Journey To The House on The Hill - The Plan

This is the second part of how we ended up in our cozy House on the Hill.  The first part of the journey is here.  I have been putting off this post in the hopes that I would find the very few photos that we had of the Little Old House prior to our moving in.  I still have no idea where they are, we may have thrown them away.

On purpose.

It was 1997 and...

It was the summer after our baby girl's high school graduation.  She was ready to start off on her new life adventure; her brother was already firmly entrenched in his own.  We were empty nesters without even a dog to be responsible for.  Yet.

We were free.  We thought.

We put our memory laden Suburbia Brick Home with its 13 closets, 5 bedrooms, nice pantry, big laundry room and pretty front porch on the market and it sold within a few weeks. Whew!

Ignore the pretty gangster moll standing
in front of the pretty front porch.
This is the only photo I can find of the
outside of the home we raised our children in.

When the excitement died down, it hit us.  What in the heck do we do now?  I quickly went looking and found us a wee little place in the country to rent for a year;  south of where we raised our children.  We thought that year would give us plenty of time to get settled into a nice new place. Yeah.

We packed up all of our worldly  belongings and moved out of our home and into the Wee House.  The Wee House was about 600 square feet.  We were downsizing by 2000 square feet; most of the belongings went into storage.  Little did I know at that time that some of it would be in storage for over 10 years.

Then began the search  for our place in the country.   We had hoped to find something in the area of the Wee House.  It was near Lake Wedowee

photo courtesy of Wedowee Lake and Land

and Cheaha State Park.  A beautiful area.

photo courtesy of Alabama State Parks

We looked around and looked some more and looked again.  Unfortunately it seemed lots of people thought it was a beautiful area for lake and weekend homes.  Property was scarce and prices were high.  So we decided to broaden our search.

After months of looking and many, many miles of driving, in the spring of 1998 we finally found and bought a Gorgeous Piece of Land nestled in a little valley in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains - NORTH of where we raised our children.
 

The property boasted a slightly run down Cracker Farm House.  Yes, that is a real architectual syle in the southeast.   The front of ours was built just like the drawing in the link above, but it had an addition built on to the back in what they term a saddle bag extension.  Much like these. 

The pictures above and below are the same house from either side and the front.  One of the sides was taken into the sun and the other with the sun behind me.  This is one of my favorite houses around here, the pictures do not do it justice.  I took them from the road while sitting in my car and it sits on a rise quite a bit above the road.  Very hard to photograph.

It was put up for sale about 2 years after we bought our property and was a total mess.  The people that own it have totally renovated it and did a beautiful job restoring and painting the original siding bright white, putting a new red metal roof on it and redoing the front door, porch and stonework.  The house sits on 70 acres of rolling timber and pasture.  It is up for sale again for right around $300,000.  I wish I had $300,000.



Truer color of the roof and stonework.

Another Cracker Farmhouse near us.



Ours was more like the one below than those above.  However, this house has a rustic simple elegance about it.  There was no rustic elegance to ours at all.  Except maybe the tin roof.  That leaked.  In at least 8 places.  Any character the Little Old House had ever had, had been hideously red neck remodeled out of it.  Did I actually say that?    


This house actually sits in the middle of the
Laminack Vineyards at  The Fruithurst Winery Co. 
some what south of us.

We called our Cracker Farmhouse, the Little Old House and it was approximately a third of the size of the Surburbia Brick Home.  It had NO closets, 2 little bedrooms, NO laundry room and NO pantry.  It did have a bathroom and a kitchen.  And 2 porches, both somewhat falling down.

Okay, time for some honesty.  The porches were almost totally falling down and it didn't really have a kitchen to speak of.  It had an old one piece single porcelain sink/drain tray in very good condition that sat on an old metal cabinet that was totally rusted out.  As in don't touch me or I will fall down rusting out.  The porcelain sink was THE only redeeming feature.

In the whole house.  The kitchen also had one standing metal cabinet about 15 inches wide and 5 feet tall.  With the door hanging off.  That was all that was in the kitchen.  As in no cabinets or countertops whatsoever.  It was also completely covered, walls and ceiling with OSB. Varnished OSB and it almost glowed an orangey gold color.


this was actually a window that looked into the
partially enclosed, partially screened porch

And it was really more like a bedroom and a half.  And the bathroom had burnt orange indoor/outdoor carpet that was stiff to the touch in certain areas.  Like around the toilet.  ew.  And a wall hung sink that was only partially hanging.

I really wish I had more and better photos because words simply cannot describe it, but we didn't really want to remember.  Because, slightly run down is a bit of an understatement.

We had a plan though.  The plan was to fix the Little Old House up enough to live in while we built a new home up on the Hill using the gorgeous old world farmhouse plans I had found.  Similar to this.

I was quite confidant that this was going to be an awesome adventure. I was not going to let the change in housing affect me; with my do it your selfer skills I could make that Little Old House into a cute little home. I had awesome house plans picked out and before we knew it we would start The House on the Hill.

 AND after all I was married to M, who can and does do anything, or in his own words, "I wear lotsa hats."

We COULD do this.  There was just a LOT of cleaning to do before we could even begin the fix up.  The house had been standing empty for 6 months and had been a rental for years before that.  But before cleaning could even begin, we had to take the Little Old House back from the little critters that had taken it as their own.  This was the first time I had ever encountered a pack rat/wood rat.  I was surprised that they are acutally almost cute.

Big eyes, round ears and a fuzzy tail.  About the size of a small squirrel but nocturnal.  They really don't look anything like a (shudder) rat.  I came to passionately hate them.  They leave nests.  Nests packed full of stuff.  Thus the term pack rat.  Anytime we cleaned out an area or tore down a wall, we had to clean up a pack rat's nest.  Yuck.

I have to admit, M did almost all nest removal and clean up.

With the help of both kids and gallons of bleach, the house and surrounding yard were finally cleaned up.  Just as the kids went back to the schools of their choice. 

J to the west side of the state:

and My Girl to the east side of the state.

Made for interesting Game Days in our chosen home state.

We moved into The Little Old House to start The Plan.  We thought.

To be continued.............soon I hope.    

And now.

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WOW! This is my 100th post!

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Maybe I should throw myself a party. Or not.

I'm thinking a gathering of one

might not constitute a party.

I'll celebrate later with a glass of wine.

If anybody wants to help me celebrate or

just make me happy become a follower of

The House on The Hill.