COLUMN: Home archeology
New homes are for the weak of will, the timid of tool and the ignorant of equity. People who buy new homes are seduced by such trifles as straight lines, level floors and the requisite three-car garage with attached house.
Sure, you can build a trophy house in the hills on Pheasant Hollow Lane (named after where the pheasants used to be before houses were built there, I guess) and you can revel in your virgin pine and Italian marble. You may even be written up in the Home Tour, but you will never be able experience the abject joy of standing in your bedroom with an axe and saying, “Hmm, I wonder what’s behind this wall.”
True, there are times when all my food tastes like plaster dust, my clothes look like paint swatches and I go to sleep with my ears ringing from a circular saw. People who live in new homes do not understand “it’s not home improvement, it’s suburban archeology.”
Like most old-home owners I secretly hope to uncover a stash of $100 bills, hidden gold bars or at least clues to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
If I did have ghosts and if I could talk to them in my house, most of the questions would be along the lines of “what in the hell were you thinking when you were alive and built this place? Putting orange linoleum on top of hardwood floors? You deserve a miserable afterlife. You probably got kicked out of hell for trying to brighten the place up.
Ghosts of no old homes have no straight lines and seldom yield straight answers. I have no idea why there is a door to nowhere in the back of my closet. Who actually thought green shag carpet was attractive, and why would anyone paint over solid oak baseboard moldings? Who are these monsters who 40 years ago planted cute little trees 10 inches from the foundation and thought one electrical outlet per room was more than enough?
I actually found bricks on the inside of one wall. I found a quart jar worth of glass marbles, some popsicle sticks and remains of what I’m pretty sure was the largest indoor marijuana plantation in northern Utah. (You see, it was a rental for most of the ’70s and ’80s.)
What’s one more coat of paint? I know people worry about it peeling, but if you’ve ever tried to strip old paint, you know it doesn’t come off without using toxic chemicals, the heat of a volcano or enough sand paper to deplete a beach.
Wood grain vinyl or aluminum siding isn’t fooling anyone. It is the toupee of building materials. Everybody knows it looks fake. They are just too polite to tell you. If you must get siding, have the guts to have a giant windshield wiper installed so you can just squeegee off your whole house.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to slightlyoffcenter@attbi.com.