Windows & siding

 I've shown you these first photos already, they're of the house the day that we bought it.

One of the first things that we did was replace the windows, siding, and doors.  Under the cement shingle siding, we found a layer of tar paper and under that: the original clapboard siding (surprise!).

We removed it all, as well as what remained of "insulation" after all of those years. 

                                                                                                             

 A friend of my husband, who grew up just across the street and visited here regularly for many years, took some of the clapboard siding and "reclaimed" it for a few things in his own home.                                                                               He did a beautiful job, never would I have imagined that someone could strip, sand, and refinish 100+ year old wood siding to make such gorgeous pieces!  

This barn-style door is my favorite example.

The windows and doors were trickier than we thought they'd be.  I'm not sure that either of us expected to find bark on the timbers that were used to build the house.

Before you ask... yes, that's modern drywall instead of plaster.  This is one of 3 rooms in the house that had been drywalled at least partially, over the last 40 years.  You'll see in future posts that that wasn't the case in 95% of the house.

Another challenge was that while windows in old houses are generally larger than homes built in the 1990s, apparently doors are not.  Our front door was a whopping 30" and the interior doors were almost all about 24".  Yes, I said "about".

While levels, try squares and tape measures had all been invented many years before this house was built, they were either too expensive for most people to buy, or perhaps they weren't the "manly" way to build.  In any event, none were used in the building of my house.

We took the opportunity before putting up the new siding to expand the exterior door from the kitchen to the back garden from a 32" to a 5' wide set of french doors.

This greatly increased air movement & ventilation as well as the amount of natural sunlight in the kitchen. 

                                                                             It took two years to finish... wait, no, it's still not really complete.  But, it's MOSTLY complete (notice that little corner to the upper right of the french doors in the photo above).  There are just so many major things to be done, that minor finishes end up taking a backseat.                                               Stay tuned and I'll fill you in on that next time.

Back to it...

Life is such a crazy thing.  One day, you're mourning and dreaming and writing it down. Then, you blink and it's been three years since you wrote it.

In April of 2017, we wrote out a proposal to my husband's siblings, asking to buy my late mother-in-law's small farm.  They accepted, pending some stipulations.  My sister-in-law, we'll call her Madge, was still living on the farm, now several months after her mother lost a hard-fought battle against cancer.  One of the stipulations was that she would need to vacate the premises by the end of June, because in order for us to do the massive amount of work to get the house ready for a family of six, there could not be anyone living there during the renovations because of the risk associated with the potentially asbestos siding, lead paint, and likely presence of mold.  All agreed and we moved forward, in fact, Madge even moved out a few weeks ahead of schedule... well, mostly.  She left behind her young cat who had just birthed a litter of kittens, along with a lot of trash and belongings that she no longer wanted, presumably.

In August that summer, we closed on the mortgage and each of the siblings received a check for their sixth of the total agreed-upon sale price, plus a bit extra for each because the house appraised higher than expected and we wanted to be sure that we were being as fair as possible.  

The Beginning.

The original portion of the house (noticeable browned/yellowed from age) was covered in fiberglass siding shingles.  The last addition (seen as brighter white on the left side), was an old aluminum siding and the only part of the house with more modern windows, it was a poured concrete floor pad originally intended to be a porch, but had been fully enclosed.

This photo (right) shows the front from a closer perspective, to show the rotten condition of the porch overhang.

                                                                                                         

Here (left) you can see the rear of the additions after we removed a lot of brush and dozens of small to medium sized trees and a lot of trash, old flowers pots, 5-gallon buckets, etc.

                                                                         

This photo (right) shows the back corner of the original part of the house and the first addition on the back after that brush, trees, and debris was cleared.

                                                                         

This (left) is the same part of the house, where the original structure meets the first addition.  This very tall Hemlock tree (approximately 40-50' tall) was planted entirely too close to the house, and directly over the septic line coming out of the bathroom.

This is the inside of the "enclosed porch"after the majority

of the cutter, trash, and junk had been cleared out.

