We used to live in a very nice townhouse but in September of 1992 3 kids decided to play with matches and burn down 33 homes, ours one of them. We had to find a place to live fast and I was seven months pregnant. We found a nice little 2 bedroom and settled in quickly. The landlords were very nice people and even paid my husband a decent wage to do work on their other rentals. One of those rentals was a real dump. You could see it had been nice once, but.. well.. they TRASHED it beyond belief! Mr. Landlord became very ill, so they decided to sell us this TRASHED house for mere pennies, in fact we pay less now than we did in rent. They offered to carry the contract also. Signed the papers. Set about fixing up to move in.
We started by slapping primer all over the place to cover up the phone numbers and notes to people written on the walls in LARGE permanent marker. Painted. Pulled out the carpet when we were starting to get bit by unmentionables and THAT is when the "stinky smell" hit. Pulled out the padding where it was, along with a few layers of linoleum from decades gone by, and layed new carpet. Cut down the jungle that was growing around so thick the front of the house was not even visible from the street. Painted the outside and TADA! It became livable.
All that was done in 2 weeks as we could not pay both house payment and rent. Landlords..er.. mortgage holders I guess they are now, even gave us extra bucks to help out with that. The temp was over 100 degrees in that time and we had no air conditioning until the last couple days, but we managed somehow!
I have recently *misplaced* the horrid before pics and most of the after pics. But do have a few to show. Hopefully more to come real soon.
House was built in 1914 and was added onto a bit in the 50s. The original part of the house has 9 foot high ceilings and mahogany moldings and floors. Future project to bring that natural stuff back!
The best part of the house.
Hardly had walls, don't even want to know where they went!
Big improvement over the dungeon look it came with
OK, so it's not really part of the house but a project that goes with it. It is an object that somehow survived the fire. My grampa had just given it the day before. It has spent the last 6 years in my father-in-laws garage. It was made for my great-great grandmother by her husband. She was not quite 5 feet so it is shorter than most. It came here riding in a covered wagon. A brief stop was made "somewhere in Oklahoma Territory" according to my great-grandmother's birth certificate and wound up in grampa's basement in Chelan, WA for 40 years. It needs some repairs but is really still very sturdy and neat to look at.
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