The House That Became Part Of A Family
by Patricia Stelzer
RusticDecorating.com
God smiles on fools, so they say. If He does, we must have given Him
a good, old-fashioned belly laugh. We became the proud owners of
`an old, brick farmhouse' and began do-it-yourself renovating forty-
three years ago when we innocently bought a home we could afford. We
weren't caught up in the restoration rage that swept the
country . . . we led the pack. Long before it became fashionable to
go `country', we went country. Frankly, we were poor and it
was the best we could afford. To the outside world, we wanted to be
different. And were we ever different. Crazy is what it could have
been called.
We were tired of paying rent, and many of our friends were buying
houses, the nice kind. The kind that sat on a nice, landscaped lot
with other houses just like it on both sides of the street. Housing
developments, dream homes for young families. We looked, but we
really didn't want what builders called a starter home. With two
small children, we already filled one of those houses, and we
didn't feel we could afford one of them without stretching the
budget to the max. What we really wanted was a house in the country.
We wanted one house that we could stay in until our family was
grown, so we began to think in terms of an older home. Never
inclined to do things by half-measures, we decided to look at homes
that were at least fifty years old. Back then, the older the better
because it would be cheaper. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my
mind or heart also lurked an unknown love of old houses, something I
wasn't aware of at the time. I had always enjoyed touring old
houses on our vacations and felt that those places had a unique
charm and homey quality not found in new houses. Little did I know
where that was about to take me. Never did I consider the
inconveniences. Never did it occur to me that water, electricity and
telephones weren't part of life when those houses were built.
And so the search began. We looked and looked and looked some more.
The ones that were for sale weren't what we had in mind. The ones
we wanted weren't for sale. Then one night I found an ad in the
classified section of the paper. "Older brick house for sale.
About fifty years old. One-acre lot, screened in porch, good school
district. Reasonably priced." It sounded perfect. Just what we
wanted. I called the realtor the next morning, and to my surprise,
he offered to show it to us that evening. Red flags should have gone
up. Most people like at least a day's notice before showing a
house unless they are truly anxious to catch a sucker.
With directions in hand, we set out to find this gem. Sitting at an
intersection, we looked to our left and saw what had to be the
house, an old two-story brick with four chimneys. One of the most
noticeable features was the television antenna. It leaned strangely
to one side. Actually, it was practically bent double. In spite of
that, we turned and drove to the house. That antenna should have
been a warning. We should have bent the car and gone back the way we
came. But we didn't. There we were, on the threshold of our doom
and too dumb to know it.
The ad was right. It was an old brick farmhouse. It sat there firm,
square and unkempt, waiting for its victims. Us. We smiled at each
other, both hiding what we might be thinking, took our three-year-
old son and nine-month-old daughter and started up the walk leading
to the front of the house. The redeeming feature of the front yard
was the huge old maple tree just beginning to turn autumn gold. It
shaded the wooden porch and the yard, as well as the entire front of
the house.
As if to forestall any flight plans we might have had, the realtor
appeared. He was a kindly-looking, fatherly man. I trusted him.
Mistake number two. Oh, he wasn't dishonest. He just didn't
offer information beyond what we ask him. Tragically, we had no idea
what kind of questions we should ply him with. We never thought to
ask how old the wiring was, what kind of a well it had, what kind of
heating system, those simple little details. All we were interested
in was the cost of the house, the taxes and the kind of financing
that was available since the house wouldn't be eligible for VA or
FHA loans. It didn't have city water or sewer connections. Again,
cheap was the operative word.
The kindly old man guided us in the front door directly into the
living room. This room was papered in early ugly: purple with silver
flowers on the walls and dirty beige on the ceiling. Brown and red
flowered curtains hung in the doorways to the room beside it and the
room behind it. Really went well with the wallpaper. It was at that
very moment sympathy overwhelmed any other emotions I may have had
as well as any sense of judgment.
The house didn't deserve to be treated as badly as it obviously
had been. The floor had been painted a dark brown and 1930s linoleum
graced the center of the floor. It got worse, not better. The same
condition existed in the room next to the living room. And there was
only one closet in the entire downstairs.
Not all of it was negative. The walls of the original part of the
house, the two front rooms and the rooms directly above them, were
twelve-inch-thick brick. The windows were original and had the deep
windowsills. What we failed to notice was the lack of storm windows
to keep out the cold air in winter. Just a minor little thing. All
of the original wide-board woodwork was still there, painted in
hideous colors. Each of the main rooms downstairs had its own
fireplace, but they were all boarded shut. It seemed that for every
plus, there was a corresponding minus.
