Near Divorce Experience
You might not be familiar with the acronym NDE (Near Death Experience). In a previous post, Entrances And Exits, The Fun Fuller Family began looking for a new home. But in this blog story about buying a fixer-upper house with a baby, NDE stands for Near Divorce Experience.
In my opinion, this is what the realtor sign should have said about the property:
Will the house nobody wanted win, or will The Fullers survive to host many a fun time in their new Palace of Potential?
What we could afford severely limited our choices for home ownership. Hayes was only two months old when Pete and I started looking. I had worked all my life and planned to be a stay-at-home mom until our son began kindergarten. We wanted to qualify for a mortgage based solely on Pete’s income.
Our realtor wanted me to return to work part-time. Working part-time would have primarily paid for Hayes’ care while I was at work. So, Pete and I decided that putting me back to work was one of our non-negotiables, and we would have to be patient until the right situation presented itself.
In our price range, most of the houses our realtor showed us were on the main drags of Albuquerque on high-traffic streets and near busy intersections. Others were in what the locals called “war zones.” Pete and I did not want to go from our mobile home living war zone to our dream house war zone.
City Or Rural
Other options we considered were purchasing land in a rural town twenty minutes south of Albuquerque and moving our home on wheels. The downside was that I felt uncomfortable living in a rural community with an infant and no car or friends nearby. After checking out about twenty houses in Albuquerque, several mobile home lots in Bosque Farms, and mobile home lots and a house in Belen, Pete found “the one.”
Keep in mind, Hayes was always with us while house-hunting because we had no family living in town or close friends available to help us.
Before opening the door to show us one more house in ABQ, our realtor said, “This house has been on the market for nine months. Even the investors don’t want to tackle this one. Most potential buyers never make it past the front door because of the overwhelming stench of pet odors, tobacco-stained walls, curtains that reek of cigarette smoke, and other unidentified smells. Do you still want to look?”
To me, the realtor’s description sounded like a crack house. But Pete nodded yes, and Hayes and I followed him in. The realtor had not embellished the truth one bit. Poor house!
Here is what we saw:
The living room curtains hung depressingly in shreds from the chipped and bent curtain rods. Those are not shadows on the carpet but the ground in grime. The side door was coated with years of dirt and heavy smoke stain. Like all the others, this room needed a thorough cleaning and new paint. The carpets and curtains had to be replaced.
Each room had a different color of carpet that was so filthy and worn in spots that it looked more like vinyl flooring than carpeting. All the vinyl flooring had holes or large sections missing. None of the floors had been cleaned for a long time. The thought of Hayes and us living in such unhealthy conditions made me extremely concerned.
This is the kitchen. There was no refrigerator. The avocado green kitchen appliances were in bad shape. The cabinets had layers of cigarette smoke embedded in the finish. And all gas appliances had been red-tagged and were unsafe to use.
The bathrooms were so disgusting that I would have preferred to take care of business in a port-a-potty and sponge bathe or take a solar shower using a heavy plastic container filled with water that hangs from a tree limb and is naturally heated by the sun instead of using the toilets, bathtubs or showers.
Which one of these bathrooms would you choose?
There were three bedrooms just like this in the house. If you look closely, you can see streaks on the wall. Every bedroom had a urine stench. Isn’t that the MO (modus operandi or operating method) of crackheads? Were they too stoned to know where they were and what a toilet looked like?
In different places on the ceiling, there were large holes similar to this one. It remains a mystery to me why people allow their residences to deteriorate into this condition.
Every wooden door was ruined beyond repair due to scratch marks from the owners’ large dog, who apparently wanted out of its neglected environment.
Below is a picture of the den that also had the stench, disintegrating curtains, holes in the ceiling, and worn carpet.
Mar, This Is The House
After looking at that house, before getting back into the realtor’s car to continue, Pete touched me on the shoulder. He said, “Mar, this is the house. This one has great potential. The location is perfect with a huge park only one block away and an elementary school two blocks away. Hayes will be able to walk to school with his buddies. I want to make an offer on this house. What do you think?”
My Decision
“The One” took the description “fixer-upper” to a new dimension. My husband wanted the house that had been on the market for a long time without any offers. I understood why. It was labor intensive, or in realtor lingo “in need of TLC.”
Sometimes it is hard to know if a person is still in their right mind. I thought my husband must have been as sleep deprived as me to be excited about the House of Perpetual Repair.
Remember, I was the worrier; Pete was the carefree one. I thought the cleaning alone would take about a year. Then again, everything happens for a reason. If you read Paul’s Rules, you might recall that I knew how to do every kind of cleaning by the time I was eight. I also estimated that renovating this poor house would take several years since we planned on doing most of the work ourselves.
How would we possibly be able to live in that filthy place with Hayes being so tiny and needing so much care? We did not have family in town to help with Hayes, and I wondered if our marriage could survive the great potential. What would it cost in sweat equity and dollars to fix it up? Was it the right time to take on the most significant debt of our lives? Would our American Dream take too much of our energy from the little guy we dearly loved resting close to me while his Dad waited for my response?
I knew Pete wanted the best life for his son. The house was in a great, established location close to the modern Uptown area of the city. I looked down at Hayes exhausted from house hunting and still recovering from giving birth not so long ago. The apprehension evaporated and great potential won out.
Because I also wanted the best for Hayes, I answered Pete’s heartfelt enthusiasm with: “Okay. Let’s make an offer.” This is the first part of our fixer-upper journey. Part Two is also available click Fixer Upper Part Two.
Tough Cookie Tip: This morning, before I completed the final draft of this story, I stumbled across two quotes: (I was unable to find the original author of this quote): “Fear is temporary. Regret is forever.” And from Irish Wisdom: “Two people shorten the road.” These quotes reminded me why I said okay to Pete’s wanting to make an offer on the Fixer-Upper Palace of Potential.
Copyright © 2022-2024 Marilyn K Fuller. All Rights Reserved.
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You and Pete were in the right mind set to turn this house into a loving home for Hayes to enjoy 🙂
Pete sounds like me. I can look beyond the present and see the potential in things. But I married a wonderful man more like you. When I see potential, he sees work and money. There is a reason why earth has magnetic fields and why opposites attract. Balance.