The artist and the carpenter is a blog about my husband Matt , me (Amelia), and our first real home together. We'd been married almost a year when we decided to purchase some real estate. Seeing as we live, work, and play in Tupelo, MS we wanted to find a home close by. It had to be just far enough in the country to make Matt happy, but close enough to the city that I don't feel like coyotes will be scratching at the back door.
The first house we seriously considered (and even put an offer on) was a quaint little yellow two bedroom, one bath with one old oak tree in the front yard. The rest of the yard was barren, the neighbors were pretty close, but seeing as it was in our price range, newly remodeled, and in the area we'd considered living we tried for a loan to purchase it. The bank turned down our loan application which was disheartening at first but turned out to be a blessing.
The next day we were looking at another house we'd been told was for sale and both fell in love immediately. At first glance, the house itself was in pretty rough shape. It was a bank-owned forclosure and no one had lived there for 4 or 5 years. There was a blatantly obvious addition made with low quality board on half the exterior. It needed a new roof, new windows, new siding, central heating and air, you name it, it needed fixing. But driving up to it you pass a wooded area, and can barely see the house until you turn on the circle drive. The landscaping reminded me of The Secret Garden, which just so happens to be one of my favorite movies and books. There are several beautiful dogwood trees, ancient pines, giant azaleas, vibrant hydrangeas, and plenty of other plants I have yet to learn the names of. In my mind it was ours before we even stepped foot through that beautiful blue front door.
When first entering you are slapped in the face by the horrendous smell. Soured carpet, mold, and stale air are not really the fragance you want to welcome you into your home. On the upside, the entry room had two big windows, a built in bookcase, and an archway down into the livingroom. I could see the potential already. The living room used to be the carport so it has a step down to go into it, and the room itself is long and rectangular with the highest ceiling in the house. The windows have a wall of bookcases around them, and there's an old brick floor in the corner (which we eventually tore up) where the pot bellied stove used to sit. Off the living room is the falling-in, damp and moldy utility room (our future laundry room). There's also a giant room off the living room which will someday serve as our garage but at the moment is where all the woodworking is done.
The kitchen was one of the strangest rooms. It had mismatched cabinets, green walls, peel-and-stick-tile floor, a totally random and nonfunctional square cut out of the wall that looked into the entry room, and a pantry about 11 inches wide. Also, on the cabinet doors, where there should have been a handle, they'd replaced each one with two small, brushed nickel knobs. We still can't make sense of why they did that. Convenient for us, that was the finish we would be using throughout the house so I salvaged those.
The next room we went to was the guest bedroom. It wasn't in such bad shape except for the terrible old soured carpet. Across the hall from the guest bedroom is the hall bath. It had a yellow tub, yellow sink, peculiar old wallpaper and a small, cobweb filled window. The house examination continued down the hallway,passed the linen closet, to the bedroom at the end on the right. It too had soured carpet, but also two windows and a pretty big closet. Not a bad room all in all.
The final room in the house was the master bedroom. The windows in the master had been broken out and boarded up so we could only look by the light of our phones. The closet was decent but a little small. There was also a little half bath which had become quite moldy. I later saw the cast iron sink, which is a fun shade of blue so I saved it, but haven't found a use for it yet.
Obviously we knew this house would be a fixer-upper when we bought it for $17,000. Did I mention its nearly 1700 square feet, when you include the garage? That makes it about $10 a square foot. A great deal, but we'll also be working on it for years to come. The lot is 1.5 acres, with an old wood barn, a creek that runs around the property, and later we discovered two other little buildings farther behind the barn. Our lot is like a tall skinny triangle. The house is at the front part and it gets narrower as you go back. So that is the gyst of what we saw (and smelled) on our first expedition into the belly of this beast.
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