This house had the remnants of a lot of odd heating options.  One of the first things I noticed about the property when I did my first “drive-by” was that there was a gaping hole – or lack of stones in the foundation of the house on one corner.  That should have been enough to convince any sane person to say forget it.  But, in as much as the house was still standing, I figured it could be patched.  It did kind of nag at me though – why was there a hole in the house.  As it turned out, it was where the old coal chute had been, and also explained why there were the remnants of round vent pipes embedded in the walls, as if waiting for another pot belly stove to be “plugged in.”

There was a boarded-up and cement-blocked old fireplace in the kitchen – the wall painted white with some old bead-board trim around the edges.

And then there were floor vents and duct work that had been hobbled together as part of the project to flip this house.  Some of the vents were connected to nothing, ducts went nowhere and the whole mess of it was demolished.

So out of all these heating options – we were left with nothing but a clean slate.  The builder is installing a three-zone heating and cooling system with well hidden duct work that doesn’t interfere with the character of the house.  So I expect that we will be comfortable – but comfortable and aesthetics are two different things.

I wanted to open the fireplace in the kitchen, but after further inspection, it appeared that the original chimney had been removed, the new roof built over top, and the chimney capped off inside the attic.  With the fireplace covered in cement blocks, it was difficult to make an easy determination about the condition of the 163-year-old structure and John, our builder, advised against it – given the scope of the entire project – which seemed quite overwhelming.

Besides, a brand new fireplace would be easier to manage, could be easily built in the new addition and wouldn’t yield any unexpected surprises.  We agreed.

But then we disagreed.  Chris wanted a wood burning fireplace.  I’ve been spoiled by the gas fireplace that you can light with one finger and the flip of a switch.  It’s so easy, in fact, that even Arianna knew to point to the switch and wait to be picked up so she could flip it off and on before she was even two years old – it’s that easy.  But, since Chris agreed to cut the wood, split the wood, haul the wood, light the fire and clean away the ashes – what could I say?  So we have a beautiful Rumford wood burning fireplace in the new addition with an amazing brick chimney and a fieldstone cap.  It’s lovely.

And then John asked what we wanted to do about the old fireplace.  Should we resurface the wall and pretend that there is nothing there?  Or did we want to punch out the cinder blocks to see what lurked behind?  Was there ever really a question?  What lurked behind was about 2 feet of ash and a really dirty fireplace box with an opening that was about 4 ft x 4 ft.  I decided since it was authentic to the house, I wanted to leave it open – even if just to lay some logs in it and “pretend” that it was ready to light.

John consulted a fireplace restoration expert and came back with a proposal.  The 163-year-old structure wasn’t in such bad shape after all, and at a price (a hefty price), we could still open it up and make it functional.  Since a hearth is the “heart” of a home, (or maybe a kitchen is the heart of the home – but this hearth is in the kitchen) – it just seemed that the heart of this house needed to be fixed.  We said yes, but always with an eye on containing costs.  I suggested that they just leave the “patina” (yes, I know it’s the accumulated dirt, ash, and creosote – whatever) on the inside of the fireplace – maybe it wouldn’t cost quite so much.  And besides, if we were going to light a real fire in it – it would just get dirty again.  John just nodded, as he frequently does when I have half-baked ideas.

The construction started.  There were tarps all over the place while they cleaned out the ash and soot, uncapped the chimney in the attic and punched a hole through the roof. The stucco was dreary but I figured a fresh coat of paint and a mantle would return it to it’s mid 19th century charm.  Arianna and I pondered which chimney Santa would use this year and debated the strengths and weaknesses of each.  One was clearly cleaner, one was significantly larger.  I’m not sure she really cared which fireplace he will choose, as long as he chooses one of them.

Then I walked in and saw our fireplace; the piece de resistance of this house – the one that Santa most definitely will use this Christmas.  They had sandblasted the stucco, cleaned away those years of “patina” and  revealed what lurked behind those cinder blocks.

When we found this house, it was empty – other than nasty carpet, out-dated appliances and cabinets that were falling off the walls. But there weren’t any “things” here. The house and property had been cleaned out – auctioned off to the bare bones. It was a little sad to realize that I wouldn’t be able to rummage in the attic or basement to find any true “artifacts” of the house. But I was wrong. The house has “coughed up” interesting things when least expected.

I spent a hot, sweaty day in the dark attic sweeping clouds of dust down the tiny stairs onto the miserable brown carpet below. I wanted all that dirt out well before any new carpeting made its way into the house. I realize I could have been blinded by the dirt in my eyes, but after sweeping the half of the attic that is about 8 inches taller than the other half, and proclaiming it finished, and looked back across my clean-swept floor boards only to notice something sticking up between the tongue and groove boards. It was an old house key. I guess if the “ghost” of No Rhyme or Reason Farm wanted me to feel welcome – giving me the key to the house is a pretty good sign.

