Dorka the explorer
Happy birthday, Nance. May your next fifty-three be as good as the first.
Frick has quite the little beard going on.
Robyn and I explored the house across the street yesterday afternoon with her father. It was fun, but also sad to see such a nice looking old house in such bad shape, harvested and left to rot. The building style is very similar to our house, which came along some 60 years later. The materials are the same, too, lots of rough cut lumber for the framing and tongue-and-groove pine for the floors, walls, and ceiling. They certainly don’t make them like they used to.
No one fell through any floors.
We didn’t encounter any critters, except for a lone daddy longlegs. We didn’t find any bodies, or see any ghosts.
We found some interesting items, though: a couple of old handmade dresses, a rusty pocketknife, and an empty bottle imprinted with “Dr. King’s New Discovery.” Dr. King’s discovery claimed to cure coughs, colds, and consumption (TB) back when it was popular in the 1890’s.
I’ll shut up now and just bring on the pictures. You can click on any picture to get to a bigger, more detailed version. Bear in mind that we were in a dark house without a flashlight, so some of the pictures may be a little fuzzy.
The floor of the front porch was scary, because the boards weren’t nailed to the joists.
They were just laying on them, and didn’t look all that solid.
The stairs to the front porch could use a little work.
Just inside the front door is an entryway, with rooms to the right and left.
Directly ahead was another small room (maybe 6×8′) with stairs and a door out the
back of the house. You can see the rough cut studs (which are actually 2″ x 4″) here
separating the entryway from the back exit.
Most of the rooms had layer upon layer of wallpaper. Our house was like that, too.
Why anyone would cover up that nice old pine is beyond me.
This room is to the left of the entryway, and also has a door to the front porch.
The chimney is sagging, and to the right you can see where the house’s only bathroom
was added later. The studs are smaller and newer, and that door is hollow-fill.
More fine old wood that could still be put to good use.
We found W-2s for a married couple. The husband worked in local construction
and the wife worked at a legendary local restaurant (Greenbrier, for those of you in the area).
Between the two of them, they made about $5100 in 1973.
The stylin’ bathroom. Note the fuzzy cover on the tank lid and the spiffy
fake paneling on the wall.
This is the back of the front door, and more of that wallpaper.
A window in what I assume is the dining room (it’s off the kitchen), and still more wallpaper.
A lot of the window frames in this house look like they could be cleaned up and reused.
The kitchen supports have collapsed, and it sits about 12 inches lower than the rest of the house.
As you can see, it’s a model of modernness.
Evidence of the collapse.
Old, old, old.
More wallpaper, on a different wall of the dining room.
There was an old drawer laying in the floor. I don’t know what it went to, but…
…judging from the dovetail cuts, it was completely handmade.
Another good-looking window frame, looking out onto the front porch.
Looking out the back door (the door that’s pictured in the first interior shot above)
over towards the kitchen. There’s a creepy well out here, which I’ll get to in a bit.
A better view of the stairwell that’s near the back door.
We couldn’t go up it, because it was blocked by boards and crap.
This shot, which is kind of confusing, is looking up the stairs. There were
boards from the landing across the stairwell, resting on stairs, thus making
something like a ceiling over them.
Fortunately, the stairs in the dining room were mostly clear.
I won’t lie here. It was scary going up them, not knowing if they were
going to hold. Lucky for us, they did.
Halfway up, I sensed an ethereal presence and snapped a quick shot.
Just kidding. It was dust.
I like this picture. I like it better in black and white.
The floor up here didn’t look all that solid, so we stayed at the top of the stairs.
There are a couple of rooms we didn’t get to see, off through the door you can see
in the left of the picture. Right in the center is an old molded mattress.
Again I am led to wonder why someone would put ugly assed wallpaper
over such nice pine.
I think the banister could be harvested and used.
The room at the top of the stairs has a NICE window looking out the
front of the house. It was probably 5-6 feet wide.
The flooring looks like it could be harvested, too. Plenty of wood there for sanding still.
The room through the arch is to the right of the entryway, and the room I was in
when I took this picture is at the front of the house. If you look back up to the first two
pictures, I’m in the part of the house that’s to the right. The stairs I just came down are
on the right (out of the picture).
What it looks like between ceiling and floor. Our house is the same way.
Under the stairs. Note the broken 45 in the bottom left. That’s a Carpenters
song, released in 1976. It’s said to have been Karen’s favorite song.
Handmade dresses, hung on a sill.
Out back, the old well sits like an evil toad. Inside the concrete cap…
…the stuff of which nightmares are made.
When I was clearing off the cap so I could get pictures down in the well,
a board slipped in. It took a good three seconds to hit bottom. It thumped on
solid ground, so I guess the well’s dry. My guess is that the sparkles above are
broken glass.
Going through the old house was a pretty awesome experience. I’m still tempted to offer to buy it from the current owner. If I understand correctly, he’s almost finished harvesting wood, and there’s still a goodly amount of usable lumber in there. Enough big pieces to build a nice tractor shed, I think. It would be pretty awesome to sink several treated posts for support, then build the rest of my tractor shed out of rough-cut pine that’s over 130 years old.
