How to rip apart your entire life… throw sanity to the wind… sign up for more stress than ever before…and commit to it for years without end.
Paul and I went and looked at this. Because it is for sale. And because we are insane.
The appeal is obvious… No?
The only reason we could afford this, (which is a statement without any concrete basis, but is perhaps possible according to our imagination) is that it is a seven-unit rental property. And because it is falling down. And therefore it is cheap.
Cheap, compared to what? I’m not exactly sure… Compared to other, non-falling–down mansions on the river? Compared to homes that are actually homes, rather than giant pits of despair and mess and shoddy roofing, and being able to see the sky through the second-floor ceiling, and plywood patches on the exterior walls… That kind of cheap.
Once we pay for it and put many hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars into it, untold years of our lives, live with our tenants, and possibly kill each other… it will no longer be cheap.
But THIS will be our front porch.
And it kind of makes me not care about being happily married. Or sane. Or eventually divorced and bankrupt.
Granted. It does have some issues.
Why yes, that IS insulation just hanging out of a wall that appears to have been bashed through.
Why yes, they DID tuck a bathroom into a room that is hardly six-feet tall…I know this, because I am six-feet tall, and I could barely stand up in there.
Why yes, a Mansard tower burned down at some point, and they just laid two-by-fours over the hole, topped it with plywood and poured concrete as the roof!
When we left. We said things like: that house is completely doomed. Only a crazy person would buy that. We would be insane to even consider it. We would seriously end up divorced.
To try to renovate a house of THAT size. Would be an undertaking of grave idiocy.
It would probably kill Paul.
The realtor assured us no bank will finance this. And that whoever buys it is going to need cash. Which made us laugh. And secretly mad at eachother. Why do neither of us have over half a million dollars just sitting around.
So. Out of curiosity, we’ve asked the bank. Nicely.
RELATED POSTS:
- Part II- Where I consider whether I can handle this.
- Part III- More photos of the house, and where it is revealed that I will not be getting a ballroom after all.
February 11, 2015 @ 10:55 am
I just found your blog, and I started at the beginning–
I stopped short when I got to this entry though, because I think my hubby and I used to live here! I can’t quite remember the number (maybe 105 Bank Ave? I can see the address sticker on my Victoria Magazine in my mind’s eye 🙂 ha ha)(Is that mag even still in print??) but there were several mansions-carved-into-apartments along there. We were on the ground floor, in back, in a two-bedroom, with amazing high ceilings and ivy-wallpaper in the kitchen. This was 1990.
Anyway, we were preggers so we bought a home in Cherry Hill and the rest is history.
Dying of curiosity now– is there an update? This place really needs to be a B&B!
August 13, 2016 @ 10:29 am
Oh. my. I think I just fell in love with this falling down mansion. I came across your site on Pinterest and have been reading this morning to this point. Holy cow this is exactly the same kind of reaction that I would have had, and my husband would have looked at me like I am crazy, and I would have persuaded him that this would be PERFECT for our first house. Totally sane, right??
Ah this is gorgeous!
August 25, 2016 @ 5:36 pm
It had me at the reflection of the sunset on the water in the window.
Found you on I don’t even no where at this point but it had to do with the ginormous kingdom mirror that you bought off of CraigsList. I have since been reading from the beginning bit by bit. You are hilarious and I covet your current house.
December 11, 2021 @ 4:18 pm
I actually worked on this mansion in 1964 for a home remodeling company called Stankovitch Construction company out of Gloucester. I was part of a team that was putting cheap paneling over all of the walls, most of them with beautiful intricate details. I was only a 20 year old college student at the time but I cringed every time we put up another panel. I don’t remember it being in a state of disrepair at that time, but only needing much TL……not paneling! I think my boss was the first owner to convert the upper floors into rental apartments.
September 3, 2024 @ 1:47 am
My grandparents lived here in the 60s ( second floor) and I would love to visit