Selling. Looking in NJ for House. Shortest Blog Ever.

So first I'm looking for land and finding acreage with "Caution: SNAKES" signs prominently posted

---this past week, my realtor and I went out to look at a house for sale (in case this whole buying/building thing doesn't pan out), and I'm checking out the back yard, and I see this big black Newfoundland dog walking around the back of the house next door.

Except it's not a dog. It's a bear.

"Bear" was not on the MLS description. First snakes, now bears. Message?

Selling. Back from TN Home.

They don't stand a chance, that couple on the verge of buying our Tennessee house. The dogwood tree outside my old bedroom window is blooming--they won't be able to resist signing that final piece of paper. The one that says they're fine with the inspection and they're fine with our negotiated price. We just have to fix that one rusty pipe.

The couple says they'd like to bargain for some of the furniture, which would be fine--Mom and Dad would have loved for the living and dining room to stay mostly intact. But Ned and I will move some odds and ends up here, to replace furniture that those oft-mentioned four cats have destroyed; and Jim will take a chest-of-drawers (he swears, that's all he wants); and we'll have some kind of sale for the Rosenthal, Royal Worcester, etc. that Mom and Dad collected over the years. Mom had very good taste. Lucky for her, Dad thought that was ok. Together the two of them created a house that really was a kind of work of art. Not too much, not too little--just classy and elegant.

Which brings me to the story of the Chinese cabinets. As far back as I can remember, they were always there in the dining room, tall and dark and mysterious, one on each side of the dining room window. The wood had a very distinctive sweet odor, and there were very fragile inlaid landscapes on the front. The cabinets were, in fact, from China, but by way of Atlanta--Mom and Dad went down there, with a decorator from Bradford's Furniture in Nashville, and bought them, probably in the early to mid '60s. Mom never got over how the guys who delivered them dumped the huge wooden crates in the driveway during a snowstorm.

My Aunt Lois convinced me there must be hidden drawers or secret little places in the cabinets and we scoured them pretty carefully--but no hidden treasure was to be found. Mom filled them with the good china, crystal, and special holiday pieces.

After Dad died in 2002, and after Mom moved into an assisted living facility, at the end of 2009, it was only a matter of time before the house went on the market, which it did in April of 2010. Mom felt strongly that she wanted the cabinets to stay with the house...that they were perfect for the space, and vice versa. I was sure I'd be struck by lightning--but I didn't listen to her. An estate appraiser came through and said that most of Mom and Dad's furniture wouldn't sell too well in Middle Tennessee--it needed to get to a coast, east or west. So with that information....

A friend of mine, in the same historical society in northern NJ, runs one of the biggest antique fairs in New York City. So, "Irene," I said,"what can I do about these wonderful old Chinese cabinets that need to live a life beyond Gallatin, Tennessee?" And she had the perfect answer: "Why don't I put in touch with my friend Lark Mason, WHO DOES ASIAN FURNITURE APPRAISALS FOR ANTIQUES ROADSHOW?!" [caps, bold face, and exclamation points all mine] I thought that was a fine idea.

So I called Lark, who was very friendly and sounded very interested in the cabinets--and when he saw photographs, he was even more interested. Lark not only appears on Antiques Roadshow but he has an online auction house, and he wanted to bring them up to New York City and put them in his next online Asian furniture auction. Estimated starting bid for the two of them, $10,000. I was happy.

I should say at this point that Mom wasn't going back to the house anymore. There was one time when she told Jim she needed to go back and pick something up, and so he took her home--but she only walked around the place, as if she were taking one last look. I didn't feel any need to tell her the cabinets were leaving--she'd feel as if a part of the house were being amputated.

Some nice, gentle movers that Lark recommended came and got the cabinets--I believe they were in better hands than the ones that had delivered them. When they arrived in New York, my friend Emily and I went to visit them in Lark's showroom, and there was the old familiar wood smell. I choked up a little. They had traveled well.

The auction for the cabinets started in late October and ran for a couple of weeks, into early November. That starting bid of $10,000 was met pretty quickly. Again, I was happy. Then, not so many days after, there was a bid for $12,500 or so. Happiness is...

