Out of the basement

Since arriving in Calgary about a week ago, we’d been living in a vacation rental basement condo while our stuff meandered up from the States.

The suite, possibly 300 square feet or so, was nice enough – a small kitchenette, a bar table with 4 stools, a bathroom and a bedroom with a very comfortable bed and pillows, and a small little entryway with a bed where the boys slept. It had internet access and free telephone calls. There was a washing machine and dryer in the hallway. It had a television – much to the delight of two of the Johnson men.

But it was dark and felt like a cave – the walls painted a deep taupe, heavy blinds in front of the windows for privacy. While I was grateful to have a ‘home base’ from which to operate, I was also grateful for opportunities to escape.

I guess I associate basements with despair and our situation was quickly turning desperate.

When we made a leap-of-faith move to Berlin in 2002 some friends of ours very kindly put us up in their basement for more than two months. Our bed was a bizarre futon-esque contraption that could not be made comfortable with all the padding in the world. It was also too short for our bodies. We called it ‘the pallet’.

The basement and the pallet represented everything that was going wrong for us in Berlin – unemployment, homelessness and a general sense of ‘what have we done?’

Fast forward to a little more than six years later and it seemed we were in the same place, if in a different city, and with two sidekicks. This time the bed was a lot better and at least one of us had a job, but things had not been going according to plan.

When we flew to Calgary we had tentatively agreed to rent a property in the Crescent Heights neighborhood. But when we arrived to check out the house that was about 1000 square feet there were a few tiny problems: the windows either had storm windows behind them or did not open; the gray/black mottled carpet was loose and bubbling up all over the place, in addition to being beyond ugly. The closets in two of the bedrooms consisted of slight indentations into the wall about 12 inches deep and 24 inches long. The closet in the third bedroom consisted of a square opening in the wall about 3 feet by 3 feet in size.

I was trying to be ‘brave’ as G would call it, but I couldn’t get on board with no airflow, no closet space and nasty carpet. We were back to square one, combing the internet for listings in our price range and a reasonable distance from the university.

About 75% of the properties we called or emailed about had already been rented. The other 23% were downright scary. And the remaining 2% were in good shape but had other ‘issues’ – people living underneath who may not appreciate two screaming boys, scary decks or bad locations.

And so we awoke this Sunday morning faced with the reality that we had to be out of our basement condo by 11am; that we’d plunked down an obscene amount of money for an additional three days of vacation rental living; that our furniture was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday and we had nowhere to put it.

• We had the possibility of renting a professor’s house near the University. Except the professor hadn’t responded to our emails and phone calls, and for all we knew the house had been rented already.

• We had the possibility of a beautifully remodeled main floor of a home. But it had a tenant in the basement who might not love hearing two boys carrying on upstairs. And the deck was not safe for little children. And getting to the university would be complicated. And it was $100 a month more than we could afford

• We had the possibility of our ‘original’ Crescent Heights landlord agreeing to replace the carpet and put screens on a few windows.

• We had a 3pm appointment to see another property – but couldn’t recall its specifics beyond location.

Jason got up to check email and announced: ‘Eduardo has said he doesn’t want to do the work – they want to rent the place as is.’ Eduardo being our original landlord.

We hadn’t even had our coffee yet.

The professor still hadn’t responded to Jason’s email or phone call which left only one solid option – the slightly expensive, main floor-only home. It would be fair to say we were a tad discouraged.

We started packing up when Jason’s cell phone rang. Mysteriously, since it didn’t seem to ring reliably in Canada (or Muncie for that matter). It was one of the many people he’d emailed earlier in the week – just a random listing from the newspaper. Jason made an appointment for us to look at the house at 11.30am, on our way out of town to the new vacation rental.

Of course, as life with two little kids goes, we didn’t leave the basement condo until 11.28am. I tried calling the woman to let her know we were on our way but she’d only given her home number. I left a message anyway. Jason suggested I try the professor one more time, since we were, after all, desperate. She actually answered.

And informed me the place had been rented.

At 11.47am we arrived at the possible rental home – or what we thought was the possible rental home. The street was beautiful, lined with million dollar homes. There was no one at the home, but the number on the house matched what J had written on the paper. I called her home number again, but no one answered, so I left another message.

Just as I was despairing that we’d hit yet another dead end, the phone rang. It was Gail, the owner of the property. She was very understanding – had actually waited until 11.45am before driving home – and said she could be back at the house in ten minutes. In the interim, I took a walk down the street to scope out the area. I got excited when I saw the nice playground just around the corner.

The house itself was pretty shabby from the outside and Gail had said on the phone that it was an old house – which is real estate speak for ‘not in very good shape’.

And despite its good bones, the house is spectacularly ugly inside, with a selection of wallpapers that will never make it into the vintage hall of fame. A bathroom with a french blue bathtub and two french blue sinks, no doubt original to the 1912 home. Two windows in the entire house that actually open. A basement with red shag carpeting.

But it’s in our price range. The beige carpeting lies flat on the floors. The kitchen is big and filled with light. There are actual (decent-sized) closets in the three bedrooms. There is an office, another room for storage, and a play space for the boys. No one lives in the basement. And it is empty and ready for us to move into once our stuff arrives (please let it be Tuesday!).

And just like that, in a way we could never have foreseen, we were out of the basement.