Tag Archives: house hunting

Gallifrey House or Pot House

17 Aug

I’ve been house hunting twice this week: first Sunday afternoon, and then today. I’ve gotten excited about two quirky houses; if someone beats me to #1, then I’ll bid on #2…but I’m really hoping for #1, which I saw today.

#2 is a blue house built in 1947. I think I sent you a picture showing the living room and dining room and, in the distance, the black and white checkered kitchen floor. It has four rooms that can be used as bedrooms, although one of them is connected to the living room through a pair of French doors. I found myself thinking that would be the library until you move to Oregon; then it can be a combination the library and my bedroom. Like most of the main floor, it has a hardwood floor, but it’s painted black. There are two carpeted upstairs bedrooms and a second bathroom; I figured I’d rent those rooms to college students for a while.

And then there’s the attached building out back. Maybe it was originally a garage or barn or stable. The sellers used it for growing their legal cannabis. I’m guessing they started the business while only medical marijuana was legal. The main floor has four rooms that were all used for growing pot; the wooden walls are mostly lined with white plastic, and there are pipes attached to faucets for watering the plants. In the central hallway is a staircase that doesn’t have a railing; it was dusty, and I figured the rooms upstairs would also have plain wooden walls.

Until today’s house tour, I was fantasizing about the blue house. I could see myself living there… and I knew I would be compelled to put the pot barn to use somehow. Some of it could be storage, but it has enough rooms that I’d want to redecorate and turn it into a living space, which would take a lot of work—even such things as insulation.

#1 is a green house built in 1951. It uses Time Lord technology. It’s bigger on the inside.

If you’re standing on the sidewalk and looking straight at the front of the house, it looks small. When you step through the front door, you enter a living room with a staircase on the right. Wandering around the house, you might think of M. C. Escher, and you could get lost wandering into various rooms (wonderful hardwood floors and a variety of colors painted on walls). There are two staircases, one in front and one in back; the online description says there’s an apartment in back, and I did remember that and notice a lock on a door leading to the section in back. I eventually realized there are also two kitchens, because the apartment includes a kitchenette. The back staircase has an odd cupboard under it and leads to one bedroom; the front staircase leads to three bedrooms, including one I immediately identified as mine, because the wainscoting is painted maroon. Here and there are alcoves and nooks and closets and cupboards. I stood in a space that reminded me of a phone booth.

In the fenced backyard, there’s plenty of space for a garden and chickens. There are also a couple of storage/porch/whatever outside parts of the house that struck me as potential catios (cat patios). There’s a laundry room that you enter through the back yard. There’s a strange wooden structure, currently full of tree stumps and branches, that looks like it’s meant to be a stage for amateur theatrics.

The original part of the house is likely one of those little post-WWII houses, but over the years it had various add-ons.