I have an old house. While idiosyncratic, with its banging radiators and tiny bathroom (It didn’t have a shower until the 1970s! Just a claw-foot tub!), I do love it. The hip-roofed Colonial has warmly held two families, and now me, since 1921.

I bought the thing when I was 23, submitting the final offer on my birthday that year. Happy Birthday to me! The house was last on the set of listings I neurotically forwarded to my broker. It was a fixer-upper on a quiet street near an elementary school… not exactly what a single girl looking to explore her city wanted to hear. BUT, it was reasonably priced, and had potential.

When I toured it for the first time, it spoke to me. Despite the matted shag carpet that covered the entire first level save the kitchen, the peeling wallpaper, the uneven horse-hair plaster, the “wood” paneling hiding god-knows-what, and the faint lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke, it spoke to me.

The sun poured through the front-facing bedroom windows, and I thought “this would be perfect for makeup application at my vintage vanity!” I imagined my sparkly cocktail dresses displayed in the ell off the bedroom (originally intended as a nursery — soon to be a giant closet cradling my own “babies.”) The stained glass windows, one in the stairwell and another in the dining room, were like art-deco brooches. I imagined my growing collection of vintage cocktail accoutrement nestled in the built-in china cabinet.

SOLD.

That first night there, after cramming Cookie Monster and Biscotti together in my only cat carrier and borrowing my grandfather’s pickup truck to cart boxes of stuff across town, I did not sleep. Relentless thoughts of “WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” and “THIS IS SO EXCITING” and “WHAT IS THAT NOISE?!” were on loop. I felt like I was squatting in some old lady’s house. The cats were freaked out.

After a month straight of ripping up carpet, painting impossible-to-paint plaster walls, cleaning, stripping wallpaper with vinegar and smelling like pickles, re-arranging, and dealing with the inevitable joys of home ownership (50′ fir tree falling down in backyard during a freak windstorm? Check! Archaic furnace dying on the first freezing night of the year? Check! Knob and tube wiring deemed un-insurable? Check!) the house felt like home. Those were tired months, cobbling together “renovation time” with a busy corporate schedule and various and sundry holidays, crises, obligations. Thank goodness for my parents.

I have lived there comfortably with my furry friends and the occasional house guest for about three years. There’s a joy in knowing I brought the house back to life, and that it is mine.