Announcement, announcement, Announcement!

Somehow, you would think that the pain, suffering, anguish and expense of building a house would have taught us something.  Some lesson would have trickled into our brain cases.

Apparently NOT!

Gene and Linnea have decided to do it all again.  Only this time, for extra credit points and added difficulty, we're renovating a house.  Not just a house.  Two houses.  Two houses joined in 1910.  Two Victorian houses that need a whole lotta love.

Welcome to the Feightly House renovation blog!

We're putting our offer on the house today.  We found this house last December when driving through Tipp City.  It's the house Sarah Feightly built and then gave to the Lutheran Church to use as a home for indigent maidens and widows.  From 1906 to 1981 the Feightly House was the 'giant pink house on Main St.'.  Actually, I don't know if it was pink all that time, all I can find are black and white or sepia photos.  Speaking of which, here's one to get you started.

The Feightly House, around 1920 (I think)

The Feightly House was a home for people who needed help.  Today, we're going back to that lofty aspiration.  Linnea's folks need help.  Her dad has Parkinson's disease and her mom has Multiple Sclerosis (MS).  They need a little boost in getting the daily things done and while our son Drew is living with them, full-time availability is necessary.  So we're taking this giant eleven bedroom house and turning it into our giant eleven bedroom home.

Here's the plans:

• Renovate the complete downstairs of the Sears house.  The house on the left of the photo was added in 1910.  We think it's from Sears and Roebuck, the Woodlawn model.  Going to research that some more.  We're going to take the three bedrooms on the ground floor, kitchen and sitting room and make it into an apartment for her folks.  Full wheelchair accessible kitchen and master bath.
• Repair the soffits (under hang of the roof), gutters and siding as needed to stop deterioration and begin restoring the original character of the house.
• Remove some nasty stuff from the basement (asbestos insulation) and re-do the downstairs full bath (already gutted by the current owner).
• Weathertight the full attic (like, 30' by 40') and make that into a love nest birds nest.
• Rebuild the porch balconies (currently gone)
• Re-do the front room, second story of the original house (the Greek Italianette  house on the right) to make into a new master suite.  Maybe.  Still up in the air about that.

The beauty of this house(s) is that we can live in one and renovate the other.  Then switch.  The important bit is to get it safe and healthy, remove about 5 tons of ugly carpet and get the ground floor apartment ready for Ken and Dee (my in-laws).

Lots more to come.  God is on the move and it's further up and further in!