The air conditioner condenser that drained into the shower. Check. The tile guy who arrived for work at 8 a.m. so drunk he fell off the back step. Check. The electrician who installed the exhaust fan in the wrong room. Check.The disappearing carpenter. Check. Adventures in do-it-yourself sheetrock. Check. The shocking experience of 80-year-old wiring. Check.
I’m a sucker for an old house. Which means that for the past 25 years or so, my husband and I have endured a never-ending series of fixer-upper catastrophes, some of which, I’ll admit, we perpetrated ourselves. If you’ve been following my blog posts lately, you know I’ve been working on my latest novel, THE FIXER-UPPER, at the same time we’ve been fixing up our circa-1943 beach house on Tybee Island.
Oh MK I have loads of them. I bought a old southern mansion house and was in fixer upper hell for 12 years of my life. Here is my story of the dissappearing floor man and the crashing ceiling…http://gladysspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/11/perfect-excuse.html
Hows that book coming?
My heart longs to get in over its head on my in-laws beautiful family home. My father-in-law moved in to this house when he was twelve. His dad built it and no one but a Phillips has ever lived there. The house is only 68 years old, practically brand spanking new! I romanticize and dream about all of the beauty and warmth I can fill it with. No need to find old doorknobs and light fixtures, they are already there. I would need to install a beautiful farm house sink around a completely new kitchen of course; my brother-in-law has possession of the original sink (just like the one MK has been searching for) and will not give it up. There is already a beautiful old church window used very cleverly in the master bath, it was salvaged from the church they help charter. The bathroom would need some changing however, they installed a wonderful long wood cabinet with a marble top but they did not use it as the sink vanity they instead installed a pedestal sink. It is lovely but I would like to see the marble used as a sink vanity. The bath that is original to the house is in need of some updating with tile floors and a proper shower surround. Of course, during the time the house was built there was only one bathroom and it did not have a shower at all. Husband wants to change out the windows but I would not dare, they are the old cantilever rope kind, I could not bear to see them go. A proper laundry room also needs to be worked in utilizing a half bath that my husband’s grandfather added by taking in part of the back porch. All in all the work that has been done it not horrible I just see what the house could be!! Oh sure there are lots of other details to be addressed, no closets to speak of, the outdated electrical (husband is an electrician by trade), the fact it does not have good insulation, the porticochere on the front is rotting, and I haven’t even mentioned the upstairs yet. If I could only talk husband in to the idea I would be set to blow through our savings and have way more money in the house than anyone would ever appreciate besides me and perhaps my in-laws. It is probably a good thing I have a stubborn, I mean level headed husband who can see all of the pitfalls that lie ahead. I guess I will eventually have to remove and lay aside my rose colored glasses but a girl can dream right?
In January of 2007 I decided to renovated my full upstairs bathroom. The following are the blogs from the days of that renovation project:
Allow Me to Recap
Tuesday night I began to work on my upstairs bathroom. I was working by myself, so I opted not to remove the toilet yet, but to begin tiling the floor and put all the solid pieces down that wouldn’t need to be cut. I also left the sink in place since it is fixed to the wall and doesn’t actually touch the floor. I can’t even begin to tell you what a big mistake that was. The removal of the sink and toilet in the downstairs bathroom was so easy that I had a very skewed idea of how easy removing these should be. Those do-it-yourself shows that tell you to do ALL demo first… weren’t kidding.
Last night, I lured my good friend, Q, over with pizza for dinner in exchange for his help. While I had somebody to help, I figured the first thing we should do is remove the toilet since I didn’t think I could carry it out of there by myself. I had no idea what I was getting us into. The tank came off the toilet with minimal water on the floor, but the bowl was a different ballgame. For whatever reason, the bolt that hold the toilet down will not come out, so I am going to have to get a metal saw or something and just cut them off. So, we moved to the sink next. Very quickly, he realized that I didn’t have a pipe wrench or any sort of tool to disconnect the pipes in order to get the sink out. Before leaving to fetch the tools from my brother’s house, we notice that the water supply for the toilet is dripping on the floor, so we put it in a bucket to keep the water from getting on my freshly laid tiles.
