Sky Box

I don’t know if they are going to execute gang-leader Stanley “Tookie” Williams tomorrow, or if the Syrians are responsible for the latest assassination in Beirut , or if the terrorists are responsible for the tremendous blast at the fuel depot near Heathrow Airport outside London .

I have not been paying that much attention. I had a lot to do over the weekend with the holidays coming. The shopping is just about done, and the debt is now incurred. I’ll deal with that next month, in the New Year.

I was driving in the pick-up truck with my older boy. We had finished the last of the shopping in Georgetown , and then stopped on the base to buy imported champagne at discount rates from the Post Exchange. I like shopping for liquor, and it is fun to stock up for the holidays. When we found just the right vintage, an import that was just fancy enough, we motored off Fort Myer from the Class Six liquor store up Washington Boulevard.

We passed through Lyon Park, which adjoins the Fort . The neighborhood used to be a stop on the old streetcar line from the District for people who wanted to take a day trip to the country. Little cottage communities grew up along the line, summer places, mostly, and the Park still has that tourist air about it.

The developers are ripping the little places down and erecting McMansions on the three-quarter-acre lots to everyone’s horror. But that is the way it works when you are this close-in to the Federal City . Owners have the choice of tearing down their places and starting over, or blowing out the back and putting on a modern addition. It is changing the character of the neighborhood, which is why people bought there

I’d rather have a house than a condominium, of course, but it probably won’t be in this town. That was one of the topics of discussion with my son over lunch at J. Paul’s 1880s-vintage saloon on M Street in the District. He made a comment that made me realize that the little efficiency where I have been living was embarrassingly small.

I let it slide, since so much has changed of late. The only smart investing I have done has been in  Northern Virginia real estate. I first washed ashore at Big Pink a couple months after I found myself living out of the trunk of my car, moving each day or so between the available rooms in the transient officers quarters on the bases at Fort Myer and McNair.

I had no priority on the housing list, since my homelessness was purely voluntary, so anyone coming to Washington on orders bumped me out. I don’t recall actually sleeping outside, though there was a night on a pal’s yacht out on the  Maryland shore that made me hungry for someplace to call my own.

With growing desperation I looked at apartments in Arlington , where I found myself because that is where the military facilities were. A Realtor showed me a little box on the second floor of Big Pink and I jumped at it; a real place with a real door, a shower, and a little kitchenette.

I couldn’t afford it, not with one son starting college and the meanest attorney in Fairfax County on my tracks, but you do what you have to do.

I was devastated when I lost the lease on the box, and there was some unpleasantness with Winnie, the owner, who had been defeated in life and forced to fall back on the little property she owned. I still see her in the lobby occasionally, and I feel sorry for her, even if she screamed at me over the phone for my disorganized decampment.

Fate being what it is, a slightly larger place came up for rent on the fifth floor, where Marty One and Margaret live. We had a ball up there, playing Sorcerer’s Apprentice from the balconies when the hurricane came in the Spring three years ago.

The trees danced and the limbs cracked with the gale, and the power went out. The radiator failed in that place that summer, drenching the carpet and the three layers of Persian rugs that made the place look like a Bedouin tent. I had no other place to put them, and no place to dry them properly.

So although I was happy on the fifth floor, I was always looking over my shoulder, wondering what mischance elsewhere would cause me to start piling my things in the shopping cart again.

Big Pink features several model apartments, from efficiencies to some grand three-bedroom palaces up on the eighth floor. Of course they are not apartments; Big Pink converted to condominium ownership about a quarter century ago in the first big rush to transform the rental trade. I don’t know what they cost back then, and finding out would only depress me.

But I had to do something. Three Springs ago I was walking out of the building by the side exit on the prestigious West End of the building, where the Steelworkers have their colony at poolside.

Henry was standing by the open door to the efficiency that is closest to the pool gate, looking hopeful. Henry had made something of a career out of selling units at Big Pink. He owns seven units, at last count, and is always flipping them or fixing them or renting them out.

He is an unassuming young man, soft appearing, but he sensed that something was happening in the market and went about exploiting it. I looked in the place, and almost before I realized it I had passed from the patio right through the single room, past the kitchen and bathroom, and into the hall.

It was smaller than what I was living in, but if I owned it, no one could ever throw me out again. I went back upstairs, gave Henry a check backed with funds I thought I could produce by the next banking day, and began the process of home ownership again.

It was still too small, and apparently an embarrassment.  I found a place in Big Pink that was coming on the market, and began negotiations to secure it, but the greed factor was too intense. Owners were expecting to virtually double their investments, and negotiations broke down with acrimony.

Then Dorothy from Oz decided to hang it up and move to Florida to be closer to the hurricanes, and I made an offer she could not refuse.

I don’t know if it was smart or not. At the instant I signed the papers and assumed the mortgage I thought I had made a profit. But that might have been at the very top of the market, and the future is murky. But even if things soften, I should be OK. They are not making any more real estate down here, and there is plenty of parking at Big Pink and the location cannot be beat.

My only problem was that I couldn’t live in the place I bought. The IRS says that in order to harvest real estate profits tax-free, the property must have been used as a primary residence for two full years out of any five year period. So I would go upstairs periodically and wander in the empty rooms, looking at the hardwood floors and fiddling with the appliances in the kitchen.

Two full years were up last week 

It has been real luxury to have two places, since I have been in a constant state of work on the Sky Box, and I hate to live in the place I am deconstructing.

I replaced the old radiator units, which provide heat and cooling to each of the three living zones: living room-dining room, guest bedroom/library and master bedroom. The original convectors were exactly that; unchanged since they were installed in 1970. They had layers of paint over them, and mold within,  and it was impossible to keep them clean.

Ominously, the wood parquet flooring around two of them showed evidence of past flooding. Some of the tiles were rotted. I decided to bite the bullet and replace them with new units, with clean drains and new threading on the pipes that connect to the building’s chill water system.

When I saw what was under the old covers, I was glad that I had made the decision. Some of the pipes were corroded so badly they had to be cut out. So that done, I got a line on a guy who does quality woodwork and had him come out and replace the damaged wood and stain it to match. Now the floors look seamless and glossy.

The bathrooms are in pretty good shape. I had them re-caulked and painted, and they are perfectly serviceable. Then the kitchen. The previous owner had asthma and lung problems, and she carried an oxygen tank with her whenever she ventured out of the unit, like an astronaut.

Accordingly, she  had been reluctant to do anything that would raise a lot of dust. So, while she had replaced the cabinets, dishwasher, stove and reefer, the floor was still old linoleum tile with some newer press-on tile on top.

So out with that. I found some porcelain tile that was a pretty good match for the new counter-tops and had the floor taken down to the bare concrete and the new tile laid.  Grouting it was a much bigger project than I had anticipated, and I have been doing industrial-strength dusting ever since.

I like the refrigerator. It dispenses crushed ice, and you don’t have to open the door to get it. I was always running on the critical edge when making margaritas down at poolside, since the  Kenmore with the ice-maker I bought is not truly industrial grade. It is refreshing to have the capability to entertain dozens of thirsty guests.

The last touch was to upgrade the bathrooms. I decided to install some cabinets in towers that fit cunningly around and above the toilets. It gives some additional storage space to store critical long-lead time procurement items, like shampoo, conditioner and mouthwash.  

I did that yesterday, and I think I may start sleeping upstairs, maybe this week. My son and I stopped by the Sky Box yesterday to watch the kick-off of the Redskins game, which was late, since it was televised from Arizona . He helped me lift the bathroom cabinets in place and we had a beer.

I asked him what he thought of the place, and he thought for a moment. He said it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as it could be.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsoctra.com

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