house hunting | haunting

Ever so often we have a warm and free Saturday morning where we go house hunting with some friends of ours. They have three boys that we use as weight to test the floors. I'm kidding. But it is nice being with another family for all of these explorations of ours. Below is a house that is the largest we've been in so far. Our second time driving up to this house (returning to extract some windows a few pictures down), there was a huge owl perched in the top attic window. There was no sign of it once we were on foot. Spooky.

Below is the entrance (the easy entrance) on the right side of the house (from the point of view of the pic above). Walking up to this area smelled strongly of skunk, but fortunately, nothing in sight. It probably was under the floor boards though.. 

This is the kitchen with all the very cool appliances still here. This house must have belonged to someone very wealthy; signs of the wealth - the curved ceiling moldings, tin ceiling plates, wallpaper layers (they must have changed it, or rather, added upon it at least 6 times), many rooms, large house. 

After the kitchen this must be the family room. Here you can see layer upon layer of the wallpaper. I have a close-up picture of it, but it sort of made me sick last time I looked at it, so I'll spare you. But there are about 6 or 7 different (completely different) styles. Florals, geometric, regal, etc. Many different moods must have been experienced in this house. 

So many pink rooms!! Either this house was full of girls, or of a family who's mother loved pink! We even found an old crib:

I'm not sure what this very small room was, but there was a window into the hallway near the top of the wall, and a tall window to outside; maybe it was a room for time outs. Or a restroom. (?)

The wallpaper had peeled off, or disintegrated so much that in many places, this is all that was left of it.. everything about this house is like a ghost:

Windows!!!!! My friend and I were so thrilled to find windows in tact.. let me tell you! Our dear husbands just rolled their eyes and helped us load 'em up. We figured they're just here left exposed to the elements and animals and rot, so we are saving them and doing the old owners a favor by sparing them more broken glass in the future. They are absolutely beautiful all cleaned up.

This room just gives me the creeps. This is upstairs in the back left (from the pov of the very first pic). The couch is so so old, and probably really smelly (I imagine). The ceiling is ghostly, and when I went back to the closet to peek in, I stood up and freaked out since the fluttery material was brushing my face. There were torn pages from a book everywhere on this floor that I thought to favor; they were all about engineering and had pictures of boats like the Titanic. It was all very interesting, but all very dirty. Pink, pink, pink.

The stairway was scary. On the way up, you could slide your foot into the stairs and climb just fine.. but on the way down, I could barely place the ball of my foot down (there were maybe 3 inches of stair), while holding Mont's hand (I couldn't hold him, no way - we would have both fallen), while not hitting my head on the ceiling, while holding on to the decaying wall. It was not my favorite moment. My friend went first, then Mont, then Me. Mont was a brave boy and loved exploring, but I made him hold my hand for sure! I would have taken a picture of those STEEP, VERY STEEP AND NARROW stairs but my thoughts were nowhere near taking a picture at that time (okay, I did think about it, but rational took over). If I had been the queen of this house I would have put in a slide, for sure.