The Dangers of Owning Old Homes

There are many downsides to owning one (or more) old homes. The upkeep, the covenants, finding replacement items, bleeding time and money... The list goes on and on. But did you ever think your old house could have it in for you? Would be out for your blood? We're not talking about ghosts, poltergeists, or even the evil ivy. Just the house itself. Sad but true. Or more specifically, all of the things that have been living in that house since lonnng before you took up residence. So let's discuss this before another hospital visit occurs.

Currently Legionnaires' Disease has been making the evening news all across the country due to the outbreak in New York City. At this time there have been four deaths in that outbreak. It turns outs that this very deadly form of pneumonia is what landed Eric in the hospital last week. We are so blessed and grateful that he is now safely home with us and recovering. Unfortunately, we don't know where he picked it up, BUT it is complicated by the fact that we do own the old houses. And we WILL BE doing some special testing, cleaning, and construction to make extra certain that it did not come from any of our homes or gets spread. Paranoid much? YES!!! We have to be! With Amanda's compromised immune system, we can't take any chances.

Front Parlor of the Toad Hall. Looks perfectly clean to me!

The point here, is this is the second time in three years we have had a family member in the hospital, and the doctors were running a lot of extra tests because we live in, and own a second, old house. Looking for things like special fungus, bacteria, etc. And this time they found one. It just might not have been living in the house. 

So. Precautions. This is why all those masks, gloves, and other bothersome safety items are suggested for cleaning, painting, and repairing your old home. It's a matter of health! And the next time your significant other reminds you to clean the gutters, replace a furnace filter, clean an air conditioner, or set a good example for the kids and wash your hands, please think twice before arguing. They love you and want a happy, healthy home environment!

Keep safe, well, and stay blessed. We know we are, to have our Eric with us tonight.

- The Horner House Family.

 

 

To Mow or Not to Mow...

When I was a child we called our parents Mom and Dad. But we were lucky children whose parents read to them often, and one of my favorites was the Bernstein Bears. Because of that I took to calling my own father Papa Bear which I have done, on occasion, all of my life. Then, when my niece came along, she chose Papa as the designator for my Dad, and I began calling him Papa more often than not.

Well, Papa came over yesterday with his lovely big Dixie Chopper to mow my yards for me. Eric and I are very grateful to him for bringing it over every other week all summer long and keeping our yards mowed for us. Unfortunately, his lovely Chopper had a bit of a mishap and broke a belt. Now the yard looks like it has half a Mohawk, but hey, we’re not winning any beauty pageants any time soon anyway.

From this angle it is hard to see, but the yard in front of the Bungalow is done and there are a couple of stripes on the utility strip clean, but most of the yard is still overgrown.

On another note, we had to have Lee’s Complete Drain Service back out. The main line backed up again, just a week after the first experience. They came out on a Saturday morning, early and got us working again. Our current water use is extremely low and there is some problem with the main line where it runs under the house. So, since Lee’s doesn’t have a camera to see what the exact issue is we have to increase our water use.

Spring has hit with and we are back to long days and longer to do lists. More soon!

-Amanda 

Well, I had to leave to meet someone to do some work at the BG house before I could upload the picture and post this. And while I was gone Papa fixed his Chopper and snuck in and mowed. So at least that part is done! The trimming still needs to be done, but with the spotty weather this week it might be a few days before we we get completely cleaned up.

   

March Update

Once again time has flown by us and it’s been awhile since we have posted. There are a number of things that have contributed to this, but I’m just going to hit a few of the highlights. The first is that the Bungalow is still a work in progress and that is causing an overall daily time drain. We still don’t have a working shower and the washer and dryer are not hooked up yet. This means that we have to transport all of our laundry to either Beech Grove or the office and do the same for showering.

The kitchen is still incomplete, so that means storing everything in the dining room and having to haul it back and forth to use it. Every week it gets a little better. In the past four weeks we’ve gotten the dishwasher installed, the waterline for the ice maker run, the microwave moved over (but not hung yet), and the walls and ceiling in the kitchen painted. We still have to paint all of the cabinets and trim, hang three cabinets and the microwave, and lay a floor covering. Also, while we have put a new pane in the boarded kitchen window we found that the trim strips that held the pane in place had been glued down instead of nailed. We still need to replace all of those, as the old pieces were destroyed in the removal process.

