A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Well we’ve seen most of the first floor, a few doors were locked and no one knew where the keyswere. As it turned out, we sawed the locks off 6 months after moving in and found two servant’s roomsand another set of stairs.Moving up to the second floor was more of the same and even more on the third. Twenty rooms andsix baths in all plus extras, like 23 closets, a few linen closets the size of modern day bedrooms, 70 doors,and an unaccountable number of panes of glass all with loose putty or none at all. Oh, and even, a darkroom for photo work.Well after that first tour, I thought, No way would I buy a place like this, even though there were afew things about the house that I liked. Maybe that’s where I went wrong; I should have said there wasnothing about it I liked.It took 4 months and many more trips up to College Hill before signing the papers. I remember thenight before signing I thought I’ve never owned a home before and never renovated thing (except forpainting a few old dressers of my mother’s and things like that) - I must be out of my mind for doing this.I was investing every penny I had and I was only 25 years old. Looking back it must have been thatnaiveté that talked me into it. I had given notice to my landlord and I had no choice any more but to go.The first 3 months were simply awful. The home sat empty prior to its sale, except for a few furrycreatures who moved in and took advantage of the vacancy. They were forced to leave as soon as theywere discovered. We contracted with who we thought was a restoration specialist but who really had nomore idea of what he was doing than I did. I remember coming home from work and as I walked up to thesecond floor I noticed the bedroom window was left open and then I remembered it was the window onthe side of the house they were sandblasting. It took 12 tons of sand to clean the exterior of the house andhalf a ton was now in the master bedroom. I wanted to cry but after several hours with a snow shovel andbroom, things didn’t look all that bad.Getting through all the painting, sandblasting, plastering, getting the yard mowed, and the hedge rowtrimmed made the first summer go by quickly. Fall was spent finding out that the old oak trees droppedmillions of leaves, and raking leaves was always something I hated to do.Winter was next on the agenda. The house is now heated by a new one-half million BTU, lowpressure,gas steam boiler, but during the first and second winters, we heated with a prehistoric, convertedto oil, coal boiler. In the yard to the east and rear of the house underground 2000-gallon oil storage tankwhich is measured with a dip stick. That October in 1977 the boiler was started and, to my surprise,heated the house quite comfortably. My next surprise came the first week in December when the boilershut down. Out of fuel oil, that winter was long and cold and 6000 gallons later, Spring came. Springcleaning revealed a thin film of soot that oozed from the boiler. Two years later it was removed from thebasement piece by piece - too big to be removed in sections, it was sledge hammered to rubble.The next 6 years were spent almost endless with either a paint brush or scraper in hand. Today theproject is about two-thirds complete and the house is much more comfortable that first time I saw it in1977, but a house built 140 years ago I’m certain will have a few more surprises up its sleeve in thefuture.Recently I was asked if I’d do it all again, and I said, Sure, it’s taught me a lot. Restoring an oldhouse is like life. You can’t enjoy it unless you accept the satisfaction along with all the disappointments,and, like life, a restoration project can hand out plenty of both.217