Its midnight so tomorrow is now today and today is now yesterday… or something like that. “Santa” just came to drop off the loot and fill the stockings. That means I can finally hit the hay.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Hi, my name is Mike and I’m the owner of a lovely little house on South Prospect Street in Montague. My wife and I bought the house in 2005. Its our first house.
Before we bought the place we were told that old houses can really nickel and dime you. This place was built in 1889. We got a good price on the place, and wanted a fixer-upper. Maybe we bit off a little more than we can chew…
The first nickel we forked out was for a new screen door. One day, only four months or so after we moved in, a good intentioned neighbor from across the street came over and snowblowed a path in our yard. So very nice of him. The screen door originally installed was cheap - priced at the Home Depot a similar one sold for around $75. For some reason this well meaning neighbor had the chute aimed at the house and the snow was thrown against the cheap door.
Now my wife was home during this and at first thought was great to have neighbors like that, but after the neighbor had left she walked out on porch to check the mail only to discover the door was stuck and she was trapped inside! Luckily, she didn’t have to go anywhere as it was her day off. When I got home, I screwed around with it and got it unstuck. We didn’t have any more problems with it until I picked up a new refridgerator. Long story short, the door jammed up again and when I tried to get it open the handle broke. Had I kept a calm, cool, and collected sense about me I could have simply replaced the handle. Instead, in a very Jack Torrence way, I ripped the door from the porch.
The house looked pretty trashy for a couple of weeks without a screen door. This all happened in the middle of winter and it was too cold for me to want to work outside. The new door looks great and it matches the style of our replacement windows, too.
Our second nickel was spent this past summer with the purchase of a new chimney. We don’t really have a need for a chimney, but it makes the house look nice. It cost about a weeks pay to have it rebuilt and capped. It looks good.
Now for the dime. We’re in the process of having the roof replaced, but the weather isn’t playing nice. The roofer stripped off four layers of shingles from the front of the house then installed a layer of 30-year architectural shingles. FOUR LAYERS. It was ridiculous! Two days into a four day job and it started freezing rain. Then it snowed. A couple days ago it dropped six-inches to a foot and its set to snow some more.
The roofer said it’ll probably won’t be until March that he’ll be able to get back to finish.
More improvments / repairs:
This place is almost a 120 years old. With a little elbow grease and a lot of luck this place will be around for another 120 years.
All in all, we’re glad we made this house our home.