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.