“A ruin with a view.” That would
have
been a factual description of the Mountain House when it went up for
sale in 2002. Years of deterioration had done so much damage that neighbors feared the
farmhouse might be torn down, if it didn't catch fire first.
The roof was peeling away. The eaves were a lacework
of holes with swallows nesting inside. Decades of bat guano filled the attic.
With one bathroom for nine bedrooms and a drafty,
dank interior, the useful living space in the house had shrunk to a small
downstairs enclave. In some places rot was so bad that the beams crumbled
on contact.
Tumbledown sheds, stables, workshops,
and storage spaces created a semi-circle of blight around
the house. And junk was knee-deep, inside and out:
heaps of engine blocks, piles of hubcaps, dozens of painters’ ladders and the like.
Having fallen in love, we bought the place as is. Minus
the junk, which was either auctioned off or carted away in a series of dumpsters.
And at that point two and a half years of renovation began.
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