Old house pictures!

Today my neighbors across the street (D and M) gave me the most incredible gift: 2 pictures of my house, one from the '50s, the other from 1960. D's sister lived in the house in the 1950s, and when I talked to D a year or so ago about the house's history, he said that he'd ask her if she had any photos from when she lived there. Since it's been so long, I assumed he had either forgotten or couldn't find anything. I wasn't going to be a pest about it. But today when Shayne was leaving, D flagged him down and gave us these two photos. How exciting!

D's wife M wrote the following caption for this picture: "D's sister bought the house like this." To me, the exterior appears to be in completely original condition. My guess is brown on top with white below, which is a common color scheme for foursquares. The screen door is the same one I found beside our neighbor's garage and "rescued" on a hunch that it belonged on our house. I'm so glad I did, since the neighbor cleaned out the junk pile over the summer, and it would probably be long gone otherwise. The porch floor looks like it's wooden, and I love the lattice on the bottom. You can just barely see the original garage in the back. The tree on the right may be the same one that's there today. The one on the left, which is obviously a maple, is still there for certain.

The second photo is dated June 1960. M wrote another caption: "Then closed in the porch." I wonder why they changed it? I generally don't like screened-in porches, but I don't think it looked too bad. This one confirms that the maple is the same one there now. The second story looks to have been painted white., but not much else has changed. You can barely see the original garage in the back, as well as the fence along the railroad easement. Maybe it's the picnic table and swing, but I love how homey this picture makes the house and yard look.

And a year or two ago. Is it just me, or does the house look WAY smaller? I think the spindly porch supports make the house look less substantial. And the windows look so naked without trim! The 2 car garage was moved to the property at an unknown date. D told me the '50s, but it wasn't there in the 1960 picture. The original is still behind the new one, but I'm not sure now if that's its original location. It looks closer to the house in the old pictures. Obviously the original porch is long gone. And it's been "updated" with vinyl siding and fack brick. Ick. I'm almost positive that the mailbox on the left is the same one, it's just that the little slope leading up to the yard is higher.

I never thought we'd have old pictures of our house. Thanks D and M!!

A history lesson

After receiving the letter from the previous owners, I figured it would be a good idea to talk to D and M across the street about the Prairie Box. I'm not sure why I didn'tdo this sooner, as they are very nice folks and we've visited on several previous occasions. Somehow, I can't figure out how, since it's one of my obsessions, the house never came up in conversation.

But this afternoon, armed with some wayward Christmas mail for the PPOs (K and L), I stopped in and asked about the Prairie Box. And M said, "Why D's sister used to live there... About 49 years ago!" Who'd have thought? Talk about a small world. They're going to talk with her and see if she has any old pictures of the house or maybe even the property abstract. That would be like winning the lottery!

D and M also provided some insights into the property, since they are good friends with the PPOs and had visited many times throughout the years. K and L seemed like they did the most modifications to the property, including adding a garage, remuddling the porch, adding vinyl siding andfake brick, opening up the wall between the kitchen and dining room, remodeling the kitchen, finishing the basement, and putting up the paneling and ceiling tiles. I learned that the 2 car garage had been moved to the property from South Bend in the middle of the night. I also learned that the back wall of the dining room, facing the back yard, used to have a window. Not a double-hung, but a head-high one that you put a buffet underneath. D and M also told me a little about the porch that used-to-be. It had a short railing and squat craftsman columns, just as I had imagined.

I'm amazed that so many of the changes I wanted to make to the house, even before we started uncovering clues to what was original, are actual features the house used to have. Before it was remuddled, this house was everything I imagined it to be. Too bad I haven't found any built-ins that had been removed...!

D and M were amazed that we want to make the house look old again. "You're young people, don't you want it to look new?" Their home, a vernacular farmhouse, had been remuddled almost to the point of style-less-ness. It is a very nice house; clean, well-kept, and homey, but just isn't what we want. I told them that I love antiques and old homes, and that we just want to pay tribute to the character of the house while making it our own. That's what it's about for everyone, after all: creating a vision of home.

Letter from the POs

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to the previous owners of our house, asking them for any information they might have about the property, what repairs/changes they made to the house, and if they had any photos of the house when they moved in. Here is the reply I received:

We received your letter dated October 23, 2007. It was good to hear that you are
taking care of the house. B and I were laughing that you had already undertaken
much of the work that was next on our “to-do” list prior to me being offered
another job. I will try to answer your questions as best I can.

