The house became a home. And now it’s on Zillow.

The funny thing about selling a house, if it’s a home, a home sweet home, is you have a relationship with that house.

​And seeing it on Zillow is fun…but it’s also like seeing your soon-to-be-ex on a dating app. It’s shocking, and sad. It’s the beginning of the end of something.

In my case, 18.5 years.

I bought the house, way beyond my means or what I could afford, with a nothing-down loan. I had no money, maybe $300 bucks in my account.

I was mostly looking at cheap houses and condos, until I saw this house, this Victorian, backing to a park. It’d been on the market for a year, so the price was a little soft—the seller, a good doctor moving to Denver, flexible. I walked in and saw the good bones and remember thinking, I could live here for the rest of my life. I never have to move again.

​I loved it up from the get go…

It smelled like cigarette smoke, back then, and had bright weird green and purple paint in some of the rooms. Chrome and black plastic chandelier, a particular un-favorite. The upstairs bathroom, the larger of two bathrooms back then, was small and cramped and claustrophobic and frankly depressing, like something bad had happened in there. A big tall drywall wall between the toilet and the bath interrupted the space and cut off the light and made it so you had to swivel in place to get around the sink, toilet, and aisle. All the doors in all the bed rooms were so close to any sized bed frame they hit said bed frames.

So I removed the smoky wallpaper, or plastered over it. Opened up rooms and expanded both bathrooms. Introduced eco insulation instead of the toxic pink stuff, or in many cases a wide open heat-losing wall that contained only century-old newspapers or sawdust. Created a book nook out of one wall, expanded two closets, insulated and cleaned a crawlspace and added…yes…58 windows, including skylights, stained glass, and windows in doors. The R value went up, and the attic got finished, and a 360-views-of-Boulder balcony and spacious main bedroom were added. A deck was added on the back and the whole house fenced in, with bike wheel rims and pallets and other fun things, including a shovel used in the 2013 flood. A 40-foot two-level Tree house was built out of reclaimed materials, without a single screw or nail in the giant tree it hugged. I opened up the space beneath the stairs, for cubbies and shoes, and added Schoolhouse brass and pottery fixtures, Rejuvenation fair trade wool rug with brass holders, and Restoration Hardware brass curtain rods, holders, and curtains. We used old doors from a gutted Victorian in Denver, sideways, as wall paneling in the new bedroom. We added a huge closet to one wall, with stained glass windows on both levels that communicated light, with sound and visual privacy, between the floors and walls. Persian rugs and antiques and organic and natural furniture and even framed pictures (barnwood) were added. We exposed brick on one, two, three, four, five walls, repointed the brick in a time-consuming but cleaning and strengthening process. We added real bead board, not toxic plywood, and a Putnam library ladder to the attic, where I painted a sun and moon and stars in the insulated lath and plaster beneath the new white metal roof, that kept the attic cool, quiet in all months. We put three beds up there for play area fun or guests. We added antique doors and opened up rooms with stained glass and the book nook and new bedroom got gorgeous custom-fit lighting and built-in shelves, just like the bathrooms, one of which got a two-person tall copper nickel-lined tub. I added tin paneling and an antique sink in one, and a mountain grown juniper sink in another. An antique Jenny Lind bed cradled that sink, and the book nook, and the kitchen farm white porcelained sink, which was rescued from the side of the alley two houses down along with a Victorian door we restored. Cheap materials like particle board were taken out, throughout, and real wood used, as with the basement stairs or paneling in the back of the house. Huge heavy slabs of countertop became flooring, with reinforced reclaimed wood below to hold the weight, and marbles were put in the red grout in that floor to provide footing on slippery wet days. Transom windows and hooks made of branches were added, along with a solar pergola and a woodshed and a stained glass and copper bike shed beneath the tree house stairs and the giant old silver maple, the queen of the property that backed to green Mattie Dean park and two other larger park-like properties, a green carpet to unobstructed views of the Flatiron mountains, which put on a daily show with the weather and clouds and light or snow or wind. Custom benches to shade the skylights in the hottest weeks, or to protect guests at parties, were added to the high up balcony overlooking the mountains and parks and all of Boulder’s low cozy treeful skyline. A cubby was lit from within trough two stained glass drawers, a white fleur-de-lis chandelier added to the bathroom and Fireclay tile off Marketplace and Carrara marble from ReSource, a salvage yard of sorts, polished it all off. An Ashe, the Buddhist symbol of genuine heart confidence, was carved into the original plaster, not added, on the mantel and fireplace, where the brick was exposed. Bricks were mended and mortared, and bronze wire guards were put in place as custom screens or beneath heat registers, to keep the mice out (it worked). A hexagonal honey jar was put in a spot where a pipe once was, a whiskey decanter in another. A copper shower was added, and more glass bricks and custom stained glass through the floors and walls for light, air, and delight. Open shelving was added in place of dark cabinets and countertops in the now-light-filled-once-dark kitchen, and light streamed into the once dank living room, with shelves full of cheerful heavy books. Plants filled corners. A new round hot tub sits beneath the Maple. Red-red-orange painted Victorian toriis were added, Victoriis I called ’em. A third torii out of telephone poles became the hardworking side-back gate. An old Sinclair sign went over the garage. A basketball hoop rose up in the alley, and saw lots of action. Old bike rims and basketball hoops topped the fence there, keeping the ball from bouncing over into the backyard. Neighbors were befriended and especially dog-loving neighbors, for hundreds if not thousands of historic cemetery strolls and backyard dog romp dates. A bright orange local retro fridge and stove were added, and copper pipes to the farm sink rose up, displacing old dark cabinets that had made homes for mice for many years. The place became brighter and clean and full of detail, craft, care, and play. Victorian chandeliers, brass, brightened the tiger oak dining table and entrance, where a school bench invited visitors to take their shoes off over a red blue cozy persian rug. Custom once-shipworthy brass lighting went up in the upstairs bath, and the lower bath got a light right over and behind the tub for better reading of New Yorkers. Fruit trees were planted from local Harlequins—apple, cherry, apple, cherry, and a few flowering trees joined the lilacs and cowboy truck benches and Buddha statue beneath the maple and old benches made out of my elementary school, Mapleton, by the hot tub and just above on the deck of the treehouse. A doghouse was added, just removed last week—barn red with gold lettering of sweet old Redford dog’s name and a dog weathervane, painted with his spots in the right place. Hundreds of old local rocks were moved by hand, my biceps remember them still, from a neighbor’s house who was de-rocking. Pink, red, granite, all of it. A Christmas tree, rooted, rescued from cutting in the mountains, planted post-Xmas and growing tall, now. Landscaping added in the front with dozens of plantings, and hardy roses in front and back. A side gate, a fourth torii, named after the neighbor kids because it was low and fit only for them really. A vintage metal screen added to the fence, with three birdhouses, for added privacy to the bathroom, where the window was expanded by a third for more light and the tub wrapped in marble. And last but not least, the cutest most elegant, double-paned for heat dog door, with a copper chimney on the inside and a stained glass (yes) window on the outside, in a wood frame with a heavy narrow wood ramp help in place with, yes, local pink sandstone.

Amazingly, I could go on. The house held worlds and layers of craft and eco, historic renovation.

If I’d stayed, an ADU would be added in the back, and / or a rentable apartment in the brick and stone-walled large basement, with low-slung ducts removed for heat pumps and no more central air.

The house became a home. And now it’s on Zillow.