The realtor, not about to let us spend too much time in any
location, hustled us upstairs. The stairway was wide enough, but
kind of steep. A door at the bottom of the steps closed it off, and
it felt rather cool when he opened the door to take us upstairs. All
of the floors were painted a nasty dark brown, covering wide and
random wood flooring original to the house. We quickly noted three
bedrooms, the back one a step down from the two front ones. At least
there was a fairly good-sized closet in the larger of the two front
bedrooms, or so we thought. And the upstairs hall was big enough to
hold a few pieces of furniture. Everything seemed to be in at least
passable shape, except for the color scheme and the lack of
electrical outlets in some of the rooms. Each room had at least one
and how many did a bedroom need?
Hurrying us on, the realtor thought we should check the outside
before it got too dark. Yeah, sure. But we followed him back down
and through the kitchen where the family was just finishing their
dinner. The kitchen was early congoleum, a wall covering similar to
linoleum, halfway up the walls. The rest of the walls were painted a
dull, pea green, and the floor didn't seem too level. It seemed
to bow up in the center. The kitchen had two outside doors, a
doorway to each of the two front rooms, and a door leading to the
bathroom. One outside door led to the driveway and the wooden,
detached garage sitting behind the house, the other to a screened
porch. When he took us out the door leading to the garage, we
discovered that the family dog had been hit and killed earlier that
day and was resting in a galvanized washtub awaiting interment. Our
guide quickly directed us to take a look at the yard. What we saw
was the better part of an acre plowed and planted in vegetable
gardens on both sides of the house. Not much yard for children to
play in. There was also an old outhouse sitting at the back of the
property, ready for use if needed.
But the yard did have some nice features, even if it was apparent
that chickens had once used the garage as their home. An apple tree
and a hickory nut tree shaded the back, and there was enough room
for a swing set under the trees. That was good. Parsnips and carrots
still protruded from the ground making it difficult to walk across
the yard. That was not so good. There was a screened porch on one
side, with a milk house behind it to be used for storage. That was a
good point. What we couldn't see in the growing dusk was the
deteriorated state of the screening, brittle and rusted so that, we
would find out later, cracked easily when touched with any pressure.
As we finished our tour, the realtor asked us what we thought. In
our youthful na´ve way, we believed that maybe this could be the
right one. After all, it was brick, it did have almost an acre of
ground, and it was in a decent school district. Best of all, we
thought we could afford it, a major factor in our decision. We were
totally unaware of the years of financial investment and deprivation
that we would be facing.
That's when we committed our third and most lasting mistake. We
made an offer slightly lower than the asking price, but slightly
more than we could comfortably afford, a form of courage embodied
only in the young. They accepted our offer, the bank accepted our
loan, and the owners held a small second mortgage for us. Talk about
anxious to unload that house. When we made our grand announcement,
our families and our friends practically rolled on the floor
laughing.
What did we care if they laughed? We were homeowners. We had eight
rooms in various states of disrepair, a yard that had recently been
turned by a plow, our own outhouse, a myriad of small creatures that
called both the yard and the house home, including twenty-three mice
who fought to keep their residency inside with us during the first
winter.
Little did we know the great adventures that lay ahead of us, the
great discoveries we'd make, like no heat in the upstairs, the
closet that wasn't a closet, frozen water pipe survival
techniques, and an old-fashioned dug well that was only about
seventeen feet deep and depended on ground seepage and was outside
so that the pipes were exposed to the cold.
Yet we embarked on the adventure full of hope and with a "we can
do this" attitude. We embarked on an excursion into the land of
renovation/restoration without ever getting any advice from Bob
Vila, and without realizing that in a little over eight months we
would add another little boy to the family.
Over the years, now almost a half-century later, we are still
working on this on-going project that has become as integral part of
our family, and the love affair with the house has lasted and grown
stronger over the years. As with any good relationship, it has only
gotten better and holds more memories, good and bad, that we would
never trade for a new house. We have learned much about old
construction, including how hard it is to level oak beam braced
floors and the difficulty of pounding nails into old concrete-type
plaster. We learned that the original part of the house was
constructed between 1825 and 1835, and successive additions were T-
ed behind it in two separate stages. We have come to understand that
part of our family we call our home, and it has enriched our lives
in many ways and with a warmth only an old house can have. It has
given back infinitely as much, if not more, than we have given it.
About the Author
Patricia Stelzer, Springfield, Ohio USA
patstelzer@...http://www.RusticDecorating.comPat Stelzer is a writer, columnist, reporter, and retired school
teacher, currently an adjunct instructor at a community college. She
has a long running interest in home decorating and in rustic or folk
art pieces, her own 175-year-old home a veritable collection of many
types of Americana and folk art. She has recently published her
first mystery novel, "DANGEROUS RESEARCH, BY GEORGE!" Information
about it can be found at www.PatStelzer.com .
