Let’s talk about getting old.
No, I’m not going to talk about how I am really, really old again (although I am – really, really old, that is). Instead, I’m going to talk about the old homestead up in North Long Beach.
I signed the papers to buy this house 26 years ago this week. I realize that isn’t anywhere near how long some of my Long Beach native friends have been living in their homes, but 26 years isn’t a brief stopover, either.
This house is far older than our occupancy. It was built in 1947, along with much of our North Long Beach neighborhood and nearby Lakewood, to accommodate the post-war boom. If my math is correct, that makes the house six years older than I am, and that’s really, really old (sorry, I said I wasn’t going to talk about that).
When Frank Colonna took me up to look at the house, he emphasized that it had “good bones.” It had three bedrooms, a detached garage, three big trees and a big fenced yard.
Did I say Frank Colonna? At that time, Frank was the Third District City Councilman, a force in Belmont Shore and a friend. He also was a real estate agent. Today, he is a Long Beach Harbor Commissioner, and still a friend.
And no, he didn’t get me a deal on the house so I would be nice to him in the paper. That never crossed his mind, or mine.
I loved the house. The previous owners had lived there for decades – the Sycamore out front and the Chinese Pepper out back had been growing that long too. It was relatively small, but its three bedrooms would accommodate the lovely Maria and her kids, Charlotte and John. (They were coming to California so we could become a family.)
Unfortunately, those good bones were getting old, even back then. The wiring dated back to the 1947 construction and would struggle to support two televisions, let alone computers in a home office. A new power panel and complete rewiring started the week we moved in.
And the bathroom. There was only one – already an issue with a teen-aged girl and her mom. The 60 square feet with a tub and toilet might have seemed like luxury in the 1940s, but it was a real squeeze in 2000.
But the bathroom has stayed pretty much the same for the last 26 years. I’ve put in new fixtures, new lighting, a new medicine cabinet, and even replaced the sink and vanity, all without changing the basic layout. (The attempt to resurface the bathtub was a disaster we’ve been living with for the last 10 years or more.)
For a long time, the lovely Maria’s dream has been to add a second bathroom. She kept talking about it even after the kids had fled the nest for lives of their own.
But that sounded too expensive for my newspaper guy budget, and we were getting by. Instead, I kept her sort-of happy with other home projects – painting, new kitchen cabinets, a backyard garden, etc. – many of which you’ve read about here.
For the most part, I’ve tried to do them all myself. The results are self-evident – mismatched flooring, sticking cabinet doors, non-producing grape vines, etc. I have had a few moments of clarity when I actually hired a pro to replace the 1947 house heater, and a crew to replace some rotten siding with stucco matching the rest of the house, as well as new kitchen flooring to get rid of my less-than-adequate attempt (which included getting rid of the slippery tile I had brilliantly installed in the laundry room).
And to be honest, I’m getting really, really old. I’m less eager to take on major projects these days.
So when recent circumstances provided resources sufficient to start us talking bathrooms again, there was immediate agreement that we would be using an expert instead of my DIY dreams. It was immediately clear that the only option was “remodeling” the existing bathroom, not adding a second bathroom – resources dictating the plan.
I did my due diligence to find the right contractor, and we’ve already had a couple of discussions. We’ll be taking things slow to make sure the lovely Maria gets what she wants in the new facility – remodel in this case means taking everything down to the studs and rebuilding a new bathroom.
There will be inconveniences. Tearing apart the one bathroom you have means no shower access, no toilet access, no medicine cabinet, etc. But Maria has made it clear the temporary discomfort is much preferable to what we are living with now.
So the project has begun – at least the planning part. And there is one silver lining. I’ll no doubt get some columns out of the process!
Thank you, old, old house.