When the last day of the auction came, the last 30 minutes, I was stopping by the Haworth Library and I pulled Elizabeth, my friend, the librarian, into staring at the computer screen with me for those last few minutes. Well, we weren't just staring at it...we were refreshing it constantly. And there was action. I think it started the afternoon in the $20,000plus range--then it hit $30,000--$40,000. Elizabeth said, "It's going to hit fifty, it's going to hit fifty," and I said, "No way, no way." It hit fifty. When the auction ended, the cabinets had sold for $55,000, and they were going back home to China.

Jim was right--Mom never did get home again. She died before the auction started, and I'm glad she never knew the cabinets left the house. Although actually I think she would have enjoyed the story...Antiques Roadshow was just about her favorite show, Lark Mason was a gentleman, the movers were nice, the price was amazing, and the cabinets were making a voyage home.

Aunt Lois was right about something, too. There was treasure in those cabinets, after all. Mom and Dad must have known all along.

Selling. Looking for Land.

Probably not a good idea to buy land with a "CAUTION Snakes Present" sign on the fence. Correct me if I'm wrong. Luckily, I'm not like my mother, who once called the Gallatin cops to come shoot a snake that was in the backyard, minding its own business. I think it was thin and green. But I'm thinking about resale value here. First snakes, then before you know it, locusts, plague, etc. etc.

Here's our plan, such as anyone can actually make a plan: Step 1. Sell the Haworth house (by the way, where are you, nice young couple with those two-year-old twin boys who seemed so interested? Thought letting you pet Dixie the shih tzu had reeled you in). Step 2. Buy an inexpensive beautiful piece of land with trees, a view of the mountains, view of a lake and sunset and sunrise (FYI, Step 2 is an impossibility in Bergen County, NJ, with about 4000 people/square mile--a tree or two and not staring into a neighbor's window would be nice). Step 3. Build a modular, green, eco-friendly house--your state-of-the-art R-19 insulation, tankless water heater, bamboo floors, fiber cement siding, tilting thermal pane windows, and dual-flush toilets (I didn't know what those were either but think about it--flushing/1, flushing/2...).

How did we get started on this path? I was googling "modular" and "green" and "New Jersey" late one night, and tripped across the "New World Home" company, out of Manhattan and Jersey City (www.newworldhome.com). They make environmentally-friendly houses, but in traditional architectural styles--no cubist mod minimalist designs that really don't work on Main Street. The home designs all have environmentally friendly names-- the Thoreau, Emerson, Henry David, Portland, Ansel, Muir, Whitman, etc. We most like the "Henry David," a cape with dormers and a bath each for David and Kate (you have no idea how important this is to family harmony), and the "Dillard," a Dutch colonial named for the author Annie Dillard, who, unbeknownst to me, has a lot of nature themes in her writing. If we were picking just by name, I'd go for the Henry David, since it includes David's name, and I do think Henry David Thoreau carries more weight than Annie Dillard.

One of the New World Homes was "Country Living" magazine's "House of the Year" in 2010, and the other endorsement of note--I guess--is that former NJ governor Christie Whitman is building one for her daughter and son-in-law down in horse country somewhere.

So, back to steps A, B, and C. While we're waiting for Step A, the sale of our house, we figured might as well look around for a plot of land and make some progress on the design of a house. We talked, via conference call, with New World's architectural team yesterday, and though each house comes with its own designated floor plan, you can play with it, as in making sure teenage boy/teenage girl each have his/her own bathroom. We'd like to have all the design details worked out so we're ready to move quickly, if and when A happens.

In terms of looking for land, fortunately, I believe there will be some local acreage that's not snake-infested. There's the uncleared lot with some nice trees in Closter, too small to hold a McMansion which is why it's undeveloped; there's the .92 of an acre in Park Ridge with a small shacky house on it that I wouldn't feel TOO guilty about knocking down; and there's the more expensive, very narrow 69x200 lot down the street, which could only hold the equally narrow Dillard.

