Old House

My kitchen window is in an old house. I don't mean historic just old. Most of the house is an early 1950's or late 1940's farmhouse. The design came form Farm Journal and you can see its mates all over this area on other farms. It's a standard story and a half with two bedrooms up and a dormer roomer over the porch.

The thing about an old house is that you are always putting it back together or repairing it. You deal with windows that don't open, doors that don't close, floors that slant this way or that, drafts that creep around your ankles, strange creaks and groans in the night, and plumbing that gurgles and stops. Then there are the challenges of putting a modern family into a dwelling built with a simpler, older time in mind. Take for example the problem of closets. It seems that the modern generation is the only one that feels that we need lots of closet space. How did our parents deal with clothes with only one closet (in the whole house) and a few chests? Today's children need a closet for summer clothes, winter clothes, and one for outgrown clothes. When we moved in our bedroom didn't have a closet at all--we added two, on either side of the fireplace (something we don't need).

The fun part is that living in an old house is like living in an archelogical dig. Everytime you do something to the house you discover a part of its past. For example, when we remodeled the bathroom we discovered that the walls were insulated with newspaper from 1950. So we deduced that the bathroom was added to the house in 1950. It was obvious that the bath had been carved out of the end of the kitchen, but now we knew when. It also explained why you feet nearly froze to the bottom of the tub during your shower. Nothing can explain why the bath instead of being square is nearly trapodzoidal. Trying to put tile on the floor was a major mistake that causes many people to feel dizzy.

When we decided to repair the walls in the upstairs bedroom we encountered another adventure. The bedroom on the left was a nice, normal 8' ceiling bedroom. The one on the right was a 7 1/2' ceiling with an elevated floor. When we repaired the walls and tried to remove the baseboards we discovered that the baseboards continued for 6 inches below the floor. Thanks to an elderly lady who had once lived on our farm, we discovered that he original house had been built in the early 1900's but had been destroyed by a tornado in the late 40's. The house now existing had been build on the older foundation and using some of the original sturcture. So we have two rooms that predate the rest of the house. Like I said, it's like an archeological dig. You dig a little and learn a little history.