It was August of 2005 when I first clapped eyes on R Bungalow. It was Tim’s weekend off at the Coast Guard station at Marblehead, and we were visiting my parents. They kept S, who was a busy toddler at the time, while we went to church. Alone! We probably hadn’t been to a Mass at St. John Vianney as a couple since our wedding day. If you’ve ever tried to sleep through an alarm, you understand the extreme contrast of going to church without your kids. It’s heaven itself.
After communion, as the ministers ‘did the dishes’ I just enjoyed the presence, my mind blessedly at rest. Tim was finishing his night school program in Sandusky, and reaching the end of his enlistment. So we were looking forward to moving home, and starting to think about looking for a house.
As the entire congregation sat in quiet reflection, I looked over at the Holy Family statue, and felt the word “Rosecliff” come through my mind. I leaned over to Tim and whispered, “Maybe we could leave a little early today, drive through the old neighborhood?”
We got home, packed up S, and headed west, exiting at 185th. There happened to be an open house at a Tudor right across the street from the church on Neff, with a huge tree mounded up in the front yard. It needed a lot of updating, a reconfigured bathroom, and those tree roots were maybe snaking through the foundation. At Lakeshore, I asked him to go east a ways. We got to Rosecliff, where there were two For Sale signs, so we turned up. One was in front of an impressive white bungalow with a green tile roof.
The other was in front of an empty-eyed beige thing with a cement stoop, two yucca plants, and a jalousie front porch. It reeked of vacancy. I was undeterred, though as I recall Tim didn’t actually want to get out of the car. The backyard was private, and the front room, when I peeked through a window, ran the whole width of the house—all you had to do was look past the empty wheelchair by the front door!
It was the worst house on the best street. That’s the dream! (No, I am not too liberal with that phrase.)
We worked with a nice, city-focused realtor (meaning he did not once ever even try to show us a home in a suburb). Tim wrapped up his enlistment, we hung around Norwalk long enough for the midwife I’d picked to catch D in late January 2006, and we closed on the house two weeks later.
But it was Jim Jagger, a longtime home inspector in the neighborhood, who handed me the keys to the house months before. I greeted him in the driveway, he nodded at the front porch, clicked on his tape recorder, and began, “What we have here is an American Craftsman bungalow” With those words—those elegant, unlockable, researchable words, our adventure began.
Weeks later, on another “off” weekend, we took a trip to the Sandusky Library. I built a pile so high, I nearly went into labor carrying them all—Tim was busy chasing S.
Here are the books I’d gladly have gone into labor for, right there in the reading room:
Bungalow Kitchens and Bungalow Bathrooms by Jane Powell. She describes these two volumes as “what-to, not how-to” books for and period style from roughly 1900-1940. Filled with photos and helpful illustrations, I wore out the binding In the kitchen book going back to it so often for ideas—layout, cabinets, trim, details. In reading these, it will help if you have a healthy tolerance for puns.
Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, by Terry Meany. In summation, your wood windows have survived many decades of abuse; just think how well they’ll work if you just show them some love.
Bungalow Colors by Robert Schweitzer. I found out later that a neighbor hired Mr. Schweitzer to consult on their exterior color scheme. I got the book second hand, and we picked the color scheme on page 166, since the roof was the same color.
The Magic Toolbox by Mie Araki. This is a children’s picture book about an ambitious bunny and an extremely prescient toolbox.
I actually found a Magic Toolbox recently, but that's a story for another day.