There were plants hanging from that bar down the center of the ceiling, as well as covering every horizontal surface in the room.

A cheap fiber-board bookcase and several old-fashioned

shelves in the corner behind this fireplace housed dozens

of flammable (and several-years expired) cleaning liquids,

paint, shoe polish tins, etc.

The above photos show the kitchen after many hours of clean-out had already occurred.  Furniture, "banana boxes" full of papers & notes, about 100 dead ink pens, an old portable dishwasher that had only been used as extra storage for many years, an old gas range, and an upright freezer had already been removed.  The center photo shows the large rotted-out soft spot in the floor directly in the entrance door to the dining room which had been covered by an area rug for at least 15 years.  In the corner beside the refrigerator in the last photo, you can see yet another "closet" that had been added.

 This is the other end of the kitchen after more clean-out had occurred.  Still 2 old dressers and a microwave stand to remove before we would begin actually remodeling a year later.

This is the very pink dining room.  Two-tone pink paint, the lower-half painted over cedar wainscot.

The curtains, were also pink, but more in the salmon family.

This is the odd, narrow hallway-type
entrance to the house's only bathroom from
the dining room.  

Notice the falling plaster from the ceiling and the
condition of that high-tech light fixture.

The "charming" combination of

blue & pink ceramic tiles (out-of-style since at least 1995, but always ugly throughout history) were crumbling, cracking, and falling off of the walls. The gray cement board behind the sink (which was also falling off of the wall) shows where all of the tiles on that small wall had already fallen off over time.

The left view shows that the living room, small as it may be, is the room in the best condition of all 10 rooms in the home as of the day we closed on the mortgage.                                                              The view on the right of the living room shows a hand-made bookcase that my father-in-law added in the 60s.

This is where it really gets ugly. 

 This is the "den".  I believe that when my father-in-law bought this house, the intention for this room was for it to be used as an office for his business, based on the large bookcase & desk that he built along the longest wall in the room.  This room had ceiling in similar (but far worse condition) than the bathroom hallway pictured earlier.  Additionally, the plaster on the walls was cracking and crumbling and the floor, sadly, was some kind of floor covering attached directly over the hardwood flooring, which had aged so poorly in the home's humid conditions that it was now paper-thin.  For about a decade in the 80s, this room served as a very confined bedroom also, as you can also see a closet that had been added behind the door to the living room.  The musty, mildewy smell overpowered this room like no other.  I promise that you (and most people) probably have no idea how strong that statement is in reality.

This staircase, centrally located within the original structure, leads up to the second floor, where all of the bedrooms, none of which had been used as such for better than a decade, were located.

At the top, the hall leading toward the back of the house with quite possibly the world's most dangerous and terrifying handrail/banister, complete with what might be the world's first prototype smoke detector.

                                                                             


This is the first bedroom as you reach the top of the stairs.  This was in the best condition of all upstairs rooms.

Filthy, with a leaking window and empty vodka bottles and food trash: it was still the easiest room to clean.

                                                                           This brings us to what the family referred to as "the big bedroom".  This room was comprised of nearly half of the entire upstairs of the original 18' x 33' home.

It spanned the full 18" depth of the house and boasted views of both the front and back yards.  By far, this room got the lion's share of sunlight over any other room in the home.

                                        It also had a built-in closet, of sorts.

In fact, it was the only storage place in the entire house that offered both the ability to hang clothes on hangers AND store them in drawers.

                                                                                                       


This was a sad room also.

For a number of years after my husband returned
home from serving in the Navy, this was his bedroom.

After we married and he moved out in 2003, it
became yet another storage place for a variety
of musical instruments, clothing, polka records,
music books, a few typewriters, a couple of
old-fashioned hard-sided suitcases, and more
boxes of old clothing & bedding.

It also had an added closet (barely visible in the far
left in the photo), a few shelves, and like every room
in the entire house, a crucifix adorned one wall.

But before entering that sad room, you had to pass by a terrifying entrance and stairwell to an equally terrifying attic. I do love that old-style door latch, and wish that it could have been saved for something around the house, but it was rusted, painted a dozen times, and no longer functioning.

