This Old House

On my property there is an old little one-room house that someone built an outbuilding around. The inside still has the original ceiling and small, winding staircase, but otherwise has long been uninhabitable. I have a picture of my house from 1891, so I assume this smaller house is probably about ten years older, based on when the people started settling this county.

In this picture from this winter, you can see where the original house is, with its small upstairs window, and the part (on the left) where it was added on to.

One day I hope to turn it into an enclosed workshop with electricity, heating and air, but until I get about a million other projects done around here about all I can do at the moment is clean it up. When I first moved in, it still had tons of cans that had been stored there from when my dad lived here. He had wanted to take them in to donate towards a kid's camp, but was never able to find the time. Unfortunately the bags of cans were torn open by mice, making it just that much harder to get everything cleaned up.

By the time I cleaned them up and took them to town, it ended up being a lot of cans!

It was such an unorganized mess....

...that I finally got cleaned up this week! It doesn't look like much, but it was several full days worth of work. Installing new plexiglass over the old windows alone took me almost a full day. I had to remove all the old nails, old glass, and an ancient shelf that had been put in the one window, plus try not to get stung by the bees that have their nest just on the other side of this wall (see the dark spot on the right from their hive?).

All that is left on the floor is the planks for my new horse trailer floor and a few pieces of wafer board that will soon be installed as an attic floor.

Oh, and some chicken poop. Thanks, guys.

Next up--installing doors to keep the chickens out!

No rest for the wicked--or the chickened,

~J