house

I'm getting married in a few weeks. Getting ready for a wedding is kind of like planning a coordinated military strike force. You have to determine where to attack and how to do it. Figuring out what kind of cake, dresses, invitations, tuxes and menu items are just the tip of the ice berg. Being the groom, I just hope to be pointed in the right direction and say the right name. I don't think I've done much, and much to my amazement, after a long day of running around my fiance told me we were pretty much done. What? Really? Ok.

One of the last things that we ended up doing was touring our new prospective apartment. "new" is an understatement. Some friends of ours had just purchased an old house so they could fix it up. It has a lot of potential. The house we are moving into was built in 1898 and is currently under total renovation. All the carpets were torn up to reveal a trap door on the first floor that went down to a dirt and stone foundation. Three layers of linoleum was torn up from the kitchen floors. After removing a closet our friends found out that the current ceiling was not the original and that someone had lowered the ceiling a foot and a half. Why? No one knows. There are two front doors which suggest that it may have been a duplex at one time. A doorway was converted into a closet, which sticks out about 5 inches into a hallway.

The back half of the house is an obvious addition. Who ever owned it must have decided to add more rooms whenever it was convenient. There are pipes and electrical wires that criss cross and intersect between rooms. Going upstairs reveals narrow doorways a couple of rooms. In the back of a closet is a door that opens up to an unfinished crawl space. The top of an old chiminey is visible in the darkness and you can see where they broke off the top and roofed over where it should have stuck out. I assume the fireplace got bricked over. Other chiminey had a similar fate at the other end of the house. A few windows have been bricked over. There are some more little secret doors around the house that are either small closets or lead to more unfinished crawl spaces full of old insulation and trash. Most of the interesting fixtures and door handles are under layers of paint that need to be removed. An unique house indeed.

The back yard has a small building that was used for storing coal and a storm cellar. The cellar was full of jars of preserves and cans of things. But the room is too small, making me wonder if the other half of the room was walled over a long time ago. The basement of the house is similar with odd cinderblock walls blocking entry to another part of the basement. Exploring all of these rooms make me wonder if someone will find treasure or a skeleton or a hidden time capsule somewhere. Maybe a ghost or two.

I'm excited to move there- my fiance is too as long as I don't try to frighten her with ghost stories. The house should look pretty awesome once the renovation is finished. I'm excited to move into a different apartment. We're getting new furniture and will have access to the hot tub and the trampoline in the back yard. Old houses are cool because they have so much history to them. I have a friend that lives in a house that was made in the 1600's.. just thinking that far back blows my mind.