Our Fixer Upper

We immediately fell in love with the six and a half  hilly, wooded acres nestled in the most beautiful farm country, with this little country manor in a large, secluded clearing. When we first saw the house, we thought the same thing everyone else thinks when they see it for the first time: “It looks nice from the outside.”

Well, at the doorstep the nice sights (and smells) ended. What we found inside was an extremely dated and worn interior with a very strange layout and an indescribable odor that was at the very least a terrible mixture of heavy smokers, large dogs, and other unknown varmints. From what little information we could gather about the house, it had been built as sort of a cabin and added to a few years later. Upon further examination, Kevin concluded that the DIY builder must have been an electrician (because the electricity was actually done very well–and the five-globe municipal light posts outside are fantastic) who just kind of stumbled along in the other trades, winging it on a shoestring budget. Some of the finer points included 1/4″ paneling throughout the entire house, a bathroom sink that looked like a giant glob of melted chocolate vanilla swirl ice cream, a toilet placed very off-center, a textured ceiling complete with glitter, and bathrooms up on platforms (because the house is built on a slab and someone didn’t want to dig a trench in the concrete for the plumbing). Another strange feature was a stairway leading from an upstairs bedroom down into the garage, so the occupant of that room could traipse through the garage to a door leading to a dark hallway which ran all along the back of the house. This was so he could get to a bathroom halfway down the hallway (which I took to referring to as “Murder Hallway”). Did I mention the bathroom was on a platform?

The center of the house (the original structure, apparently) was kind of a modified A-frame and  consisted only of an eating area in front of large windows going all the way up to the peak (the best feature of the house) and behind that a small kitchen set back in a nook under a loft. To the side were steps leading to the loft, overlooking the eating area, with a makeshift closet under the steps. Wood posts served as a railing for the loft and steps, and they were covered with latticework.  Yes, lattice. Inside the house. Oh, I forgot to mention that all the wood trim in the entire dwelling was painted chocolate brown.

The addition consisted of a small bedroom and tiny bathroom (on a platform) on one side and a great room with a sunken fireplace on the other side, as well as a half story upstairs with long, narrow rooms with slanted ceilings on each side, connected by the aforementioned lattice-enhanced loft. The garage side was longer than the other side and the upstairs on that side included a very strange winding hallway, not tall enough for a regular man to stand up straight in. All paneled in that thin paneling, of course. Even the ceiling. Of the whole house–except for the room with textured sprinkles.

Did I mention the smell?

But it does look very nice from the outside. And the land is bee-yoo-ti-ful!. And Kevin has vision. Lots of vision. So, here we go…