Introducing Greta

Our family has an odd habit of naming inanimate objects. Not everything, of course, but things that constitute major purchases tend to get nicknames. Over the years, we’ve had a series of Volkswagens with the German-sounding names of Barbara, Frieda the First, and Frieda the Second, Audis named Audrey and Alex, and good old American Chuck the Truck, a Chevy, and his descendants Chuck II and Chuck III. Boats get names, but so do smaller things like vacuum cleaners. And now there’s Greta.

When my daughter moved back to Wisconsin to take her first salaried “big-girl job,” she brought with her from South Carolina a medium-sized mutt, black with white socks. Winston complicated matters, though: it’s hard to find an affordable apartment that takes dogs his size. Not that he’s particularly big, just big enough to make things difficult for housing-seekers. After several fruitless attempts, my kid came to the realization that, given current low interest rates, it would be less expensive to buy a house than it would be to rent.

Thus Greta, the centenarian former boarding house that has become home for my daughter and her pup. Greta wasn’t her first choice. My daughter’s eye was drawn to the already fixed fixer-uppers, the flashy flipped homes that came freshly painted and newly floored, with new prices triple their most recent sales figures from last fall. But the hot housing market meant that her first two houses were sold for prices well above asking, figures that Sophie’s dad and I could not in good conscience recommend she exceed. Greta, too, might have been out of her reach, but some creativity in her offer struck a chord with the sellers, and she was in.

I’m not sure why “Greta.” An old-fashioned name for an old house? She has classic appeal with her hardwood floors and bright, if sulky, windows. Her colors are dated. Paint hues fashionable in the 1990s cover her walls; old shag carpeting covers her floors. Greta has some minor structural issues, most notably a brick front porch that will need attention before snow files. But her bones are good, and the long list of projects means my daughter may reap some of the benefit of being the one who puts in the work.

Greta has become my project as well. Like my siblings, I grew up poking around with saw, hammer, and nails in my dad’s downstairs workshop, and I have a brain that understands the mechanics of fixing things up. My children didn’t have the benefit of Clarence Wagner’s tutelage, though. So along with everything else — my mediation legal business, my writing projects, my dogs and garden, my family — I now have my daughter’s house to fill my “spare” time. And you, my friends, can watch the progress of Greta from fixer-upper to fixed. If there ever is such a thing as “fixed.”

Enjoy.