721 Harvey Street

My old neighbor Karl, used to restore houses in Junius Heights, the neighborhood in which I live.

When I lived in my batchelor house, I noticed that the house behind me might be vacant. Except one morning I saw I decidedly homeless looking dude sunning himself in the back yard. Then he was gone.

So I jumped the fence and checked it out. Homeless guy had broken through a window to gain entry. I called Karl, who lived a block away, and we both crawled into the house to see how bad the house was inside. Bad it was. It was stacked two feet high with junk, the floor was missing from the kitchen and rats were eating the place from the inside out. But worst of all, the homeless guy had rigged up a space heater to run off a leaky garden hose. The whole house --- a salvagable but battered abandonded 1921 Craftsman bungalow --- was about one space heater lighting away from exploding. Karl and I boarded up the house, locked it up, and kept an eye on it. He promised if I could find the owner and get them to sell, he'd buy the place and restore it, like he'd done with five other houses.

I found the owner, but she had died three years earlier in a nursing home. Then I finally located her son, who got the house after it cleared probate. He sold it to Karl for $14,000. Karl put $80,000 more into it and sold it for $198,000 about four years ago. When Karl got done with the house, it was in better shape than it was in 1921. I almost sold my house to get it.

Then Karl gets the crazy idea to move to Wellington, Kansas, where his wife is from and buy this 1880 Queen Anne Victorian for $40,000. This photo is what happens when Karl gets ahold of a messed up house and goes to work on it.

I want to be Karl.