About five years ago, my husband Adam and I decided that it was finally time to start looking to purchase a house. We had always talked about buying an older, fixer-upper home because we've had the idea that they hold more charm and character. Plus we can appreciate a place that has it's own quirks and we love the thought of turning something run down into something beautiful again.
With that being said, I grew up in a pretty rural farming town in Indiana that had more than its fair share of run-down houses. The surrounding areas had started to boom a little bit, with farmland being sold off and turned into new factory locations, along with new subdivisions for the people coming to work for them. I thought it'd be a great place to start on our house hunt. I figured we'd be a lot closer to civilization than I used to be growing up, but not so much so that we'd be living a stone's throw away from our neighbors.
Adam and I decided to take a drive one summer Sunday afternoon so I could show him some of the backroads of my hometown and to also see what some of the properties we checked out online looked like in person. As we were turning off the main road through town and further onto a more secluded country road, we noticed that the very first house on the left was completely abandoned. We pulled into a small patch of the yard where the grass was the shortest (and where a gravel driveway used to be) to further investigate. It was painted a deep green color, which made it almost invisible against the tall grass, sticker-bushes, and weeds that had grown up around it. There was a massive tree in the front yard whose branches and leaves helped to camoflauge this place even further. The house looked as if it were at least 100 years old. It looked like it had sat empty for years. It looked neglected, weather worn, and in need of major love. In that moment, it was perfect.
There was nothing but woods across the street and no neighboring houses in sight, so Adam and I thought it probably wouldn't hurt if we just trespassed a little. I completely justified my reasoning by thinking, "Well, we're interested in buying the property, we're not here to cause trouble! We're doing someone a favor, we could take this burden of a house off of someone's hands... we just need to take a look around first, thats all!" Plus, there weren't any NO TRESPASSING signs anywhere, so I was perfectly armed with my new found inflated ignorance and arrogance to assess this property.
We walked carefully through the brush toward the left side of the house, where we noticed a well that was still standing, complete with bucket, rope, handle and the original overhang. My excitement for a picturesque country house was building. Directly across from the well, there was a side entrance into the house through what looked like an added on mud-room. The screen door to the mud room was closed, however there was a wooden door behind it that was half open. This was our "not-really-intrusive-because-we-aren't-breaking-anything-to-get-in" way in.
It was probably in the mid-90s outside that day, so when we entered ( Adam first) we were met with thick, stifling heat. The kind that holds so much humidity that it almost takes your breath away. What we thought was a mud-room was an extended pantry area or canning kitchen—it was tiny with one window, an old rusted sink, a small stove and the walls still held shelves upon shelves of canned (and spoiled) vegetables in jars. I remember thinking, "Oh yeah, this'll be great, I totally remember how to can, and we can have a garden, and, and.." (Insert all kinds of other giddy thoughts women have while in the throes of house hunting here) It also had the doorway into the main part of the house, and this is where my elation came to an end.
Through the doorway was the the kitchen. What remained of the cabinets and sink were against the wall on the left, but they were either broken or hanging on for dear life or both. The kitchen connected to a wide open living area, with one side having walls streaked with black that led up to a half sunken, gray ceiling. There had been a fire at some point. The windows on that wall were filthy, covered in dust or ash that made the room much darker than it should have been in the middle of the day. My heart sank. I knew we wouldn't be able to afford a costly repair of a house fire, but I kept that disappointing thought to myself.