To sweep away the dirt on the lower half of the attic, I had to move 26 very old window frames in various stages of disrepair with broken glass and protruding nails. I gingerly moved them from under the eaves, one at a time, until I heard something moving on the floor. After letting out a scream (that thankfully no one heard except me), I realized it was just an old jar rolling towards me – an old blue Mason canning jar in perfect condition. Another nice house warming gift from the old house – given how much I like canning jams, jellies and pickles.

The artifacts didn’t stop there. With the excavation, dirt has piled up, settled, moved and shifted — and in that process, I sometimes catch the glint of glass or metal. I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the dirt to reveal old medicine bottles, part of an old iron, or pieces of broken pottery. It seems like when I purposefully inspect one of these piles of excavated dirt, I never see anything. But when I’m not looking – all of a sudden, something is there – pushing through the surface.

The most unexpected artifact, however, was being handed the old deed to the property. I had serendipitously met a woman at work whose husband knew this farm and Florence Reason. He was instrumental in selling the property when she passed away, and while cleaning out old papers, they found the deed – the one deeding the property her parents in 1936 for $3000. What are the chances – really, to come in to possession of this old deed, complete with the old tax stamps? I think we’ll frame it.

The infrastructure phase seems to have been going on forever. It’s all important stuff – electric, water, heating and air conditioning. And it comes with a lot of decisions. Exactly where do we want outlets placed? And where should the switches be? And which outlets should they work?   It was a longer (and harder) thought process than I expected. Don’t you just walk into a room and flip on the light? But now we had to figure out – if we turn the light on at the bottom of the stairs, do we want to be able to turn it off at the top of the stairs? And if we wake up in the middle of the night and hear a noise in the back pasture – do we want to run down to the kitchen to flip on the flood light – or would it make sense to have a light switch for the flood light in the bedroom, too? (Thanks, cousin Bruce – for that great idea!).

So now the walls are going up, the windows are going in – and we even have doors. It’s starting to feel like a real house. I can step through a doorway and feel the size and space of a room – some rooms feel bigger than I expected (the Master Bedroom), some rooms feel smaller (the Family Room). All of this comes with a bit of anxiety – is the furniture going to fit?

Chris has been (patiently) waiting for the garage to be completed so he can pick up the Deere he ordered.  He’s been diligently cutting the lawn with a push mower for the past three months, so it was with a bit of fan fare that he took delivery this weekend.  Miguel picked him up at the farm at 9 AM sharp with the pick-up truck and trailer, and off they went.

By the time Becky and I got back from heading in a different direction to pick up all the light fixtures for the house, they had the green tractor unloaded, gassed up and ready to go.

Arianna got to share in the inaugural ride, and Opa even let her steer a little bit.  We celebrated with a picnic of hot dogs on the front lawn — because there is really no other place to sit.  The backyard, where the patio will be, is full of bricks and a cement mixer since they are in the middle of building the chimney.  The garage is full of construction materials — and the house is full of dust.  A blanket under a tree in the front yard next to the dumpster full of remodeling debris was about as good as it gets.  To quote Arianna “This is gonna be so much fun.”  And it was.

If you’ve been following our blog — you’ve seen “No Rhyme or Reason Farm” go from bad to worse.  I could see the vision when it was bad — which is what got us into this predicament in the first place.

But now that it is “worse” — some days I’m not so sure I can see the vision anymore.  I have a hard time imagining this coming together.  The idiosyncrasies of the house that looked so charming in my initial vision, lose their luster as the house gets stripped to its bones and our builder, John, tries to figure out the best way to put it back together again.   I give him credit for keeping the vision (or at least not telling me when he can’t see it either).

So this week — amid drilling the well, planning the walkways from the garage to the non-existent porch and yet to be completed patio, amid watching a spaghetti mess of wires wrap through the house and in and out of the walls — I need to focus on the “vision” again.

Here is the vision.  This is what we are aiming for — with six weeks to get there.

Yes, NUTS.  They are everywhere on this property.  There are black walnut trees everywhere.  Right now they have hard green balls that will fall soon.  The green husk will soften and rot exposing the black walnut for the squirrels.  This property is a squirrel utopia.  Plentiful food — and a house to store them in.  A real house — not a squirrel house in the knot hole of some tree.  The squirrels have made themselves at home in our home, and they just got their eviction notice.

When the exterior soffits and fascia boards came down, so did the walnut shells.  I thought that was the end of them, just up under the eaves, on the outside edge of the stone wall that extends to the roof line.  But that was not the extent of their storage space.  As boards came up to make room for the infrastructure (plumbing vents, hvac, electric boxes) the nuts came out.

