1. What condition is the Raths' house in?

A thousand petty shabbiness's bore witness to the negligence of the Raths. The front door had been scratched by a dog which had been run over the year before. The hot water faucet in the bathroom dripped. Almost all the furniture needed to be refinished, reupholstered, or cleaned. And besides that, the house was too small, ugly, and almost precisely like the houses on all sides of it.