If you're reading this and you live in Bergen County and you have an extra 100x125 lot, or know someone who does, please let us know. No snakes, nor, for that matter, deer, stinkbugs, ladybugs, mice, or any other pesty creature that has visited us from time to time. We have enough of our own.

Selling. TN Home.

We got an offer yesterday. Not what we thought it was worth, but it's a good solid offer and these potential buyers seem to love and appreciate the house, which is really important to me. It'd be important to Mom and Dad, too.

The offer isn't for our Haworth house--it's for my old Tennessee home, 248 North Hume Avenue in Gallatin. It was listed about a year ago, for $229,000. It's now $184,900. In New Jersey that'd buy you a rundown, two bedroom house with a bathroom you'd have to gut. If it even HAD a bathroom. In Gallatin it'd buy you the open, bright, architect-designed, three bedroom/two bath home I grew up in. With a fireplace surrounded by tan marble, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a screened-in porch that goes along the entire back width of the house (the porch is excellent for entertaining, even weddings...I know for a fact).

Of course during my childhood/teenage years, I didn't appreciate it. No kid really looks at the eaves and thinks, "My, how those deep eaves help to keep the house cool on these hot summer days." I did think it was neat how you could put sheets over the hot air registers and make little sauna caves under there.

Mom and Dad had it built in 1958--I was two, Jim was four. They hired Nashville architect Bruce Crabtree, who later became famous for designing the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, the Nashville Public Library, a bunch of churches, etc. Mr. Crabtree is in his 80s now, and during my last trip to Tennessee, I went to talk to him about the design of the house--thought maybe I could get some information I could use in a story--anything to help sell the house.

The most interesting tidbit was--the design of the house was really all Mom's idea. She knew what she wanted. After she and Dad first interviewed Bruce Crabtree in the late 1950s, Mom called him back and told him, thanks, but we're going to keep looking for an architect...not sure we're on the same wavelength. Weeks later, she called him again and asked if he'd still do it. No other Nashville architect was on her wavelength either. That came as no surprise to me. But he told me he basically just did what she told him to. That also came as no surprise to me.

The house was always easy to describe--it was the one that sat sideways on a narrow lot, since the old woman who owned the adjacent lot wouldn't sell until a few years after Mom and Dad had already built. Then we gained a baseball/football field. And the house was white brick, which Mom liked a lot better after she sandblasted the hell out of it for a "weathered" look.

After Dad died, in 2002, every now and then Mom would talk about what a burden the house had become, with trouble getting repairmen, getting the yard taken care of, etc. She even looked at a few assisted living facilities, but she always would get back to the fact that she could never leave her floor-to-ceiling windows.

Finally in November of 2009, after one too many 3 AM trips to the ER, and one too many panicky 3 AM phone calls to friends, she knew she couldn't live alone anymore. And she left home. And went to a very nice assisted living facility which she tolerated pretty well.

The house went on the market in April 2010, and sat month after month. Sometimes nasty people put in nasty low offers, amazed that there were still fuses, not circuit breakers, perplexed at the lack of granite countertops. I didn't sense love from those potential buyers. They didn't know that I'd basically be willing to give the house away, if I just knew that they loved it. Loved the eaves and the windows and the way it sat sideways on the lot. We lowered the price once, then again, then again. We always knew it wasn't a house for everyone. Apparently true.

Last week our TN realtor forwarded an email from the couple who's now made this latest offer. She works for the Country Music Hall of Fame, he's a news photographer. The woman said they loved the house.... Maybe I'll throw in the dining room table.

Selling. 10 AM Appointment.

6:30 AM. Alarm rings. Sounds like a bugle playing reveille. Is this what got Dad up in WWII? Fails to impress me. Hit the snooze button. 6:33 AM. Process repeats. 6:36 AM. Process repeats. 6:39 AM. Awake enough to realize I should start stirring Kate for school (David has spring break this week--too much to ask schools to have the same spring break?).

Go into Kate's room and lie about the time. "It's almost 7." Silence. Process repeats. Finally I hear a muffled voice from the covers: "I'm up, I'm up."