Out of the million and one pictures that we have taken of the houses this was the only picture of what the kitchen window used to look like! The cabinets have been removed and you can see the crossbar that was used as part of the boarding up of this window.

Here is the window without a board! One step at a time...

We have made quite a bit of progress on the Bungalow and that gets us one step closer to being able to focus all of our energy on Toad Hall. But living in a construction zone causes a lot of extra work on a daily basis. Things like having to hand wash all of the dishes before the dishwasher got up and running and having to haul everything in and out of the kitchen to cook dinner. Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a complaint. We are in love with the Bungalow and it’s all worth it. These things are just slowing us down a bit and now that we live right next door to Toad Hall, it’s really hard not to be impatient to get back to work on it!

One of the other complications has been my health. Back in late November the doctors at the Mayo Clinic ordered more tests for me to have done when I came home. That led to more tests and doctor’s appointments, and eventually to what we were thrilled to find out was an incorrect diagnosis. But we spent about a month looking at the possibility of a rather bleak future. While we don’t have any answers, and I’m still very limited in what I can do, things are currently stable, and that’s a much better place than I was at this time last year. And while I have yet more tests and appointments, I have a group of some of the best doctors in the country and they haven’t given up hope that we’ll find the answers and get me back to normal. (Or as normal as I ever was. :D)

There’s one other thing that has greatly affected our available time in the past few weeks. Last weekend my brother turned 41 and we had a pitch in dinner and bonfire to celebrate. Cleaning, cooking, moving the fire pit and grill, and rearranging for the party took up quite a bit of time. But it was really wonderful to be able to have his friends and our family all gather together. The Bungalow has tons of space and a great atmosphere. And while we would have moved in here even if it were small and unhappy, it is such a great thing that we can be right next door to Toad. The Bungalow is a great house in its own right, and even with all of the complications, it’s a joy to be here.

Bungalow, Here We Come!

Way back in early December Eric and I made a decision that made our usual crazy existence look like a life of the quietest tranquility. We decided that the Bungalow would be done and moved into in time to have my Mom’s family Christmas party on December 28^th. Now, I know that many of the choices we make are considered eccentric (at best) by many people, but this one took the cake. When you consider that we still had to keep the business open, I had multiple doctors’ appointments and a bunch of tests scheduled, and the Christmas holiday was in there, even I wasn’t sure we could do it. But, after a long conversation and sleeping on it for a night, Eric was still convinced it could be done and I wanted to try. And so the insanity began.

Eric began working on the house and I called and the movers and set them up to come on the 26^th. Since we don’t have children and my immediate family does our get together on Christmas Eve this looked like the best day. And since we weren’t planning on having them move anything but the heavy stuff, like books and furniture, it was only supposed to take a few hours. Then we would transport the rest of it ourselves that afternoon and the next day.

 This photo was taken on the evening of the 24th. This is looking from the dining room into the back porch (utility room) after we had painted.

Just over a week before the movers were scheduled I met our insurance agent to do a final walk through on the house. We did fine until I missed the bottom stair and did a belly flop onto the hardwood in the foyer. I was laying there with both knees screaming, reassuring him that I was fine, all the while thinking, “Please don’t cancel me!” It wasn’t all that funny at the time, and my agent would have been even more bothered if he realized just how close I can to taking him down with me, but in retrospect it was kind of amusing. About the only things worse to do in front of your agent would be setting the house on fire or hitting his car…

So a couple of days later I limped through the house and tried to be realistic about our progress. While Eric had been working incredibly hard, the answer was pretty grim. The electrical in the kitchen was incomplete and I had no cabinets, countertops, sink, dishwasher, paint or floors. The downstairs bathroom needs gutted, but at least had/has a working toilet. The enclosed back porch, which we will now call the utility room, needed the carpeting ripped up, lines run for the washer and dryer, and completely cleaned and painted. None of the painting had been done anywhere else in the house and the upstairs bathroom was gutted but that’s where we stopped. The rest of the upstairs needed plasterwork, a complete cleaning and painting, and there was still tar paper on all the floors.

 This picture was also taken on the 24th, looking from the dining room into the living room. It has since been completely cleaned and painted.

