Oh, the tasks of homeownership

Jacques Kelly

September 27, 2008

This country's home mortgage crisis reminds me of the advice my neighbor, Grace Darin, once gave me. Darin, who gave Charles Village its name and fought for the neighborhood and homeownership, warned me against buying the house I now own.

Grace told me the place was old, built in 1872, and it came with shaky plumbing. She said every time you flush a toilet, you'll have to say a prayer. Her source was the Clarke sisters, who lived there for nearly 40 years and never stopped fretting about its idiosyncrasies.

When I bought the house in 1979, I figured Baltimore was a city of ancient houses. How tough could one be? The past 29 years have taught me that three stories of old brick on St. Paul Street add up to a deep money pit.

To add insult to injury, I should also note that the house has been burglarized. While on vacation this summer, I received a call telling me neighborhood brats dug up a brick from my front garden and heaved it through the front window - at 10 o'clock on a sunny Monday morning. Six weeks later, and I am still locating glass shards.

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But the real issue is how to get a 1923 toilet to quit running. My handyman said its tired parts probably deteriorated because of a lack of use when I was at the beach. I located a plumbing supply house in California that supplies fixtures for antiques, and I am now fervently hoping a new stopper will cut the flow of Loch Raven water.

Over the years, I tried to keep some of the funky old stuff in the house operating. I paid a house painter a small fortune to reinstall the sash weights in my windows, because there is nothing like real fresh air.

Some other initiatives died quickly. I once had a central air conditioning salesman to the house to give an estimate. He just laughed and said, "Lost cause."

On another occasion, I attended a local home show and signed up for estimates for replacement windows and a shower stall. The sales staff arrived and looked over my place. One declared my house a "heritage situation" and declined my business. Another gent took a look at my bathroom and said I needed an "artisan," not the services of his company.

On my to-do list is a hand-pulled doorbell apparatus, but I've let that one go because so many guests and family members use a cell phone to tell me they are pulling up at the front door.

This was the year I had all the old electrical wiring yanked out. My electrician was initially reluctant to take on the job. (He had to climb over the permanent Christmas garden in the basement.)

Standing in a pile of debris, he had never encountered so much ancient wooden tubing used to contain early 20th-century cloth-wrapped wires. I now have an electrical panel in what the Clarke sisters euphemistically called the wine cellar. It holds a passing grade - a city inspection sticker that tells me it's now safe to turn on a light.

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Oh, the tasks of homeownership

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