Looking back over the past year..... - Deb

Dave and I were hammering nails on the new dock last weekend when he started talking about how slowly it seems that the house is coming around. I reflected on this and then realized that it has only been a year since we acquired this little project of ours. The year has flown by and with it how we have continued to grow as a family and how our lake house has taken on a personality of its own.


Allow me to reminisce a bit about this year…

June 6, 2010 I spot an ad on Craigslist that read:

Lake House 15k

Date: 2010-06-06, 5:04PM

2 to 3 bdrms 2 bath 2 Car Garage , Dock

Water front fixer upper.

Call April 816-320-xxxx

• Location: Lake LaFayette Mo

When I called to get more info on the property the lady was very vague about details concerning the property only stating that it had been years since she had seen the place and that she was trying to sell it for her cousin who lived out of state. What this lady neglected to tell us was that it had been abandoned 3 years prior and that raccoons were the current residents. Granted this property belonged to her crazy psychotic cousin who had escaped to Nebraska (must be where the witness protection agency is currently hiding people) and I know she had no clue to the condition of the property.

This was our first glimpse of the house.

Our first look, Deb, Jason, Nathan and John take a trip to look at a property found on Craigslist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PaUSe866ms&feature=player_embedded

Jason voted NO on this house

I was in the van with the 3 youngest when we drove past the house for the first time and we are lucky enough to have captured the moment with a video camera and now is immortalized forever on YouTube if use the above link.

When the cousin, Crazy Susan, agreed to meet with us for the first time she agreed to our offer of 12,000 for the house and 8000 for the other property with a beautiful view but only a basement. The lady at the title company made an error and wrote up two separate contracts that ultimately saved us a $8000 mistake when we found out the day before we closed that the cityhas a funny rule that says you may not build on a property unless you have two lots side by side with at least 15000 square feet of land. This community was originally designed to be 1500 small camping lots back in the 70’s and in time the community incorporated into the City of Lake Lafayette, MO.

We closed on the first property on July 2, 2010 but since the second property was now worthless to us and since we never put a closing date all we had to lose was a little bit of time and possibly our earnest money.

On July 3, 2010 Dave’s doctor called me while I was working a fireworks stand and said he had to get a hold of Dave immediately and since we had just left his office the day before I assumed it wouldn’t be good news. Looking back I am still unsure why the doctor decided to tell us that Dave had kidney cancer on the Saturday of the 4th of July weekend.

For the next 3 months Dave’s son came out to live with us while Dave went through his treatment and surgery to have his left kidney removed. With his Michael’s help, my kids and Katie’s boyfriend, Andrew we started to work on the house. The overgrown weeds, the horrendous amount of crap in the house, the odor and quantity of raccoon poop and the abysmal condition of the inside of the house might have scared off a normal person but I never claimed to be normal and anyone who knows Dave…well you know.

So we began with a few machetes, a shovel and a Costco box of contractors’ grade trash bags. After the first roll off dumpster was filled we decided we needed to hire a bobcat operator to grade a driveway and clear out some brush, trash and create walkways. Even to this day it was easily the best $300 spent.

So now we were able to walk around the property and kind of see the ground.

(Taken from the front entrance) Looking over the courtyard from the makeshift deck built with 2x4's and imagination




Just some of the junk found

 

To say this lady was a hoarder is no exaggeration. She has not one or two but dozens of things. Like doors and windows. Only a few were useable the rest were broken down, but she kept them. She had piles of pieces of wood less than 12” long some were just broken off, most were used and rotted but she kept them. She had a collection of cabinets inside the house that were not installed. Instead they were stacked to the ceiling and were empty, except for poop. She said she was going to use them to put in a kitchen. Somehow this woman lived with a child in this house for at least 5 years without a regular kitchen. She also didn’t have a furnace. She swore the wood burning stove equipped with a small blower kept her house heated all winter long. We tried to recreate that warmth on many occasions this past winter and found it impossible.

Once we were able to get into the house and start working we immediately replaced the front and side decks in order to get into the house. The before and after pics really speak volumes with the amount of work that went into this.



The desperate front deck

 The decks literally did not have floor boards for the most part. Sometimes you would wonder what you were standing on and then you realized it was a piece of paneling or a piece of lattice, never a rhyme or reason as to why it was there. Dave thinks that woman was extremely creative in her building materials and truly lived the green lifestyle. Think deep down she was nuts.

I also think that Dave is amazing. Considering he somehow taught himself and my children how to be mini carpenters, plumbers and electricians is amazing. I have always said that good can come out of bad situations if you have faith and while I know he was in a bad place with the cancer last year I believe that lake house gave him a purpose and reason to fight. Dave took FMLA for much of the summer and fall to recover and I believe that even if he was overseeing a job that the kids were doing he was slowly getting back to normal.

Consider these after pics of the front and side decks that he designed and helped the kids to build.

Andrew's got a good grip on that joist....




Dave wants everyone to know he has since leveled the end rail

  Side deck after

Dave taking a well earned rest

The inside of the house is coming along as well. The big room which is code for living room, kitchen, and dining room has laminate hardwood flooring down, new to us appliances, lots of furniture, new wiring and a soon to be official kitchen. Water or lack of running water has made the inside house stuff slower than expected. But we have made due and have been mindful that for at least 35 years the residents out here have had to haul water from Odessa on regular basis so we are lucky that as of a few months ago we were able to get running water and as of last week we finally got hot water! We are downtown.


What is pictured below is our water manifold which with our PEX piping brings water all over our house. We can now flush our toilets and wash our hands and dishes. It is the little things that can really make me thankful.

Back to our year in review…We reroofed the back half of our house, filled 7 dumpsters of trash, bought the wooded property next to ours so that we could build if at some point we felt like we needed to. We have rewired, reinsulated the house, ran our plumbing (several times unfortunately), resided most of the house and recently removed the old dock and are building a new one as we speak/blog.



Dock before



Dock Middle




Dock  complete and ready to flip

The dock, just before we tried to flip it and put it in the water.

I love this little piece of heaven that we are building. The serenity and the beauty of the lake, building things and remodeling the house and property and the amount of family time has made this project truly a labor of love and I am in love with this piece of the pie. I hope in future years we celebrate many happy occasions and host numerous parties. I also hope when I am long gone that this place continues to make memories for the kids and their friends and family.

Off the porch deck near sunset

So as Dave and I were talking the other night as we were hammering on the new dock and he said that it doesn’t seem like we have done a lot, I remind him that we have done more in one year than anyone thought we could do!

This time next year if he says that then I am sending him packing.