After posting about living happily here in Pennsylvania, I have been chatting a bit with Angry Prophet and from that, have decided to post about the story of my house. I've debated with myself a bit about whether this was interesting enough to post here or should be posted in my "boringme64" blog - the name speaks for itself!
In 1986, before we were married, we bought our 5.3 acres. It already had a well and septic on the site because there had originally been a summer home here that had burned down. Legends abound about what caused the fire. We've heard it was a lightening strike, but others say it happened when an airplane crashed into it and some people have alluded to arson. I suspect it was a lightening strike but the airplane story sounds much more exciting. We had our house built by a local home builder that same year. At that time we could only afford to have the main part of it built (the part with two dormers). We also had them leave the upstairs unfinished to save money. I can still remember the excitement of moving in! Packing up our few things and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Everything was so fresh and new. Its hard to believe that its 19 years later and everything is now...broken in! LOL!
That winter we finished off the upstairs doing all the work ourselves. The next year we undertook the much bigger project of adding on our garage. I've noticed that many people say that they built their house, when in fact they mean that they acted as a contractor who hired workers to build their house. Well, WE built our garage! I must tell you that Tom was the brains behind the operation. I ended up learning a lot but started out with absolutely no knowledge. Tom is enough of a handyman to know most of what he needed and to figure out the rest.
It ended up being more than just a garage because its the exact same dimensions as our house. This made it easy to figure out the size that the joists, rafters, etc needed to be. It also included the "mudroom" that attaches it to the main house. Since this is an enclosed room it is not called a breeze way but we learned its called a hyphen. We made our decision to make it so big based on the fact that we would never say "wow, its too big', but would possibly regret if we made it too small.
Our project started with calling excavators in the late winter to have someone come in the spring and dig the hole for the footing. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, I said that we did the work ourselves. Well, let me continue. Unfortunately the excavators told us that the earliest that they could dig would be the fall of that year. That was, IF we were lucky! So we started to look for a place to rent a small backhoe. We soon discovered that our isolated country life meant that there wasn't any rental companies close enough (since then, a few have popped up around here). So our first purchase was a couple of spades, yes, shovels. We borrowed a pick. It seemed to many, an absurd idea to dig this huge hole ourselves. I'm not sure if it was optimism or ignorance that led us to take that plunge. One thing for sure we were definitely ignorant about how many rocks are here in Pennsylvania, not to mention the clay! I'm just appreciative of the fact that we didn't encounter any huge boulders. We had a few helpful friends and relatives that would stop by to help...once or twice. I have to mention Tom's cousin who was a powerhouse digger, if we could just keep him going in the right direction!
Well, that heck hole took us over two months to dig but we were ready to pour the footings. We had a cement mixer but decided to have a company come with ready made concrete. We had called the building inspector to have him come inspect the forms while we were at work and assumed he hadn't found any problems. We poured the footings only to find out he had never made that inspection! He said "You've got to take out the footings!" I guess since I'm from the country where they would think that was a funny joke and Tom is not from the country, we both took it differently. Fortunately, my laughter broke the ice and diffused Tom's panic quickly enough that he didn't have a heart attack and throw us completely off schedule! It was only a joke but we were more careful about future inspections.
I think working side by side with Tom made our marriage even stronger. I've seen people try to work together carrying heavy objects pushing and pulling and working against each other. Tom and I have carried so much that its like one person moving the object. Many of the jobs were repetive like cutting and placing the roof shingles. I would cut them and he would nail them down. It got so I would know exactly what size he needed before he even asked. My cooking skills came in handy since I mixed all the mortar to use on the foundation. There's nothing like the strength building exercise of carrying hundreds of 40 pound concrete blocks and handing them to Tom to mortar into the foundation wall. I became very strong but still managed to be pleasing plump! My fear of heights is greatly diminished since I spent so much time going up and down the ladder. Tom did such a good job on the electrical wiring that the electrical inspector commented on how great it was. It passed before we discovered it had a couple of mistakes! Well, all these years later the house hasn't burned down so I guess everything is okay! Tom designed and built the round barn type doors that you see in the picture and did such a good job that they've held up perfectly.
We began to call the inspector "our buddy Dewayne". He was known to be tough but we were always meticulous about our work so we never had a problem with him. He even stood up for us at the Board of Supervisors meeting when we were begging to get our third yearly building permit. Yes, the project took us three years. We had nights that we would get home from work at 5:00 pm and work until it was dark. In the summer that could be until 8:30 or 9:00 pm! Originally I was going to type that the ENTIRE project took us three years to complete but that is not quite true. We got our Certificate of Occupancy after three years but only needed to have one coat of spackle on the walls to get it. And that is the way it remained for around 15 years. That is when we finally finished to the two rooms over the garage for the kids to move into. The mudroom is still in process and the garage may always have spackled walls! We have grown to see that the process of creating our home is much more fun than having everything done right away.
There is always something new happening. A couple years ago Tom finished the porch on the front of the house. I've wanted a porch forever and the wait was worth it! I love the look of hanging flowers in the summer and wreaths and garland in the winter. The latest is turning our mudroom into "The Pennsylvania Room". For me this constant metamorphosis is necessary. I feel that if it stops, we will be at the end of life. To me change is life.
