Bats in my Belfry
In October 2019 I had a weekend away on my own in Buffalo; well I say on my own, Phil Collins was there with me too but what happens in Buffalo stays in Buffalo! Anyone who knows where Buffalo is in relation to me, will appreciate it was a fair old drive. I spent that drive home in deep thought and arrived back to the girls excited to pitch to them my idea for staying in the house. Within minutes my ideas were shot down in flames and I realized that converting the basement to an airbnb rental with a newly installed egress entrance and a locking door into the rest of the house was not the way forward.
Too many ghosts here they said, too much maintenance for you to take care of on your own they said, too much lawn to mow and way too much driveway that needs clearing when the snow comes, they said. And in that moment I knew we were moving.
Fast forward past my wonderful realtor suggesting what maintenance work needing doing for a Spring listing, past a fabulous painting team who painted out all my red feature walls and past the most amazing Winter Break week in NYC with the bestest friends a girl could have and it was time. We listed the house to sell the weekend New York State shut down and the rest, as they say, is history…
In the grand scheme of things selling our old house was a piece of cake in comparison to the efforts buying this house took. Inspection issues appeared and contingencies did not get closed out in anything like a reassuring timeline or manner. But finally, with the help of my fab realtor and a tenacious attorney it was mine and that is where the fun really began!
I know in the early days of living here I shared my frustrations over blind installation and possibly a little more, but to be honest the quantity of things the house threw at me in those first few months we lived here was overwhelming and very nearly made me unwell. It seemed like it was never ending. A short term rental property in its previous life and every job that needed doing needed taking back at least three steps further than I had wanted or budgeted for, because it just hadn’t been done first time round with the love and attention of someone who was then going to live in the house with that fix. I needed an easy win and when I didn’t get that doing something as simple as moving a coat rail higher in a closet I had to stop. I had backed myself into a corner; I was upset at having to do all the jobs, but I was only doing the jobs for me and my pleasure, the girls didn’t mind how tidy a closet was or how high the coat rail was. Stopping and really thinking about what steps were next has helped me immensely. So has finding a reliable handiman, who came running the week I had 3 bathroom leaks and a roof leak all on consecutive days. But asking for help and being prepared to accept help has allowed me to completely change my mindset over our home, which is just as well considering the joys it brought between Christmas and New Year.
The first calamity occurred while we were all out of the house walking… no one knows how, well I suspect someone knows how, but for now we’ll stick with the no one knows how version… somehow an upstairs toilet began spewing dirty water through my newly painted kitchen ceiling. By the time we returned from our lovely, relaxing walk there was water and lots of it in the kitchen; on the counters, on the floor, over the Gingerbread houses, over the Christmas goodies (thank heavens NOT over the English chocolate!) and lots of mess in the bathroom. Both needed extensive cleaning, disinfecting and sanitizing.
To put a positive spin on the second, it was more the solution to a mystery that had been bothering me for several months… what is that scratching noise in the attic that wakes me up at night? If you already guessed what is coming you get bonus points; I am the proud owner of an extensive colony of bats; flappy, scratchy, screechy bats! I don’t know much about bats but in the last 5 days I have found they are a protected species, there’s no going into the attic right now and napalming the lot of them, sadly. I must be patient, learn to sleep through their nighttime scratching and wait till Spring. But come Spring they need to appreciate they are being evicted!
This holiday was really the tipping point for changing my thinking and reminding me how much I love this house. I’m not yet seeing the reduced maintenance we moved for, or the reduced snow clearing due to sheer quantity of snow falling right now, but I am loving our location. We are loving our location. We can walk miles every day and we do. We are spending quality time together as a family and that was something that our old home and its ghosts didn’t let us do. Yes, we are in a pandemic and yes that inhibits so much of what we can do, but that would be the same wherever we were living right now and is not the fault of our new home.
The learning has been huge for me in the last 5 months; I can confidently use a drill, can fix things, put up shelves, blinds and curtain poles, change electrical outlets and switches, even install a light, but most of all I can ask for help!
To those I have asked and who have then delivered, I thank you!
Be kind, be gentle,
Denise xoxo
