This Old House

We love our house. It was built in 1899 by Brad's great-great-great grandpa (at least the original part of it was....hope I have the correct number of greats in there!). Sweet story behind the building of it too. I've been told he built it for his wife as a winter home. She stayed here during the winter so she would not get isolated out on the farm. You have to remember that this would have been back in the days of the horse and carriage, so what today is a 5 minute drive to the farm would have been around a 20 minute carriage ride. Winters here can get pretty rough, as today (-12, with a real feel of -22 because of windchill) proves. Well great x 3 grandpa did not want his wife to be without the company of her friends throughout the winter, so she stayed here in town and he stayed out on the farm, traveling back and forth to visit her! I think that is a wonderful sweet love story. Anyway...we have an OLD house, and as most people know old houses are NOT weather tight at all!!! Today I am camped out in our guest bedroom with Abby as it is the only room (besides Miriam's bedroom) that is warm! (We have been using the guest bedroom as a master bedroom ever since Abby was born via c-section and thus stairs were an issue for me. They aren't an issue anymore, but we just haven't made the move back to the real master bedroom.) It is a good thing the computer is in this room or I would seriously be going crazy. I just have no desire to be out in the rest of the house freezing my toesies off and making my nose drip! Miriam has braved the cold and is sitting on the couch under a blanket watching TV. Soon her shows will be over and I'm going to have to come up with activities for her to do that will keep her in the warm parts of the house, ie the guest bedroom or her bedroom. It's gonna be a long day! Why don't we just turn up the heat you ask? Well we have electric wall registers for heat. No central heating or air in this old house. When you get an electric bill that tops $200 for one month...it makes you cut back on electricity anyway you can. Keeping all rooms in this old house at a comfortable temperature level is completely and totally cost prohibitive and needless to say pretty much impossible anyway. There is this lovely draft that runs through every room. It is mainly along the floors and up about a foot and half or so, but in certain areas it seems to just flow through a solid wall! It's sad when you realize that something you love, this house, really isn't working for you. We know this, we realize this, and we are slowly coming to grips with that fact that someday we are going to have to let this wonderful old place go. There are so many good memories here, so much hard work put into fixing it up, yet some day we will have to let it go. On days like today, with the frigid temperatures outside and thus inside, it isn't as hard to think about that some day coming. I will say this...where ever we end up living down the road I will make sure it has a BIG fireplace for days like today!