Our nightmare

The first few walk thru's of the house were exciting and inspirational. The foundation was solid. The previous family had only been out of the house for a few months (meaning the water, electricity, plumbing etc was functional). The wood work was totally fixable and the house was right up my alley.
The small windows up top are actually the back windows of cars... I'm not sure how I feel about that. Very resourceful. I personally don't mind it. The two little rooms on the front of the house were used to 'hang spearmint' (I will go into more detail about the hidden room under the stairs in the closet with a planter box and a heat lamp. Not sure how I feel about that either)

This is the living room. I loved it!!! Please notice the bright blue rocking horse hanging from the ceiling fan. :-) It came with the house. The man who built this house gathered all this wood from farmhouses he tore down or leftover wood from contracting jobs he acquired. The wood on the wall straight ahead was leftover from a job he did at the local Cracker Barrel. The stairs are from the county courthouse. The floors are from an old local farmhouse. The barn wood covering the walls in the adjoining room straight ahead was (quite obviously) from a barn that was over 80 years old. This house had so much personality and so much character. I immediately fell in love.

View into the master bedroom from the loft.

This is the master bedroom. The door furthest to the right goes to the back yard, the one in the middle is a bathroom, and the one on the left is a hallway out to the living room I posted above. As you can see, the wood is a constant throughout the entire house. Take notice of the dark cherry section of floor versus the lighter wood that travels into the bathroom. Below that section of floor is a very creepy hand dug cellar. The previous owner states they dug the cellar before they built. I think they dug the cellar after he got caught growing pot outside. Either way, we now have a lovely grow room below our future bedroom. The bifold door sticking out in that hallway leads to a closet. In the closet, there is a slab of wood. Lifting up that slab of wood reveals a stair case. You can draw your own conclusions. Creepy.

This picture was taken in the living room and the view is into the kitchen/dining area. And of my little puppy Ruca. She's so little and cute in this picture!!! But anyway. The wall furthest to the right has a window to the outside. The kitchen has a bathroom/pantry area allllll the way to the left which there will be pictures of later. There is a countertop on stilts in there but we have since taken it out. There was no way it was going to work. I feel the need to reiterate that a man built this house completely by himself (with instruction from his wife of course) and he just seemed to build on as they had children. The upstairs of the house has three bedrooms and a loft (each with a child in it) and the downstairs had two bedrooms. So the design isn't typical. But so increases my love.
   The house has a cistern and wood stove heat. It is essentially self sustaining. We could live in this house almost entirely off the grid if we had solar panels. But the tiniest of tiny tiny details revealed itself after we signed the papers. Stephen hates it. And I don't mean he just doesn't like it. He hates everything about it. He wantes city water and a gas furnace. He wants to be able to paint the drywall. He doesn't like the porches. The layout is not working for him at all. He detests this house. Why would he not mention this to me before I convinced him to purchase it? I am still trying to figure that out.