Eventually, we decided the master bedroom ceiling had to come down, and with it, more nuts.   And then, on the underside of the attic flooring – now exposed to the bedroom ceiling — it looks like we have Chestnut too — not NUTS, but Chestnut wood.  The American Chestnut succumbed to a blight in the early 1900’s.  These floor boards have been here since the mid-1850s — supposedly, it’s REAL American Chestnut.  We thought about pulling it out of the attic, replacing the attic floor with plywood and using this random width, really thick and very special wood for our first floor hardwood flooring — but the cost of doing that was NUTS!  So, the chestnut wood will stay in the attic, where it’s been for more than 160 years.  At least the nuts they were hiding are gone.

The house has been torn apart and in some ways looks worse than when we first saw it — when we could see the vision.  Now it sits there with no front porch, no doors, no windows, no shutters, looking forlorn and hollow.

I think it must feel like a transplant patient, getting a new heart, new lungs, new kidneys.  The work is going on inside — new plumbing, new electric and HVAC; all necessary parts to bring the house back to life.

Old wood is ripped out, new wood is expertly milled and put into place, plumbing & electric lines are run through the house, but with no well and no power, the house is still lifeless — as if waiting for a defibrillator to resuscitate it.

The garage deserves it’s own post.  First of all, it cost about 3 times what I thought a garage should cost.  Mind you, I have no real perception what a garage should cost, other than it’s value to me — which is merely a place to put the car when I come home.  But a garage is apparently a big deal.  It is home to the various back yard implements — and — if completed before our other house sold, could potentially store all our earthly possessions until the house would be blessed with an actual “Certificate of Occupancy.”  I can see that there is value in that — my stuff could be close at hand, I wouldn’t have to pay for storage at some off-site location and I could even organize stuff by room in anticipation of moving day.

But the rain prolonged the process, the house sold — and all those earthly belongings are (hopefully) safely stored in an off-site pod facility.

The garage is nearing completion.  It still needs siding and exterior lighting, and the interior space provides room for the cars — and a Man Cave too.  I love the slope of the roof and the privacy that the garage will give the patio, creating a “courtyard” feel.

One of the “reasons” it took so long to buy the No Rhyme or Reason Farm — is that we were trying to get inspections done.  There was a newly installed “pump thing” in the basement with a date of install of May, 2014.  So, water must have been working/pumping recently.  With the frozen winter and the lack of a functioning sink anywhere in the house, it was difficult to verify gallons per minute, or quality of the water.  But there is a springhouse with a bubbling brook, so water must be present — and the quality must be good — because Florence (Reason) lived here until a ripe old age and the water didn’t kill her.  All good “reasons” to go ahead and buy the farm.

Now we find that the PVC pipe rising from the ground, is not exactly a well.  It’s more like a PVC pipe shoved into a cistern that is about 12 feet deep.  It appears to have a beautiful stone circular interior wall, like a wishing well.  My wish is… I wish I had a well.  So now we apply for well permits, the builder stakes out a new spot in the front yard to drill a well and we bite our nails wondering how deep they will have to drill to give us a real well.

In the meantime, walls go up, and walls come down.  Walls on the addition and the garage rise quickly, get wrapped in Tyvek and topped with a roof.  The framing takes shape for the guest bedroom and bathroom.  And the wall comes out between the two bedrooms upstairs to open the space into one large Master bedroom.

The stone wall comes down between the addition and the house to create an open flow between the kitchen and the family room.  And stone comes out of the upstairs master bedroom to allow for a closet opening where we are stealing space from the bathroom closet.

But the best wall is the one I am building with the stones from that $#^&* non-existent well.  No point in having that beautiful circle of wishing well stones covered in, never to be seen again.   I am pulling them out, one by one, along with other rocks laid bare by the excavation for the garage and the addition — and I’m making my own wall.

The plans are approved, and it all seems like fun and games until the construction actually begins.  Then it seems real.  For the first time, I have a sinking feeling of what have we done!?!

The space is marked out for the new addition and the garage.  The excavation begins and there are huge piles of dirt every where.  The space looks too tiny.  I’m sure we’ve made a mistake; it looks like there is no way the living room furniture is going to fit into this addition.  John tells me rooms always look small at this stage, but when the walls are up, it will look fine.

Instead of putting walls up, floors are coming down.  The entire first floor is gone.  It gives new meaning to an “open floor plan.”  It’s fascinating to see inside the walls, examine the old construction and envision the finished product.

And now it’s time to start making decisions.  I thought the tough decision was deciding whether to buy this place or not.  Apparently that was the easy decision.  Deciding on kitchen appliances, siding colors and whether to open the fireplace or not — are much bigger decisions.  And every decision comes with a price tag.