Would You Tackle This?

I was looking through photos tonight and ran across one showing my cousin's farm when her husband first bought it. If I remember the story correctly, he was focused on the farm land along the Ohio River and the "house" came with it. And there was a tree (or maybe more than one) growing right in the middle.

Keep in mind that Dave and I have a "thing" for historic homes. We owned an old (for Wisconsin) farm house in Nashotah when our kids were little. It was built in the 1850's and needed some love and affection. (In fact, when my mother-in-law came to visit the first time she flew home to Massachusetts and told her friends "My daughter-in-law is trying to kill my son"!) That house turned out to be a wonderful, big, welcoming family home and it broke my heart to leave it behind when Dave accepted another job.  Years later we owned a 200+ year old home in Old New Castle, Delaware. Again, we purchased it knowing it needed work….but we loved it.

Owning an historic home (or probably any house) just means you need to accept the Rule of Three. If you think it will take three weeks to fix, it will take nine. And if you think $100 should do it…again, multiply by three. Once you get that into your head you can just go along knowing that your original budget for any project was way out of whack.

But, back to my cousin's place. Here's how it looks today.

So, impossible as it seems, the falling-down-shack turned into an amazing, warm, welcoming, fun, colorful and relaxing family home. We love to visit……just so sorry we weren't close enough to help during the construction years. (Hah!)

:-)