We trek across town (in a small Honda with a large daisy painted on the hood I might add) to get the tools and end up running a friend of Q’s to get his truck and taking a little longer to get back then we expected. We get back with the tool and go upstairs. Q sits on the floor under the sink to disconnect the sink and suddenly his rearend is completely soaked. Apparently that little drip had overflowed the bucket and had made its way over most of the bathroom floor. There was water everywhere! We dried up what we could but I knew that getting all the adhesive wet meant that I was going to have to take up all those tiles and start all over again.
The sink came out without too much work but the mounting plate that was screwed into the wall was a different story. I get out the power screw driver and Q starts to take the plate off. On the first try, the screwdriver spins out of his hand whirling to the ground, bouncing off his foot and then breaking one of the tiles. (And, yes I laughed at him). After what seemed like an hour of drilling and wrenching the stupid plate, we finally got it off.
The next project was to knock off the tile toothbrush holder, soap dish and towel racks which are mounted into the wall. After the other frustrations, we were both ready to swing the sledgehammer a little bit. I knock them all off, managing to break yet another new floor tile. Then, trying to make the leftover broken pieces smooth, Q uses a coal chisel and the sledgehammer. His hand slips off scraping against the broken tile and suddenly, there is blood. And do I have band-aids in my house?? Of course, not! So, what do we use? That’s right… duck tape!
So, after we get him all patched up, we start removing the newly laid tile from the floor. Might I remind you, that I had decided to tile over the existing tile on the floor rather than demo it up. Yet, another bad idea. The old tile was coming up with the new tile. Now, I have to demo up all that tile before I can begin laying the new tile. So, basically… last night we undid any progress that I had made. And yes, the drip is still going. I managed to rig up some larger buckets to catch the water and I only hope its large enough to hold it all until I get home for lunch today to empty it.
Luckily for me, Q has agreed to come back tonight for round two. I’m surprised since every time he comes over he seems to get hurt. This past summer, he worked in my yard and got stung by wasps. I think he even tripped on my stairs once. My house is a Q-danger zone. Maybe I should buy him something better than pizza? So, wish us luck that tonight goes a little better… or at least that there is no blood involved this time!
Bathroom Update
I am officially a moron. My dad came by on my lunch break and looked at the damage and helped me figure out how to cut the bolts off the toilet bowl to get it out. I had the toilet tubing running into long tray catching the water which drained down into a large tupperware container so that it wouldn’t overflow by the time I got home from work. Dad said it looked like a rube goldberg contraption.
His question, which never once crossed my mind… or Q’s either apparently… was why we didn’t just to do THIS!
Can you really call this progress?
This is a picture that was taken of my icky pink bathroom before the renovation process began. The walls were pink… the floor was pink… Can you say “YUCK!”?
BEFORE
This is the current condition of the bathroom…
CURRENT CONDITION
I got the beadboard on the walls last night, but they were pretty warped. So it required wedging 2x4s in there to hold them flat to the wall while the liquid nails dried. My bathroom looks like a jungle gym!! But the tiles are looking great and I am really happy with the color I chose.
I’m getting really excited. I think I have at least reached the halfway point on this project. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that I will be able to get a lot done this weekend since it is a 3-day weekend. I’m so glad it is Friday and I can work on it late tonight and not have to get up early in the morning.
Oh My…
What a mess… this was earlier tonight and I got almost all the tile off. We duct taped some plastic sheeting up in there so I can take a shower. Sigh… I am so ready for this to be finished.
MESS
30 Things I Learned This Weekend
1. Concrete is heavy, even if broken into small pieces.
2. Just because you have a masonry bit for your drill that says “for concrete” does not mean it will drill through it easily or even at all.
3. When using tools in a two story house, what you need will always be downstairs when you are upstairs and vice versa.
4. Flying busted concrete is unpredictable and painful, especially when it is unexpected. I highly recommend eye protection.
5. There is a maximum number of times one can swing a sledgehammer in one day.
6. Montgomery City Waste Management cans have a maximum weight. Wheels and the can will bend if this weight is exceeded, possibly turning over and spilling heavy concrete in your front yard.
7. Concrete is not flexible and this is not negotiable.
8. Large chunks of concrete in your front yard serve as not only lawn decoration, but a new perch for pigeons and other birds.