Knowing there was no way that we could complete all of this in a week, even if we didn’t have work and Christmas (including all of the shopping) to deal with, Eric and I sat down to reevaluate. And we decided on what many will call our most insane decision by far. We could go ahead and move into the ground floor of the house and then we’d be more available to work in the evenings. This means having to go over to the office to shower and do laundry, working in an incomplete kitchen for a few weeks, and only moving part of our things. But this is what we have done. Since there is not enough room in the living and dining rooms for everything Eric is sleeping on the twin bed and I’m on the couch and there are a number of other issues too. The dogs have to go out on leashes, I can’t find things like my boots (during a snowstorm), and we’re using three baby gates to keep the dogs in the safe parts of the house.

 The foyer looks surprisingly good considering that it's been primed but not painted, the ceiling fan needs installed, and the chairs will have to be moved so that they no longer block the stairs. :)

The upside to all of this is we are almost ready to turn the Beech Grove house over to Greg and JR at Jacoby to get the hail damage repaired and make it market ready! I am hoping that we can get it listed by the first of March. And even through the best part of having the Bungalow was that we would never have to live out any scenes from the Money Pit, and we might be in danger of it yet, at least we are finally getting moved and almost done with the Bungalow phase of our project.

New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve is a good time to look back at the past year. I didn’t really think that we had much happen, but then I looked over the blog posts and realized that it’s been quite a year. On the positive side we finished the search and found a new contractor, gotten the Horner House added to the National Register of Historic Places, and found a number of exciting things with the metal detecting. We also added the Knightstown Architecture and we have been able to decorate for both Halloween and Christmas. Another surprise is that our FB page has 690 followers and the blog as been viewed over 29,000 times! And finally, we are partially moved into the Bungalow. 

 Another (better) picture of the house with the Christmas tree.

On the harder side of things it has also been an eventful year. The Irvington Post Office was both saved and lost in a few short months and we lost our own garage to an arsonist. And the Bungalow had a structural issue that was both identified and repaired. Also, Amanda’s health has been a challenge, with three trips to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and more doctor's appointments and tests than she cares to remember. But overall, her health is somewhat better now than earlier in the year. It has been a very long, very up and down, year for all of us.

In the new year we will be adding more architecture blogs, including other cities, and catching you all up on the work done to the Bungalow and our move. We will also be getting the garage cleaned up, the Beech Grove house fixed and sold, and hopefully making some good progress on the Horner House.

It is looking to be a very happy new year. Thank you all for keeping up with us and being so incredibly supportive.

Miscellaneous Bits: Fire pit, Garage, and Amazon

For those of you who follow us on Facebook, you probably already know that once again, last Sunday, someone tried to break in to the house. They must have heard the alarm and ran off, but there is some small damage to another window. I don’t know if it’s the same people, but someone also stole our fire pit several weeks ago. We had half a drum raised on blocks that Dad was occasionally using. The cost of constantly replacing and fixing things is getting a bit old. It’s hard to get anything new complete when we keep getting drug backwards.

The blocks are still there, but the fire pit is gone.

That takes us on to the garage. We only have until the end of this month to get it cleaned up. So far health and hospital has been very understanding, but come December 1^st, that might change. Eric is going to be getting the clean up arranged while I am gone. Taking us back to the fire pit, at the same time the scrappers took it, they took some burned metal from the garage. This is another frustration, as we had no insurance on the garage (it had been condemned and we couldn’t get coverage until it was completely fixed) so we are having to pay out of pocket for the cleanup. That metal could have been turned in by us to help offset those costs.

Now on to a happier topic… You may have noticed that we have added an Amazon search box in the right column of the blog and an Amazon tab at the top. We have signed up to be an Amazon associate which allows us to do two things. First, anyone who accesses Amazon through our search box and then buys anything, you earn us funds to put towards the house. This does not cost you anything! It’s similar to us receiving a finder’s fee for directing you to them. The other thing that we will be doing is posting books, tools, and that we recommend. These will go on the Amazon tab and you will have to go look at them, they will not come to you. We will not be constantly be bombarding you with this.

So, just a few miscellaneous things as get ready to leave. I’m off early tomorrow to Minnesota and will see you all in a couple of weeks. Until then, I leave you to Eric’s gentle care. J

-Amanda