings and picking out houses on one criterion alone: I wanted a nice, big yard. I'd seen only a few that qualified. I thought this one was really nice.

South wall of house It has a gentle southward facing slope to it, a wild ravine behind it and large yards on both sides. Anyway, the house was passably laid out. I hated the wallpaper, the curtains, the carpet, the light fixtures and the linoleum tile. But that is superficial stuff.

There were two substantial problems with the house. One was that the house was only three-quarters brick. I liked the pink brick, but did not like the fabricated siding on the south wall. It was supposed to look like wood, but it looked like cardboard to me.

The other problem was that the back wall of the house, the one that looked out on that nice big yard, had almost no windows. The windows on either side of the fireplace were so narrow that Craig called them murder slits, after the tall narrow openings in medieval fortresses through which you could stick a sword in anyone who was trying to scale your walls.

There was a small high window in the bedroom, and a window in the dining area that wasn't big enough to suit me. I wasn't sure I could live in a house with so little natural light.

My parents were visiting, and thank goodness my father said something I would never have thought of. He said, "Cut holes in the wall and put in more windows." I said, Really? Can I do that? He said, Why not? He even called a contractor and got a price. It wasn't out of the question. Above, you can see the south wall with two sets of French doors and enlarged windows on either side of the fireplace.

French doors And of course, part of what made it so feasible was the fact that the south wall was not brick. Shoot, you could cut that stuff with a utility knife.

So we bought the house. Did I mention the paneling in the livingroom? Craig pulled that down before we went to bed the first night. Then we tore off the wallpaper, peeled up the tiles, got rid of the carpet, took down the light fixtures, and put it all, all, all out with the trash. Phew. It left us high and dry, but bare is okay. Ugly is not.

For a very fair price, a carpenter we knew installed two sets of French doors, one in the bedroom and one in the diningroom. He also enlarged the windows in the livingroom. And light poured in. Ahhh.