“And when did you say this house was built?” Kelly craned her neck to look up the chimney.
“1902,” said Gina, the real estate agent. “As you can see, the fireplace is fully functional.”
“It doesn’t even have anything that looks like wood in there,” said Kelly. “It will look nothing like a real fire with gas just shooting out the pipe.”
“It’s a wood-burning fireplace. The gas starter is just there to help you get the wood hot enough to burn. Then you turn the gas off and enjoy the heat and light of a real fire!”
Kelly looked at her with wide eyes. “Goodness! That is old fashioned.”
“The house does still have central air and heating though, doesn’t it?” Kelly’s husband, Scott, looked skeptically at the radiators standing along the walls.
“It has radiators for heat,” said Gina, confirming Scott’s fear. “For air conditioning, you will need to use window units, but the previous owners are selling those along with the house, so you won’t need to worry about purchasing new ones.”
“Probably because they’re moving into a real house with central air,” Scott said under his breath.
“How old are the window units?” said Kelly.
“They’re a few years old,” said Gina. “I can show them to you when we get to the basement. They’re right next to the washer and dryer units, so we can knock out two birds with one stone when we get down there.”
Kelly raised an eyebrow. “Units? As in plural? The house doesn’t come with a single washer/dryer unit?”
“It does not, although the washer is still a high-efficiency machine.”
“Just the washer? How old is the dryer?”
“It’s a few years older than the washer, but it still works just as well as the day it was made. Let me show you.” Gina led them to the basement stairs, her chipper attitude never wavering as Kelly and Scott exchanged a glance behind her back.
It turned out Gina had been rather loose with the term “a few years old.” The dryer looked like it had seen more years than Kelly and Scott combined and the air conditioners couldn’t have been made too long after the house itself had been constructed.
“Well, now we know what they mean when they call a house a fixer upper,” Kelly said once they were in the car on the way back home.
“Yeah, it means the house is a complete shithole and you’ll need to spend more money updating the house than you did to purchase it in the first place.”
“Now we know why the asking price is so low. I told you it was too good to be true.”
“Still, it didn’t hurt for us to take a look. Besides, now we know the kind of descriptions we want to avoid before we call the real estate agent.”
Kelly shuddered. “It’s going to take them forever to sell that house. I don’t understand why they don’t just sell it to a developer who will tear it down and put up a new one. Who’s going to buy a house that doesn’t even have central air?”
“Who knows? Maybe some history nut will buy it thinking it’s romantic.”
“If they really want to live in a house that’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer and use an ancient washer and an even older dryer, they’re welcome to it. The utilities bill for that house must be enormous!”
“To each his own, I suppose.”
The end.