9. It will rain as soon as you put wood in the back of a pick-up to bring it home.
10. Sheets of concrete backer board will fit in a convertible if you just put the top down. (Note: they will also scratch the paint if you slide them across the car as you put them in/out)
11. You should always be friendly to your neighbors. You never know when you might need them to help you carry something heavy from your car into the house (See 10)
12. When cutting pieces of wood, you should mark which piece you intend to use and make sure you have the right one before you pound nails into it and carry it upstairs to put in place.
13. People who say, “measure twice, cut once” know what they are talking about.
14. When you call someone and ask them to bring you a tool, you will most likely find another way to accomplish your mission before that person arrives with said tool.
15. What you planned to accomplish today almost never translates into what you did accomplish today.
16. Don’t laugh at someone when they hammer their own finger. Remember karma. If you laugh, it will happen to you moments later.
17. Sometimes spare parts can be found in a wall. Don’t panic if you unexpectedly remove a piece of pipe, as it may not have been connected to anything in the first place.
18. If you are sitting in a tub pounding on the wall and you feel something wet on your head, don’t accuse the person behind you of spitting on you. Consider first that they showerhead may be dripping.
19. When using a sledgehammer on one side of a wall, don’t be oblivious the fact that you are affecting the next room. You should check the status of the other side of the wall at random intervals. The wall may crack and chunks of plaster may fall out in the next room.
20. If you are a good climber, you do not necessarily need a ladder to get into an attic.
21. Make sure an ice pack, tourniquet, large bandages, and a crow bar are at least close by as they may be necessary at some point in the process.
22. Color is subjective to its environment. Just because golden brown looked good in the downstairs bathroom, doesn’t mean it won’t look like poop smeared on the wall in the upstairs bathroom.
23. Demolition dust can travel much farther than you think it can.
24. A loyal dog will follow you up and down the stairs as many times as you go, even if you tell her you will be back in one minute.
25. You can’t convince a barking dog that the knocking she just heard was your hammer, and not someone at the door.
26. A dad who’s back hurts too bad to push out the garbage can at home can still use a sledgehammer on his daughter’s bathroom wall.
27. Do not say “I told you so” to someone with a sledgehammer in their hand.
28. Do not say “Measure twice, cut once” to someone still holding a power tool.
29. Allowing someone to break for dinner, usually translates into letting them quit for the night.
30. The most necessary tool to survive a renovation project is a good sense of humor.
My story involves a 1912 bungalow, an illiterate contractor, a plumber/electrician with a crazy Goth obsessed wife and an amazing white man’s afro, an over worked husband, two crazy grandparents with early stage Alzheimer’s, enough termites to deforest a small country, a near death experience and an ICU stay our of state, a bathtub bought off the side of the road, and about 14 different shades of red.
I bought the house I live in right now. The lady who owned the home was 90 years old and smoked and drank all day. I walked in the Saturday of the move in and it smelled like a bar..I sat down and cried.
The painters had to put two coats of Kilz on the walls…which I thought were beige..till you took the pictures of the wall and realized they were the builder’s white.
I had to have the house painted, the vents cleaned and the carpets replaced. I had to scrub nicotine off all the counters..even inside the cabinets.
After I moved into the my now beautiful home..my exterminator paid his quarterly visit. He came down out of the attic..and said..”You’ve got Rats!”. I wanted to sell the house..lock, stock and barrell. It ended up being squirrels and $700 later I got rid of them…for a while. Then one day I was mowing my yard and I see the shingles on my house standing straight up.
Seems super squirrels were so desperate to get in my attic that were pulling the shingles up! Wildlife guys took pictures since they had never seen that before.
Finally, my house was done…till the tornadoes of 2008. Allstate just gave me $$ for a new roof and I signed the papers last night…I know have a brown stain on my walls…which I’ll need to have painted again.
Ah..the life of a homeowner!
