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Let’s Get This Party Started…

The idea of Jane as a finished product was kind of a hazy concept. GWH had visions of crisp fall weekends spent with his hunting buddies where I was thinking more about the solitude of a peaceful writer’s retreat or a place to romp with my future grandchildren. How to bridge the gap? A list, of course! We started with an inventory.

The roof didn’t leak, that was something. Especially since it was the original metal roof. Designing a roof that doesn’t leak is not as easy as it sounds. Just ask Frank Lloyd Wright.

The windows under the porch were in good shape and almost all had their original wavy panes.

The pine floors showed no evidence of termites. Jane was a truckload of bead board. Most of it chippy, in marvelous colors. The ceilings were ten feet plus.

Under the asphalt, original paint!

Because of the awful asphalt roll stock, the original pine siding had essentially been “shrink-wrapped” and was in pretty phenominal shape. The asphalt cover also preserved the original paint colors somewhat.

The porch and the bathroom. A picture is worth a thousand words.

On the other hand, there was no insulation and the porch was a lost cause. The bathroom, which was an addition made in the 50’s, totally sucked. It was built in front of one of the two identical front doors, right on the front porch. It’s original exterior door was replaced with an interior door and the original door is missing. Jane was four square rooms plus the bathroom. No hallways.

Watch your head!

Although the attic was sizable in the middle of the house, the way the stairwell was situated, you would invariably hit your head no matter whether you were coming or going. If mud daubers had an India, Jane Doe was their Mumbai. There was evidence that other critters of various shapes and sizes had taken up residence, as well.

Linoleum has seen better days.

There was crumbling linoleum on two of the floors and Jane was really, really dirty.

The frames were in good shape, but the beautiful wavy glass was gone.

And the windows on the south and west sides, unprotected by the cover of the porch, were broken out and boarded up.

GWH and I had lots of conversations about how to attack the project, whether to do it ourselves or hire someone. But the BIG discussion was about how to configure the rooms. GWH thought we needed lots of bedrooms, I thought we needed one. He wanted to work around the four room configuration, I thought the house would be more workable if we opened up the floorplan. After going ’round and ’round we decided to compose a list of “Goals and Objectives” to help us with our design process. This took awhile, but the house practically designed itself once we finished it. Here’s what we came up with: