by Julie Helms

Created on: March 06, 2009   Last Updated: December 12, 2009

As I swung the sledgehammer into the kitchen wall, I coughed from the cloud of plaster dust that billowed out of the gaping hole. I looked around me, knee high in shattered plaster, fixtures all ripped out of the walls, bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and wondered how my dream home had turned into this.

Two years earlier my husband and I found our first home and it was perfect! The graystone Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse was built around 1700, very old by American standards. It had a modern addition that had been put on to expand the original house "only" one hundred and twenty-five years ago. Eight rolling, pastoral acres spread out behind the home, gently sloping up a hill with a tree line on three sides.

As I walked through the house the first day the realtor brought us to it, I took in all the quaint details. The house had shifted at some point so the doorframes were at an angle. Intriguing little nooks and crannies were tucked away all over the place. There were old linoleum rugs in all the bedrooms- I had never seen anything like that before. There were two huge walk-in fireplaces, one in the summer kitchen. Walking through the house gave me an intense feeling of nostalgia.

That is what I honestly saw wearing my romanticized rose-colored glasses! We had the house inspected by a friend of the realtor and it passed with flying colors. We bought it for a decent price- it wasn't exactly cheap, but we were in a wealthy county so by comparison it was a good deal. I remember asking my husband why the bottom of the contract stated that it was for sale "as is." He didn't really understand what that meant either, but who cares- we loved the place.

Within the first few weeks of living there we understood now why people said we should have used an independent inspector. Every system in the house, wiring, plumbing, heating were in terrible shape. The windows were original- cool looking at the wavy glass, not so cool when the winter wind began to whip right past the frames.

We had to have all 17 over-sized windows replaced and all new wiring installed over the old knob and tube. The entire house needed to be re-plastered: daily vacuuming was necessary because of the plaster constantly crumbling. There was no heating system except a wood stove that was illegally ducted through the house instead of outside. At night I would watch the stove pipe that was ducted through our bedroom turn glowing red hot. There was no protector around it so the wood

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>