To sum up what follows: Ned's working later hours today so he's still sleeping for a bit, I eat some cereal, check out a few minutes of Good Morning America and decide I'm not that interested in Brett Favre's non-ex-mistress, tell Kate no, those are all the clean clothes, see Kate get out the door, feed the four cats (see previous blog), medicate the shih tzu that the golden retriever partially blinded last week (it was an accident).

So it's now 8:15 AM, give or take. Kate's out, Ned's up and getting ready to clear out before the realtor arrives, David can sleep a bit longer before he has to leave with Ned. Time for me to start getting the house ready for the 10 AM showing.

It's all HGTV's fault. Home and Garden Television has raised the bar so high with "designing to sell" and "curb appeal" that home sellers struggle in vain to live up to televised expectations of home buyers. When the photos were taken for our online listing, the kitchen was so decluttered, it looked uninhabited. Kate's room looked terrific, with a bright, bold, green and blue Ikea comforter--who knew that the entirety of the contents of her teenage closet, which meant the contents of her floor, was out in the hallway?

The night before our first showing, which was the day before the open house, I literally did not go to bed. Ned does not know this. Please do not tell him. I had to find a place for all that stuff in the hallway, plus there were a hundred little projects I'd been meaning to get to. For years. A bit of peeling paint by the back door. a paint touch up in the walk-through linen closet, re-planting that pot of ivy for the library--you know, things that would make the difference between selling and not selling a half-million-dollar-plus house.

So, back to 8:15 AM. No painting, no potting to be done. Just straightening and turning all the lights on so it looks as if it's a bright and cheery house. Actually it is a bright house, but it's overcast and storms are expected later, so artificial light has to pull up the slack. Made all the beds, plumped the pillows, swept the kitchen, wiped the sink, stuffed a few of Kate's stray clothes under her bed, herded two cats into a crate in the basement (I've refined my cat-herding techniques, and I've decided two cats left in the house is a permissible and sane number), put the shih tzu in the crate in the kitchen and the retriever in the car.

By now it's 9 AM. Waking David up. Fast forward to 9:45, and David is finally up, and Ned's ready to go, too. They head off to the Haworth Library, where I'm sure David will fall back asleep in a big comfy chair. Quick, make David's bed, put the two maroon pillows on his black and grey bedspread (he hates those pillows), and wait for the Remax realtor (FYI, Sarah, our realtor, my friend, is on vacation in Florida this week, but never farther than a text away--I prefer to be here when someone goes through--the house is a little quirky and it's easy to miss a room, or a floor--the Remax realtor told me on the phone that quirky is good, her buyer is quirky, too.

9:55 AM. Remax realtor calls. They're running late. First quirk.

10 AM. I spray the front hall and kitchen with this "Zero" deodorizer stuff a friend gave me, in case there's a trace of cat, dog, or human being. We tried those Glade oil scent plug-ins, both in "Fresh Linen" and "Apple Cinnamon," but they left a strange after-odor, which was not pleasant and gave Kate and me headaches--then when a bit of the oil dripped on my chest-of-drawers and took off the paint, I threw them all away. I switched to chocolate chip cookies or deodorizer.

10:10 AM. Doorbell rings, and two young women come in, a blond and a brunette. Brunette's the realtor, blond's the buyer. Divorced with a two-year-old and four-year-old. Handshakes all round. Nothing quirky yet. I explain that I'll be the tour guide--fine.

We march through the house. She likes the openness, the history. I talk about all the places she can put toys for the kids. We're in the third floor guest bedroom when she gets quirky. Starts telling me about the ghost that her kids can see in her 1980s rental. Noone ever died there, she says, but maybe they're over an Indian burial ground, or the site of a Revolutionary War massacre. I assure her noone's ever died in the house and we have no ghosts, but apparently it's ok if they did and we have.

When the tour's over, realtor and prospect take another look or two. She wonders about gardening in the backyard--do I tell her there once was a huge black walnut back there and its root system destroyed any plant life except hostas? Nahhh... Maybe she can sense its ghost anyway.