My husband purchased a house and shortly after we met and were married. We then started having children and needed to do some MAJOR updating. So, we started with the nursery, then moved on to our upstairs loft that would become our master suite. Then baby #2 was on the way, so the playroom was renovated to big brothers room. Then we talked new drywall on all the walls, new windows, a new patio, new flower beds, and finally a new kitchen. On Sept 11, 2001, I will never forget sitting in the rocker with our new baby and our 1 year old and my husband and brother-in-law trying to figure out how to put in the new patio door when I turned on the TV and saw a tower burning and mintues later a plane flying into the second tower. Not much work happened that day as we all stopped to watch tv. So, as a newly married couple, new parents, and new homeowners, we tackled a huge project of remodeling the whole house. It was such a cute little place when it was done, but we had grown out of it. We needed more room, so we sold it and moved to a neighboring town. We will have been gone 5 years in December. Unfortunately, this summer, the floods of 2008 hit our old community of Cedar Rapids. Our old house like so many others was terribly flooded. But, ours was the only one on the street that had the foundation cave in. So, anytime within the next few weeks, our old house will be demolished. When I first saw what had happened to our house, I was sick to my stomach, I cried, I sobbed, and I remembered. So, much happened the 5 years we lived there. It was our children and our first home. Lots of love, sweat, fights, tears, muscle, frustration, laughter, and money was put into that house. Now it will be all gone…forever. It will not hold anymore memories, but I will still have the memories and photos of our time there. I am sad that I will never be able to drive by and “check on my flowers” or take the kids back someday and begged to see the old nursery. Instead I will just have to pull out the photos and tell the stories of the memories we made at 1604 8th St NW!
Okay, I don’t know if I have a picture, but last Christmas we decided to pull up the linoleum in our guest bath a replace it with tile. Well when we pulled it up we found black mold because they had put in the toilet wrong and sewage had seeped underneath. Well while the new tile was solidifying sewage water from outside backed up [ from hole where toilet had been] and flooded bathroom and new tile was sloshing around! This happened not once, but twice! We had to have roto rooter come out and snake our line–tree roots! He tried fishing for a tip! Here is the blog post about it since I didn’t take a picture [not something we wanted to remember] http://myutopias.blogspot.com/2007/12/big-sigh.html .
I don’t have a fixer-upper story per se (as I flee at the thought of doing so alone), but did post about my home being targeted as a “teardown”!
XOX
Hello Mary,
Having moved 4 times in the last 9 years I wish I could say that in at least one of those towns I bought a wonderful, old victorian lady or a fabulous bungalow just waiting to be loving restored. But no, each and every move has put me in 1970’s bad wallpaper hell. Couple that with a husband who just doesn’t have any vision and has an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude towards remodeling. One way I get around that is to tackle rooms with an all nighter frenzy whenever he leaves town on business for a few days. I blogged about one such marathon here: http://georgiapeachez.typepad.com/georgiapeachez/2007/08/crime-deterrent.html
Mrpeachez thought that wallpaper was just fine, intact so no problem.
It doesn’t stop with wallpaper or paint though. All our houses have been 70’s/80’s vintage and I am beginning to think my husband can’t wrap his mind around a bathroom remodel because he doesn’t know anything but a bathroom like he grew up with. My master bedroom has been wounderful updated (that was a different business trip) but as your eye travels around the pretty room you are stopped dead in your tracks when you get to the master bath area. (I generously call it a master bath only because it is adjacent to the master bedroom but it’s really just a small closet with a toilet and tub in it.) He, again, just wants to slap a new sink in it and call it a day when I want to tear out walls and gut the thing. So it just sits there because neither of us will budge.
I secretly envy everyone that has to brush their teeth in the kitchen sink because their bathroom has been gutted for reno. *sigh*
Thanks to Vintage Sue for pointing me to your blog. I’m a big fan of your books and now I look forward to reading your blog as well. suzy
I bought a house at auction in 2001, my first house ever! The old lady named Helen who lived there before me had died in the living room. She was an animal lover and had many cats. All those cats used the upstairs landing and the dining room as their personal litter box, and the wood floors had to be REPLACED. Please note that the old lady had the entire house carpeted — so all that cat pee soaked all the way through the carpet, the pad, and into the wood floor. That house STUNK.
Helen also had a large dog named Bonnie Sue. Bonnie Sue had suffered a stroke some years before, and was known to lay around a lot. She laid on the living room floor one day and just didn’t get up. But because of her stroke, and the stink of the rest of the house, Helen didn’t realize that Bonnie Sue had gone to that great dog house in the sky for quite some time. The result was what I referred to as the “Ghost of a Dog” after the Edie Brickell song. Bonnie Sue’s decomposing body left a stain in the wood floor of the living room in the shape of the dog. You could see where her head, her shoulder, and her back haunches had been when she died.
