Webleigh, our new house is lovely. We took possession yesterday. We have still not done anything about actually moving into it. We have sixteen days. Or so.

Here at Franklin, our old house, I have barely packed four boxes. There are, of course, boxes and boxes in the garage and the basement that never got unpacked when we moved into Franklin. But in terms of packing up the things that are a part of the daily lives of five people, we have made a four-box dent, consisting mainly of books.

The nice thing about moving from one house in the city to another house in the city is that, truly, you don’t have to pack pack. You can just run around dumping things in a box, drive them over, and then pull them out. They don’t have to survive the ministrations of movers, a long drive and various transitions.

There was certainly a little bit of emotional let-down in our taking possession. The house was not as clean as we would think you would leave a house when selling. For example, the appliances weren’t clean. WHY does nobody ever clean out the fridge and stove? Third house I’ve bought, and yes, third round of uncleaned appliances. This time we have mold in the freezer because they, in addition to not cleaning it, turned off the fridge and left it with the doors closed.

The outdoor faucet has somehow broken so that it will not stop running, so very first thing we need to replace the faucet. And there was a massive downpour yesterday, so as we were leaving, on my last walk-through, I discovered that the skylight was leaking. So we shall have to patch the roof very soon. And then there are three broken windows and lots of mangled weatherstripping that we’ll want to repair before winter.

We wanted a character house. We wanted a character house. This will be our mantra.

Really though, we did want a character house. And things have gone wrong at Franklin, like mangled weatherstripping, lights that don’t work, windows leaking, toilets leaking. With a ten year old house you grind your teeth and mutter “shoddy workmanship”. With a ninety year old house, you either say “I shouldn’t have bought a character house,” or you say, “this house needs us.”

I think we are the latter. We like projects. And we like to own things that we have really invested ourselves in. And really, there is a lot we could have done for Franklin – but because of the neighbourhood we knew we didn’t really want to stay forever. And so we were never invested.

We’ve had Webleigh for 1 day and already we can say, “that is the door handle we provided for it.” And then it will be, “there is the faucet we put in.”