LAST NOVEMBER, my boyfriend, Brendan, and I moved to an unrenovated 19th-century brick house in Portland, Maine—not on a whim, exactly, but in a burst of optimistic hope that it was the right place for us. We'd spent two years house-hunting in Brooklyn and upstate New York, only to decide it was Portland that struck the ideal balance: a lovely, gritty seaside town that also had friendly people and fantastic restaurants. This house, the 13th we'd looked at, had instantly won us over.

On our first night in the new place, rain...