Nowhere to go but up
Monday November 12th 2018, 11:20 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

Note: there are mouseovers on the photos.

There were three of us that were going to be coming from California, and we booked an AirBnB together for our stay in Salt Lake.

The photos looked good. I’d always wanted to see the inside of some of the quaint old Victorians there and we were actually going to get to stay in one (or was it a Sears catalog house)–circa 1905. And the price was exceedingly reasonable.

As advertised, the two bedrooms were beautifully done.

That’s the good part.

Michelle’s flight landed a few hours before ours and she got there first.

She walked up the uncertain planks that gave a bit under your feet–not quite steps (think gym bleachers) since your shoes could slip between them at any point, but at least they held–and knocked on the door.

The hostess warmly welcomed her in, showed her what she needed to know, and as they stepped forward to the living room apologized over the painting they’d recently hung that had just fallen: the command strips hadn’t been strong enough to hold it. She was so sorry. She urged that we *not* sit on the couch for fear the other would come down too.

(That’s a vaulted ceiling with a whole lot of empty white space so they’d bought huge pictures to try to fill it up some. The walls dwarfed them.)

Oh. Kay.

The attic-type steps to her room were narrow and steep but coming back down, the overhang near the bottom was so low that even knowing it was there, she had a hard time ducking enough and bumped her head. It’s tough being tall.

At some point in the house’s history, air conditioning got invented. Wonderful! Someone smashed out the lower part of the dining area window to put one in. They filled the space around it with what came to hand. The brick broke? Nobody’ll notice, use it.

We tried to puzzle out whether that was a towel or a blanket stuffed up below that obvious one-time leak up there at the ceiling. We weren’t about to touch it to find out (not that I for one could have reached.)

Those kitchen shelves that went way, way up–how on earth did they get stuff up there? How on earth would you get it down? Doesn’t it make you want to scream and run that there are no doors to hold it all in when the earth starts to shake? There was a little folded step stool tucked away that you could use to climb up onto the narrow countertop and reach way up, which even standing on the counter would probably not be enough for me, still, but–just don’t. Even if you don’t have my fear of heights. I looked at the beautiful brown pottery and again felt very Californian: gravity doesn’t always work in the right direction, you just don’t put the heavy stuff so far over your head.

The bathroom tiles were a gorgeous deep green.

The shower was not much more than one hard zap of a stream, and trying to adjust that got a surprisingly heavy head throwing itself down at mine. I ducked and lucked out.

You want an outlet to plug in that CPAP? Then you can only open the bathroom door halfway, and to get in there with the cord going across you’re going to bash your head on the big towel rack hung over the other side of that tall door. Ouch. Everything in there is tall but me. Watch out, that Home Despot sink might fall right over or the flimsy plug-in lamp (the only light source) could land in it.

But this. This is not what we mean when we urge people to go green. That’s the door between the master bathroom and the kitchen. I could just imagine, No no that is not the pantry! (The hostess had already told Michelle about it, no worries there. It was locked.) Four panes of glass with a coat of paint slathered over sideways and a top pane boarded over and painted, too. Please tell me that particular door wasn’t originally in that spot, naked as a jaybird? We tried to figure out where it might have been repurposed from.

The hostess’s room was upstairs too, but for while we were there she turned the house over to us and let us have it to ourselves.

We figured a family must recently have inherited a home that had been lived in for decades by someone who could not manage upkeep and fixed it up enough so that they could get some income off it to help while they rehab it. Those two rental bedrooms are really quite nice. Just ignore the lack of a doorframe so far on the master. Wavy wallboard edges only. But the heating system worked really well and the bed and pillows were quite comfortable, the towels plentiful and thick, the shower curtain one I wanted to copy. They provided every bathroom thing you could think of and I was relieved at the sight of the hairdryer.

You know how they say cool old houses have good bones? I would say this one has started treatment for osteoporosis.

Michelle wondered how to describe the place in any review if she should even write a review, since she’s the one that booked it.

Up and coming? Lots of up. Definitely.

It will be a fond funny memory for a long time to come. That door!


2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Well. Now. Huh.

What can I say?

Comment by Afton 11.13.18 @ 4:32 am

Oh good heavens! What exactly can one say on a review? The mind boggles…

Comment by Pegi F 11.13.18 @ 4:45 am



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)