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.
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