When we moved in, the house was livable but needed some modernization. Before
we even moved anything in, we ripped out the shag carpeting in the two bedrooms
facing the street and did some touch up painting. While we lived there, we also
did several remodeling projects. First, in what was our office (the bigger of
the two bedrooms facing the street) we stripped off the wall paper and paint
(several layers of both including some really ugly lime green and pink layers),
refinished the floor and woodwork (woodwork also had several layers of paint),
had the room skim coated, hung crown molding around the top, etc. In the small
bedroom up stairs, we refinished the floor, striped wallpaper and paneling from
the walls, painted all the woodwork (had to cut several new pieces), built the
“toy box”, enlarged the entrance to the attic, added a ceiling fan and rewired.
In the dining room, we painted (it was dark brown paneling and chocolate brown
painted woodwork) and installed laminate flooring. The plan was originally to
refinish the floors there too but several of the boards were missing/boarded
over from when they moved the heating around.

More mechanical repairs included re-wiring portions of the house (mostly to
install ground to the main floor), installing drain valves for the
mudroom/laundry room portion (the water line froze my first year there so after
that I just shut it off and drained the water line when it was going to be below
0 F for several days). I also caulked all the windows (which leaked badly when
we moved in), had insulation blown into the walls of the house and additional
insulation put in the attic. In the basement utility room, there was
effervescence on the walls so I acid etched the walls and painted it with Dry
Lock even though we had never had water in the basement. We put stucco on the
base of the mudroom which was just Styrofoam and then repainted all the brick at
the base of the house. I also replaced the window in the mudroom and rebuilt the
frames of the windows in the basement on the driveway
side.

Outside, we did landscaping. I brought in 10 yards of dirt and several pickup
loads of mulch to use as fill around the site of the house away from the
driveway. Then we planted that area with wildflowers and herbs. I hope you are
enjoying the asparagus that we put in there. Although the Fs left lots of
perennials, we also planted many bulbs, ferns and trees around the yard. We also
cut down a large white pine that was on property line with us and JD. It was
hard for me to do but it lost a lot of branches in an ice storm and we were
worried that it would come down during another storm one of the houses in the
area. JD and I were not sure who owned it so we split the cost on taking it
down.

It doesn’t sound like you found it but there is another “secret” doorway to
the attic in the bathroom, above the stairs and behind the cabinet. You would
need to pull the cabinets out, but I found it while in the attic re-wiring
upstairs and blowing in insulation. If you ever refinish the upstairs bathroom
you will come across it.

The right of way to the north of you still has an easement. The power company
comes through every couple of years and clears it to keep vegetation out of the
power lines. If they haven’t done it in the 2 years you have been there, they
will be back soon.

The best people to learn about the history of the house would be the Fs. They
lived there for 30+ years. I do not have an address for them anymore but they
are very close friends of the M’s that live across the street and we used to
sometimes see them going into the Methodist Church on the corner. Mr. F was very
friendly and helpful when I asked him for a tour of the house before I moved in.
The house does not have a traditional septic and he showed me where the sumps
were located. He also explained that there used to be a mobile home for his
mother-in-law in the side yard north of the driveway. You will still find the
gas and power lines in the utility room going towards to driveway that were used
to heat and power the mobile home. After living there for that long, he knew all
the secrets. In fact, they only moved because it was getting hard for them to go
up and down stairs. The Ms would also be a good source since they have lived in
their house for 40+ years.

I hope you have gotten to know the neighbors. JD is a really nice guy and he
helped us out a lot. The Ms were also fantastic and they watched our daughter
for us periodically and Mr. M was a great help to me as a first time home owner
on how to repair different things.

I will look for some photos from when we moved in but it may be several weeks
before I get them scanned and sent. I hope that this information helped. If you
have other questions, please feel free to call us.

I have much warmer feelings towards the POs now. I've always appreciated the work they started, but I never realized just how much they did. What I think is so great is that they were interested in unremuddling the house, not just slapping up something pretty as a temporary fix. What they did, they did right. I can't always agree with their color choices (!!), but I'm happy that they got the ball rolling for us.