When I was 6 years old, my father bought a house for us, where he and my mother stayed the rest of their lives. As a carpenter, my father repaired and remodeled it. About the time I left for college, he installed a furnace, as well as an air conditioner to ease the summer heat. In my high school years, I painted the tin roof and climbed into the attic to poke insulation into it. I also crawled under the house to help my father install the ductwork for the furnace and tuck insulation beneath the floors. Those being depression years, we felt lucky to have a home that was paid for.
A couple of years after I got married in Chicago, my wife got an inheritance, and we used it on a down payment for a house. We picked a home in the north suburb of Highland Park, near schools and stores and two blocks from the commuter train station. The house was 30 years old when we bought it.
The furnace was converted from coal to oil fired. Three bedrooms, two baths, a sun parlor, a kitchen that needed remodeling, a garage almost too small for a modern car, and very thin insulation in the attic. The cedar-shingled roof needed replacement, and the whole house needed repainting inside and out. We referred to the previous owner as “Irving the slovenly,” and I set out to correct things.
After Irving moved out and before we moved in, we remodeled the kitchen. My father came up to see us with a suitcase full of tools. In a few days, every window came unstuck, the stair railing was restored, a closet replaced the coal bin, and my dad left the tools on a workbench in the basement. A few months later, the furnace gave out, and it was replaced with a gas burner. By then, I had drained and refilled the radiators. All of the rooms were warm. I obtained storm windows to cover all of them. Weekends and evenings, I sanded and painted all of the walls. A year later, off came the rusty tiles in the bathroom and on went new ones, along with a new shower in the tub. The exterior was brick. I caulked the windows and painted the sashes and eaves and every other surface. Then I contracted for a new roof.
When I needed any changes in electrical parts, my retired neighbor would come over and supervise my efforts. He also helped me with the plumbing when we replaced and moved the clothes washer. I helped several neighbors who had comparable houses and similar problems. Seven years later, we sold that house for almost double what we had paid, almost enough to cover the new roof, the furnace, the kitchen, and the many gallons of paint.
We moved to Washington to open an office for the American College of Radiology. I bought a house in a subdivision, just a year old and complete with two stories and a basement, three baths, a den, central air conditioning, a two-car garage, a neighborhood swim club. It was walking distance to schools and a 20-minute drive from my office. The house sat on a slope with a walk-in basement door in the back. We could not call the seller “Tommy the slovenly,” but we found that he had cut some corners. He put only 2 inches of insulation in the walls and only 4 inches in the attic. I could not open the walls, but I climbed into the attic and piled up extra insulation. I hung a fan over the attic vents to draw hot air out in the summer. We added storm windows and doors.
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