by L. Shell Madden

Created on: May 28, 2008

Mom Stories - Buying Houses

I come from a working class family. Anything we have, we worked for, so I was just about to enter high school when my parents bought their first house.
It wasn't much, an older "war time" house, three small bedrooms, a bath, eat in kitchen and a living room. You had to go outdoors to access the basement, and the front door opened right into the living room, but it was within walking distance of a grade school and a high school, and on a good sized lot, which meant Daddy could run his start-up construction business from it.

We moved in, school started and about six months later we were all sitting in the living room when mom said,
"Ron? I've been thinking" In his defence, this was the first time, so he couldn't see it coming
"Muh?" he peered around his paper, "What?" he folded down the paper, to give Mom his full attention.
"I want to move that wall"
"What wall?!" I could hear a bit of consternation in his voice.
"That wall", she pointed, Dad looked over his shoulder at the offending wall. "We could then put in a vestibule to keep the weather out, and get a bigger window for the front room. It would make it some much warmer and .brighter in here."
"That's a load bearing wall" he stated, as if that said it all. He then retreated behind his paper convinced the matter was at a close.
About a week later, Mom started again
"Ron? I really think we should move that wall"
"I told you that's a load bearing wall Can't be done, it's holding up the roof." and once again he went back to his paper You should understand, my mother is not the type to give up easily, so we weren't finished yet Two weeks later
"Ron?", she waited for him to lower the edge of his paper
"Muh?"
"About the wall I checked, that isn't a load bearing wall, we can move it" I won't go into the details, suffice to say the wall was moved. Just for the record, Mom did a fair bit of the work herself, and things went along for a year or so then one day
"Ron? I think we should redo the kitchen it would be so much more efficient if the sink were over under the window. It won't involve moving any walls and I can start packing things up this weekend" And so started the kitchen renovation project but the house was just too small for two adults, two teenage girls and a fast growing seven year old so they decided to buy a new house
Papers were signed, boxes were packed, furniture was moved and we started school from a slightly larger house, in a slightly better neighbourhood, but still

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>