Bats

You might have been wondering about the tarp on the ceiling. No it is not to protect the floor from water, the roof is new, it is to catch guano(bat poop). Yes, we have a bat problem. I am hoping that the bats flew south for the winter, just kidding. Bats hibernate in the winter and I hope they went with some of their friends to a cave to hang out, but I doubt it. Hopefully the building will be buttoned up by the time they awaken and we can put in bat tubes, devises that allow the bats to leave but not come back.



Close-up of guano(bat poop).

It's Official

We are now the proud owners of this "diamond in the rough".


This is the view from the right side, the building on the left is the old firehouse that was converted to a house by the previous owner of my house.



The view looking to the left, down the road.



This photo shows the fire escape that is going to be removed. It was put there when the building was a Grange Hall.

Some Inside - Before Photos

Here are some "Before" photos. This first one is toward the front of the building.


When the previous owner gutted the building he stacked all the floor boards from the second floor as well as the beams in nice neat piles. Hopefully, this will cut down on costs since we can reuse much of them.


This photo is toward the back of the building, which shows the tarp wall. This is the first thing to replace!


Tomorrow we close on the property. Work will start in a few weeks but don't worry, there are other photos to be posted.

Genesis

Colebrook, CT - My wife and I decided to take on a new project, but this time we will not be doing most of the work. My wife saw this building in the Realestate.com and thought it would be a cool place to live. We did our "due diligence" and decided that would be in our budget to get this in livable condition. We always wanted some place with an open floor plan and this fit the bill. Also, it is across the street from a river, another thing we wanted.


The building is 49'x 33' and two and a half stories high. In the real estate listing, it said that it had a full basement(just a crawl space), and needed a few finishing touches(it is gutted). I read another listing that said it had two bedrooms and a bathroom...it is just a shell! One more thing that was not communicated, the back wall is just a tarp. Anyway, we are not the kind of people that would quibble over a few small details and went ahead and bought it; closing in a few days.



Some history as I know it so far. It was originally built as a church in 1800, in 1938 it was converted to a grange hall. Somewhere along the line the church windows were removed and smaller ones were put in to replace them and a second story was added inside. As I find out more I will communicate the information here.


I hope everyone will follow along on our new adventure and wish us luck. I will try to document every step along the way and hopefully we will end up with one cool house...and hopefully in budget! We are not ones to do too much planning and we are kind of winging it on the final look. We had plans drawn up for the structural part of the house but the finishing touches are not finalized.

Comments are welcome, let me know what you think. Tomorrow photos of the inside.