We moved to Old Town Clovis in September of 2000, after being married just over a year. We found a great deal on an apartment one street over from Pollasky Avenue, and fell in love with the area. A few years later, we summoned up the courage to become homeowners.
One night, as we were dreaming about being homeowners in Old Town, we were taking our nightly jog around the neighborhood (a ritual that died long ago!) when we passed this....uh...."architectural wonder" pictured below. It was late at night, and someone inside was playing loud electric guitar. I distinctly remember saying to Chad, "Let's just hope we don't end up next door to a junky place like that, with all that noise!"
Fast forward a few months, and I had to eat my words when this "lovely" place ended up being NEXT DOOR to our
cute little house that we couldn't resist buying. Since we moved in, we have tried hard not to look at it. It really is an eyesore, and we soon dubbed it "The Bomb Shelter" due to the various riffraff that were in and out of the house all the time. Over the years it has fallen into even worse disrepair and we wondered what might become of it (and how badly our property value was suffering). Then a few months ago we heard from some other neighbors that someone had actually bought the place as an investment.
Our first thought was, "Why not just tear it down and start over?!" But several weeks ago we started noticing definite activity going on over there. I wish I had thought to take some pictures sooner, because the pics below actually show the place in quite an improved state. Before Mr. Handy started working on it, the brown weeds were waist-high and the front was covered in graffiti.
Then a few weeks ago, Mr. Handy decided to introduce himself to Chad and share his plans for the place -- a complete overhaul, to turn it into a rental -- that involved us sharing the cost of fixing the fence between our place and "TBS." Hello, unexpected major expense! After getting some shocking quotes, we made a deal with Mr. Handy to pay $900 for our part of the project. Yes, $900 sounds outrageous, but this was SIGNIFICANTLY less than half of the quotes we received just for that one stretch of fence that divides our properties. And since $900 was all he asked for, we did the "good neighbor thing" and coughed up our share. (Really, the new fence looks good from our side, and adds to our motivation to get our backyard finished!)
Every day we hear new noises and voices over the fence, and we're watching cautiously to see the outcome of Mr. Handy's "investment." The other day Chad got a tour, and discovered it's actually a 3-bedroom, 1-bath house that's smaller than ours. At that point I decided we should chronicle the progress, since this place has been such a topic of conversation ever since we moved in.
Here's hoping Mr. Handy can turn that ugly duckling into a less ugly duckling! I will continue to post pics as we see progress.
