The Run-Down Dream House
A fixer-upper that is worth so much more than the sum of its parts
I’ve been spending a lot of time with my house lately. It’s with me in my imagination a lot. Our roommates recently moved out, so we have twice as much space to manipulate. I have so many dreams about long red curtains, crushed velvet couches, things that I think are called “light fixtures,” but I can’t be sure, because Googling “light fixtures” does not ever produce what I’m picturing in my mind. I daydream a lot about stumbling on “amazing rescue pieces” (which I understand to be sets of chairs from the 1930s or whatever) from Facebook Marketplace for very cheap.
(As an aside — I can no longer navigate Facebook. I feel confused when I open it, like I’m looking at a map of a mall in a city that I have never been to and never plan to visit. It seems like a lot of the furniture on Marketplace links to websites like Wayfair or Crate & Barrel, which I am completely capable of visiting on my own, and which do not have any “amazing rescue pieces.” The whole idea of a “rescuing” a piece of furniture is that you’re saving it from a terrible fate, like the kind of demon trash compactor that’s in “Toy Story 3.”)
The upstairs living room has the best window in the house, absolutely. It’s a big, south-facing window, and it looks out into a lot of…