I don't go up to that attic (ever), so this is as close as we're going to get on here.

The day that we went to settlement and became
"official" owners of my husband's childhood home, we
decided to ceremoniously jump right in and get started
on ONE major thing.

We started by ceremoniously tearing out and replacing
one of the worse windows in the house.

I'm certain that you can guess which it is,
simply based on the tactful paint scheme.

In case you haven't already noticed, almost every room had a hot-water baseboard heater.  You may have also guessed that in its 117+ years, no air conditioner, of any kind, had ever lived here.

All of that was about to change.

I haven't written in a long time. Some things have changed. I have an adult child for starters. Most recently though, I lost my mother-in-law.  Despite my minor challenges with my mother-in-law over many years, I loved her. In fact, I adored her and I admired her. She lost a child and she made her way through it. Then she lost her husband and found herself a single mother of six-one was my husband, and he was the only one that was really a child anymore.   She went on to live 34 more years without him. I can only imagine that she missed him every day. 34 years is a long time to be separated from your soul mate.  I can imagine it left as big a hole in her life as she has left in ours.

For 30 years she lived in near-poverty.  And in passing, we see that it was all for her children.

Now with her passing, we are left to decide what's to happen with the 13 acre farm that she loved so much and didn't owe a dime on. We can all sell it and split the proceeds- which seems the logical path considering we all own homes at this point, with exception of one who simply can't afford to.  But my husband and I think differently. While yes, we own a home – we don't own a homestead.  We don't own a home we can see ourselves growing old in.  We don't own a home for life. Her farm would be such a home. Built in 1900, and to use someone else's word, for lack of my own better one, it is dilapidated.  From old asbestos siding to rotting windows to a hole in the kitchen floor which has been covered with a throw-rug for years, it needs a lot of love.  Situated quite well on 13 partially wooded acres in the town we love but rarely see acreage in, we already love it.  Having owned our home for nearly a decade now, we are well-versed in the "do it yourself" project.  Even though we have not yet gotten an appraised value, and even though we don't know if we can even get another mortgage, we find ourselves talking about what we can do with it.  This house, like no other, holds the potential to be the house we dreamed of when we married.

 So now, we wait for the chips to fall.

Rest in Peace

Last Friday, my niece passed away at just 21 years old. 

I feel especially sick over it. Aside that her life was cut way too short, aside the fact that she left behind a 2 year old daughter who has no comprehension of death, aside the incredible woman I think she would have been someday...

I had no relationship with her anymore, and I don't have any idea why.

When she was about 2 years old, she came to live with us. As a young teen, I cared for her and her sister and brother, all toddlers basically, while their parents worked for over a year. I later spent every weekend with them for almost 2 years before they packed up and moved 1200 miles away. I then visited at least once a year, even moving myself and my daughter 1200 miles to live with them for a short time.

So what happened that when her parents divorced, I never got to speak to her again after that? She blocked me on Facebook and I never saw her or heard from her again, except for second-hand news, like when she had her daughter.

I'll never know now if I had done something specific or if she just decided to remove herself from our side of the family for some reason. Why didn't I fight to find out? The answer is simple: because never in a million years would I have imagined that she would be gone before it could work itself out. I just let it go because I figured it would blow over, because I was sure I hadn't done anything wrong.

I see now that I did.

I should have questioned it. I should have made sure that she knew how I felt about her and that she was important to me. By not doing anything, I let her think that I didn't care, or that it didn't matter, that she didn't matter. 

Brittany, if you are there somehow, please know that I cared, you have always been important, and that I've loved you since the day we met. I'm so sorry that I didn't make fixing our relationship a priority, that's a regret that I'll live with forever.

To work, or not to work

So here I am in my 3rd week of the new job and I'm not so sure about it.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like the job itself. I like the work, the environment, the boss and the co-worker. 