10:42 I text Ned that the coast is clear and it's safe to come home.

Next!

Selling. Open House.

PICTURE PERFECT! THREE BEDS/2 FULL BATHS/UPDATED 1891 VICTORIAN

HAWORTH, NJ

The Open House started with cat pee. Cat pee on me. Had a ring to it, but not a good omen. Sarah, our realtor, my friend, said the four cats might distract potential homebuyers from marveling at our Victorian moulding and new gas fireplace insert. I knew that most likely the cats would cower in a closet and never be seen—but people do have allergies and phobias and cat-cleanliness issues. So we devised a plan. To wit, we would do the impossible—herd the cats with a combination of Fancy Feast and gile. Then we’d put Mittens, Skye, Jace, and Jag into a little cat jail, a small store-room, in the basement, with a whimsical “DO NOT OPEN, CATS INSIDE” sign. We’d block the opening under the slightly short door with a nearby ironing board on the outside, boxes on the inside.

The herding went fine, except that Mittens was as nervous as a -- …. and my clothes suffered the consequences.

The cats escaped anyway. Image in my head of cats lining up, pushing together to move the boxes and the ironing board, “OK, on three….” Or making a little cat ladder to get through a transom. Who knows. Frantic text message from Sarah just after we’d left the house: “CATS R OUT.”

We bought the house in Haworth 16 years and 7 months ago. We were moving from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and we’d looked at what felt like over a hundred houses. Felt that way probably because I was pregnant and we usually had our two-year-old son in tow. Nothing tingled. We’d sold our house in Swarthmore in six days, and I’d been on bed rest with David, and who knew how much time I’d have before I’d have to hit the sofa with this baby-in-the-womb.

We went into a rental house in Ardsley, NY, while we kept looking and I kept growing. We tried very hard to live in lower Westchester County, because Ned’s family was all in Scarsdale and Hartsdale. I imagined cousins growing up together and baby-sitting on demand. But coming from a very reasonable housing market in suburban Philadelphia, in Westchester we saw only kitchens that needed tearing out and bathrooms in which you could use the toilet, brush your teeth, and shower—all at the same time. All this, of course, for a big chunk of change. It was also a bad sign that I was rear-ended twice on Central Avenue during our rental stay in Ardsley (I’m big on omens).

A radical idea was finally suggested—look for a house in New Jersey. My father-in-law had a first cousin with a realty agency in Haworth, and we decided, what the heck, let’s take a look. Yes, there was a formidable river separating us from family, but after living in Chicago, Boston, and suburban Philly, the Hudson didn’t really seem so insurmountable.

We looked at all of four houses in Bergen County, two in Tenafly and two in Haworth, and we could have bought three of them. There was breathing space, a bit of land, town centers that I could walk to, more reasonable taxes and prices (remember, this was 1994).

The house we stared at the most sits on what would be the Main Street of town, diagonally across from school in one direction, across from the duck pond in the other direction, a walk to pizza and the library and a hardware store and the post office and a MinitMart and a pharmacy. The creamy yellow exterior paint seemed a little tired, as did some of the interior, especially a sad blue downstairs carpet, but we did like it. I felt a tingle when I saw the wraparound front porch, and we bought it.

We pulled up the blue carpet and found beautiful inlaid floors, our daughter Kate was born, David started school, a new roof was put on, the outside was painted, I started a book group, David began piano lessons, Kate started school, I had so much fun finding out about our old house I started a house history business, kindergarten graduations, we got a cat, we got a cat, we got a cat, David quit piano lessons, my business was profiled in the Bergen Record, 8^th grade graduations, master bathroom all done in white, my Dad died, Ned’s Dad died, we got a dog, David started electric guitar lessons, Kate’s room re-painted lavender, Kate’s room re-painted aqua blue, Kate’s room re-painted light lime green, my Mom died, gas insert put in the wood-burning fireplace so we’d finally use it. 16 years, 7 months later. House is for sale. First Open House. Cat pee on me.