Our House Then and Now...A Work in Progress

While searching through some old files, I came across the papers for purchasing our house.  Some of you may be interested in how the place looked when we bought it.  It wasn't very pretty.  The house hadn't been taken care of.  We loved the view and thought we could fix it up over the years.  We are still fixing it up.  That's the trouble with remodeling.  Just when you get the house to a point where it looks nice, then everything is out of style again.  Remember when shag carpet was all the rage.  I have lived through all the color changes too.  When I got married in 1968, avocado green, harvest gold and orange were the popular colors, then I remember mauve and blue was in, then jewel colors and now I haven't a clue.  I think it's dark brown but I'm not really sure.  

This was how the house looked from the outside.  It was built by a local man, and we don't think it was meant to be a permanent home.  It has two big fireplaces, and we think that was the main heat source.  The room with the window you see and the front porch were built on.  The furnace in under that area so that is another reason we think it was installed later.

This is how the house looked when we purchased it in 2001.

My mother thought we were crazy.  She never really liked it here.  She grew up in the country with no modern conveniences and thought this was no better than how she grew up.  At times I also wondered if we were in over our heads.  The first summer my husband worked the entire summer on chinking the house.  The person we bought the house from hired someone to put colored caulk between the logs and all of that had to be removed before the chinking could even begin.  For those who wonder what chinking is, it is the white product that is between the logs.  In the old days, it was a cement type mortar but now they have a synthetic product that stays elastic and doesn't crack with the movement of the logs.  It keeps cold air and insects from getting between the logs.  

The inside also needed a lot of work.  It was so dark.  The outside of the interior walls were logs, but they put half logs on the rest of the inside walls.  It gave the word "rustic" a whole new meaning.  We removed those and painted some of the interior walls.  As you can see in the following picture the kitchen ceiling had faux beams.  Their only purpose was to hide the seams of the drywall.  They too were removed during our kitchen remodel.  http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/03/kitchen-remodel.html

Notice the snazzy orange counter top.  Stylish in 1970.

If you follow this blog you know I have written about many of the improvements we have tackled,  but basically the layout remains the same.  The only thing added was a dining room.  I also wrote about that.   http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/01/putting-new-addition-on-log-house.html

Some day we may have to move but for now this is home.  

The house on August 15, 2001