What I don't like is my house going to pot, not seeing my kids until bedtime, and the agonizing pain in my feet and ankles. I seriously can barely walk after my 6 hour shift. I bought expensive shoes that were supposed to be awesome, but if anything they hurt more than flats and sneakers.

My dear husband is trying, but the house, when combined with 3 kids, a teenager, 2 kittens and a dog, is a huge task to keep up with. I was never able to keep up on it completely when I wasn't working. I'm putting a lot more stress on him than I think is fair.

I miss being with my family. My kids are growing fast and I feel like I'm losing precious time. I have forever to go back to work, but only a few years left with my little ones.

So now I'm thinking, do I let it go now or do I try to milk it for whatever money I can, maybe even trying to work up through the end of the school year? And if I do, what about my poor feet?

Does leaving for these reasons make me a failure and a quitter? 

My Loss

A mere 4 days into my new job, and I was sure I was about to be fired.

On day 2, my boss gave me my own set of keys to the store. They weren't on a key ring or anything even a little secure, but were simply tied together with a basic white wire bread tie. It was snowing when I left work that evening, and coming down pretty heavily, so I tucked them safely into my coat pocket on my way out of the door.

On day 3, I left work a few hours early to take our family to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus at the Wells Fargo Center, a 20,000 seat indoor arena in Philadelphia, PA. I didn't need my keys that day, but remembered that I still needed to put them on my key ring, but they weren't in my coat pocket, so I assumed I must have put them in the center compartment of my car and I dismissed it for the evening.

On Day 4, there was a big snowstorm, which left about 12-14 inches of snow blanketing our area. A few hours before my shift began, my boss called to tell me that business was slow and he was closing early, so there was no need for me to come in that day. That reminded me to go out and get my keys from the car... only they weren't there, or on the floor, or the cup holder, or under or between the seats. Now I'm panicking.

I rechecked all of the pockets in my coat, and completely emptied my purse and wallet in search. No luck. I checked the car again, with a flashlight and a magnet and an extra set of eyes. Still nothing.

I started retracing my steps from the entire week. Where had I gone this week? Where had I been?  I even tried checking with the grocery store where I had stopped after work Tuesday night, unfortunately they were closed due to the snow storm.

I stopped looking and starting considering what and how on Earth I would tell my new boss of just 5 days that I already showed a complete lack of responsible behavoir. Should I tell him the honest truth or exaggerate with a little white lie to save my job and any respect and trust he might have for me so early on (no matter how artificial it may be)?

I started constructing a story, and then reverted back to just being completely honest, no excuses. I had decided that when I go back to work next week, as soon as I had an opportunity alone with him, I would tell the truth, Or maybe I would wait until I actually started needing the keys?

Tonight, while taking a quick ride with my mom in my truck, she said, "you know, there are keys on the floor here". I couldn't believe it. Somehow, I managed to not drop the keys at the grocery store, in the car that I drive 95% of the time, not in the church I was in for a Girl Scout meeting, not in the house or in my yard full of snow, not at work and not in the 20,000 seat arena, but in the truck that I am almost NEVER in, and so I never even thought to check there.

I think I'll definitely not share this story at work.

Back to ... Uh... Work? Well, paid work anyway.

This past Monday, I finally did it. I pinched my nose, closed my eyes tight, and jumped in. Back into gainful employment, that is.

It's not the kind of job that I really wanted, but it's something I know, something I'm good at, and most importantly, a job that was hiring.

I'm not sure how I'll handle not seeing my children until 730 every weeknight, but I have to say mornings sure are nice. I can get my kids ready for their day and off to school, with plenty of time for relaxing with a few cups of coffee and even a little housework before I have to start getting ready for work at 1130. A pretty good arrangement for a non-morning person such as myself, that's for sure.

As for the work itself, so far, so good. I like my co-workers and my boss, Ed. I like the environment and the customers have been great. 

If there's one thing I've learned from being a parent, wife, homeowner, and member of the human race in general, it's that whenever possible, you have to focus one one obstacle at a time to win each battle as it comes.

My current obstacle: figuring out how to get through a days work without killing my feet.