the purefinder - archives - Fri, 2004-09-10
« the end of something | Main | managing the transition »September 10, 2004
foot-holes
We bought our house hurriedly. I spent more time choosing a pair of glasses yesterday than I did, two years ago, considering our potential future home. I spent more time selecting the last pair of shoes I bought than I did considering our potential future home. Ordinarily this would be monumentally stupid but I think our haste was appropriate; we were three weeks away from homelessness, having already sold *our* house, and some probability of structural rigidity was enough to satisfy us that 'it would do'.
We were moving a few hundred yards - literally just around the corner. The people we bought the house from were desperate to sell quickly so that they could secure their dream home, which was only available for another month.
We had been hoping for something unlikely to rescue us from our impending homelessness and, astonishingly, it happened.
The people who we bought the house from were a pleasant family with nice children and had been good neighbours to those around them. They had only spent a couple of years in the house and, apart from an obvious 'quick' redecoration when they put the house on the market, they hadn't really stamped their mark on it.
Most decoration is done badly. Having been a former professional wood finisher I am entitled to point this out. Indeed, as a habitually sloppy decorator, I am doubly qualified to comment.
We were lucky that the house we bought was adequately sound. Apart from the inept painting there have been few problems that have surfaced in the two years we have lived here. Over those two years my dissatisfaction with the decoration has grown. The colours are... not to my taste. (In fact they are unlikely to match the taste of anyone who can actually see.) The application of these poorly chosen paints has also left me dissatisfied; in the few places where the paint has actually been applied thickly enough to cover what was there before there are brush marks, sags and runs. I've grown familiar with these blemishes and each new discovery has added to the cumulative nagging awareness that one day I would have to tackle the walls.
I've also learned more about the previous previous occupants - the people who sold the house to the family from whom we bought it. They were a tempestuous bunch - a Mr, a Mrs and a teenage son. They shouted, argued and occasionally fought and made a scene. Their inability to live harmoniously with themselves and each other periodically exploded from the house. They were fragmented by their chaos and they sold up and left.
Today I've been preparing the walls - sanding and filling. During my dusty hours up close with the walls I have found more (in)decorative imperfections. I have found deep frenzied gouges in the plaster telling of an inability to deal with frustration (when stripping wallpaper). I also found foot-holes - holes kicked through the plasterboard a foot or so from the floor when someone's fury exploded from them.
Last summer we heard that the father and son had continued to struggle to contain their fury - the son having killed his father when they fought.
Posted by padraig at September 10, 2004 10:06 PM