More About the House

I wrote a new description of the house itself for the bulletin board I go to. This one is not (so much) its condition that included some things not in the previous house postings, so I thought I'd add that here.

JB and her hubbie EJ built it themselves, they weren't builders or contractors. He had help from his Brothers/BIL's/friends who had worked in electricity, plumbing, or whatever.
It has a stupid layout (which has been made more stupid over the years), shag carpet (originally orange, now orange with dirt holding it together), filing cabinets used as furniture and lots of clutter. Also, a bunch of gray metal shelves with useless junk piled on them.

It's a square house. The only room on the ground floor that you can tell what it's for is the kitchen -- sort of -- that would be the room with the sink, stove, refrigerator, washer, dryer, and shower stall, right? The "kitchen" has a shower stall with a moldy curtain in it! There is a working toilet under the stairs (right off the kitchen) but you could hardly get in there for the clutter. All four rooms have exterior exits. (The shower and toilet are what I refer to as stupid add-ons -- but I suppose that at some point you want more than one bath in a house and want one downstairs.) But every kitchen has a shower stall, doesn't it?

As for the stupid layout, with no original downstairs bath, it's not like it's because of age. It was built in the late 60's or early 70's -- from colors in the house, I'd guess the 70's and never upgraded. The house that they moved there from did NOT have an indoor bath, so maybe they did not think they needed more than one and upstairs they put it near where they slept or more likely, where they had room for it. Upstairs is also in quadrants -- three are bedrooms and the fourth is the former bathroom The sink and toilet have for some reason been removed. The tub along with it's glass shower doors is soldered in with mold. There are still pipes in there and part of a sink cabinet, but it's in a different place from where the sink actually was. Hubbie once tried to improve the bathroom. He removed the shower doors and threw them out because they were in such bad conditoin. He replaced it with a curtain rod and a new shower curtain. FIL retrieved the doors and superglued them back in. ( I would almost bet the old mold and soapscum were included int he glue-back-in. But, that's just a guess based on how I knew him, I don't state that they were replaced dirty as a fact.)

The ceilings are 7 feet high. The stairs are shorter than standard stairs then the top step is about a half-height of the rest of them. I never went up them enough times that I ever got up it without tripping on that! There is a bedroom that has orange walls and a yellow ceiling (or vice-versa).

The house was also not heated or air conditioned. It has strip heaters screwed to the moldings. They cut holes in the sides of the house and inserted window unit air conditoiners into them. But of course they cut the holes too big and stuffed the rest of the opening with insulation. They put the air condioners in the wall because they did not want to block the windows. Doesn't sound like such a bad idea, but I don't remember the curtains ever being opened!


The land is in a place that it would not be worth anything in a good economy. I think I described that before. It's between run down commercial property and a railroad track. It's also off the end of a runway, but it's a small town airport with only a couple small planes a day, so the runway isn't that big a deal. {Well, more than I thought, I just looked. It looks like about 15 airline arrivals and 15 departures a day all puddle jumpers. There are 2 airlines going in and out. More of a hopping place than I thought! Plus general aviation and some cargo flights. }


Hubbie says that if it had new windows, exterior siding and heating/ac added it would be a good house! How many times did I say that I am glad we did not inherit it?