Renovating a Historic Firehouse — Part 1
The chronicles of renovating an old Seattle firehouse while maintaining a relationship
On a Thursday morning in June, I clicked open a Zillow email. The first property listed was a tall, tutor-style house. The price was in range. I clicked further. Jim, at his under-the-stairs desk, swiveled behind me at my little gasp.
“Oh, my God,” I said aloud. “Look at this place! Jim, it’s an old fire station!”
I should probably mention here that my boyfriend was a firefighter, so the idea of buying a fire station was laughable.
After four years together, my boyfriend Jim and I were struggling to combine our lives without much success. Jim, a single firefighter with no kids had grown tired of living between his bachelor basement in Georgetown, Seattle’s gritty, hipster neighborhood, his fire station (where he spent two nights every four days), and my house in a more gentrified Seattle neighborhood.
When I moved to Seattle from New Jersey to Seattle in 2005, I found my dream house. I had been widowed four years earlier when my kids were six and ten. Full of light, a view of Lake Washington, in a fun, beautiful neighborhood, the house was a perfect place to raise my grieving kids as a single, widowed mom.
