MEET THE QS--2006 to present

We bought the property on south Lincoln in August, 2006, and moved in September 5.

It was a long, hot summer of fruitless house-hunting--our condo sold in three weeks, but every house we attempted to buy slipped through our hands, for one reason or another. Our favorite, 411 Ashland, was a foreclosure and had to be paid for straight-out; the home on Kendall had a moldy basement; Liberty had multiple code violations, including a basement kitchen; Binder had so much mold, the real estate agent couldn't enter it; State's owner wouldn't lower the price, even though it had been on the market for years. Talma had a low price and a beautiful downstairs, but the master bedroom was in such poor condition that even our Christian real estate agent uttered an obscenity when she saw it.
Finally, three weeks before the condo would close and we would become homeless, the kids and I left for a week-long vacation at Mom's. Jim stayed in Aurora to work and to look for a home,without me.
We communicated every day during that week. I pleaded with him to buy Talma (who cared if the roof was caving in in the master bedroom?) I told him we should move to Yorkville, Sandwich, any place in boobooland as long as we could get a four-bedroom home cheap, cheap, cheap. ANYTHING but becoming homeless!
Finally, our agent spoke those now-famous words to Jim: "You know, Lincoln is still out there." The house we had actually looked at four times, but could never pull the trigger on.
The rest is history.
There were reasons, of course, why we always held off on Lincoln. My biggest worry, the blackened toilet bowls, was actually the easiest to fix; a bottle of Lime-Away the day after we moved in made them lily-white, not to mention more efficient than our condo's toilets had been. Still, an army of repairmen was hired, ready and waiting to start plumbing surgery September 7. The bathroom's drum trap had to be changed to a modern P-trap; a massive clog was removed from the kitchen sink; the shower was uncapped and made serviceable again. The kitchen stove, probably dating from the Greenwood era, was quickly replaced, as was the washing machine. The disconnected washtub had to be installed so the washing machine could drain. And, of course, we had to buy a dishwasher and put in central air. This is the 2K's!
Electricity was another issue. Before we moved in, the upstairs was loaded with live electrical wires hanging from the walls, an issue so dangerous that the agent would not permit our children to go upstairs. We convinced the previous owner, Yorktown Enterprises, to remedy this before closing (against their will), but even after the wires were disabled, we were left with no electric lights on the stairs or in the bedrooms for six months. According to our electrician, the previous owner had removed old knob-and-tube wiring, but had failed to replace it with new wiring. Through God's grace, we were chosen to receive services from Rebuilding Together, a charitable organization which does repair work gratis for selected homes each year. The church group which worked on our home included a contracted electrician, who climbed into our attic and restored most of our wiring. The lights went on!
Since that time, we have also ripped out the downstairs carpeting to reveal the original hardwood. Vera Hunger said she could still see the lines on the floor where the Christians had had a dining room carpet. Someday, we would like to refinish the hardwood--at least, I would. According to Jim, that would be a project and a half.
Jim and I slept in the now-enlarged back bedroom for three years that we lived here, but we have recently converted it into a "rec room" for the kids. The old storage area is a home office, called "the bat cave." We now use the bedroom on the right. Joe, age 11, and David, 9, share the master bedroom where Eugene Applequist was born. Lydia, age 5, sleeps in the bedroom where the "secret staircase" used to come out.

Yes, the neighborhood has gone downhill and the Aurora police know our block well, but we are happy in our historic home. May the tradition live on!