Fixer Upper

The Gate

The old yellow house with peeling paint and a serious dry rot problem was smaller than it looked on Zillow.

I walked up the rickety steps. Inside, moldy walls and floors, a decades-old wire slung treacherously over a nail in the wall. Popcorn ceilings, loose floor boards, and an indescribable smell emanating from the bathroom.

    "It needs some work," my realtor said. "But it's a good deal. And it's all you can afford."

    I told her we'd think about it.

    "Think about it?" she snorted. "Girl, if you don't put your offer in today you won't need to think any further. It'll be off the market tomorrow."

    We'd been looking for a house to buy in the Bay Area for almost a year. We had two incomes. I was a freelancer at the time, but steady. Yet, zilch. We couldn't afford anything.

    I'd never bought a house before. I'd dreamed about a quaint place with Bay windows and a view, not a fixer upper with asbestos. But it was either this one-hundred-years-old pile of garbage or moving.

    Without any experience in remodeling, we took a leap of faith. We had some money in savings. We had to make it work.

    The day I got the keys, I went to the house alone for the first time. I felt so lost. Would we really be able to pull this off? I tried to push away the panic building inside of me and went to the old gate on the side of the house. I had bought a lock for it at Ace Hardware. As I was bending down to place the chain around the metal bars, one of the rusty hinges came undone and the gate crashed onto my back.

This was real. What had we done?

    Crouched down, the gate still on my back, I begged the universe to give us the strength—and the resources—to see this through. Then I got up and put the lock on the gate.

    I cried in my car. I cried for weeks, by myself to not freak out my partner. I started dreaming I was homeless, sleeping under a bridge, panhandling for money. Had I made the worst decision of my life? Panic settled deep into my bones.

    The feeling of the gate on my back stayed with me for a long time. I knew this situation had the potential to break me.

    But it didn't.

    One day at a time, beam by beam and screw by screw, we put the house together. Two years later we signed off our permit with the city, refinanced, and paid our debt from the remodeling.

    Out of all my experiences, this is the one I am most grateful for. It showed me a strength, courage, and perseverance I didn't know I had. The old house is now our home. It has become my gate, our gate, to a more secure future.

    And I have discovered who I am.