I couldn’t afford to have ALL those wood floors replaced, and the living room wasn’t that bad, really, so I just covered it with a rug for a long time. When we were finally getting ready to sell the place, I had the floors redone. The guys said that when they went to sand that area the stench was awful, so they ended up just replacing the wood in that area.
I have many pictures of that house, so just let me know if you’d like to see some!
When my husband and I had been married 3 years we had a one year-old son and another on the way. We took the plunge and bought our first house. It was a tiny, tiny 2 bedroom, one story house that had been empty for 9 years because the owner had been in a nursing home. It was $15,000 18 years ago (that should tell you something)and would need to be totally gutted. The floor needed to be jacked up and it needed new wiring, plumbing, fixtures and a new furnace. Even the outside would need to be redone. We thought it was a palace and couldn’t wait to move in. My husband had worked with a contractor and in heating and plumbing. What could be better? He could do it himself in his spare time and get great prices for supplies. We knew it would take some months but we were prepared. We moved into my mom’s house to save money and shared our room with the baby. Of course we were optimistically naive and it took many months. 12 months. We happily welcomed our new baby (who also shared our bedroom, that makes 4 of us if you’re counting) but my husband was exhausted from working nonstop. I was exhausted from having two babies to care for and working part time. If we wouldn’t have had help from my mom…(*cold chills*)
We finally finished the inside of our new home and moved in. The first thing we did was practice yelling the kids’ names out of our new windows. Just to get the feel for calling then in to dinner. It was adorable and we loved it. We continued to work on it for the next few years. After one year we had to enclose the small porch to make a playroom for the kids. After two we had to move a crib in there for baby #3.
Although it was a great house we soon outgrew it. We were lucky enough to be able to buy the house I grew up in. It was much larger and had lots of room and land. We were so excited and it didn’t need to be gutted. It did need some work though. My poor husband decided to put in new wiring and a heat system before we moved in. More long nights of no husband, no daddy while he did the work. My grandfather had done a lot of the previous work. He was a plumber but he liked to do things his own way and he liked to be creative. He wasn’t always right though. When he rewired his own house to put in a new doorbell he encountered a small problem. Every time someone rang the bell their TV turned on and off. My grandmother was used to his “projects”. We all loved the doorbell. My husband encountered several of his projects as he worked. Some were fine and some were an accident waiting to happen. He found a few nails that had been hammered into the wall directly though electrical wires. Never a good thing.
We still live in this house 15 years later and it is far from done but it’s better than it was. We still consider it the family home and enjoy having get togethers here as my grandparents and then parents had done before us. We have a son who loves to work with tools and we are hoping he makes a career of it. There are plenty of things to be done here and maybe he could use them for a class project. And maybe someday he or his brothers will be interested in this house for their home. Then they can make their own improvements and correct the mistakes that their father, grandfather and great-grandfather lovingly made before them.
Thanks so much for letting me share my happy memories. I have some old photos but my scanner doesn’t work. This was fun and I really look forward to reading your new book!
[email protected]
I am in the middle of a fixer-upper project now, which can you see on my blog. Too many stories ont hat one to share.
My funniest story is actually from 2 houses ago- a 1905 story and a half I bought from an estate to move into after my divorce-it had been vacant for 5 years. Old lady went into a nursing home and they kept it in case she wanted to come home. Anyway, there was a shower in the master basthroom- no tub- but it had this great tiled seat where I would put my leg up to shave. So one day (cold Iowa winter) there I am in the shower- in the buff (obviously)- and I put my leg up and the seat COLLAPSES and I lunge forward and down between the floor joist into my garage (drive under garage below my bedroom addition. So now I am scraped and bloody, naked and in my garage with NO CONNECTING door to the house. So I have to raise the garage door from inside and run to the front door and inside the house. My neighbors never said anything but peed themselves laughing. Apparently, when they did the addition to this house, they did not use the right backer board- just drywall and tiled right over it- and the grout cracked as the house sat vacant and after a couple months of me showering, the drywall was all wet and gave way.
Needless to say, I ripped out the entire shower , had a contractor (who thought the whole thing was hilarious) put in concrete board and retile.
Saving most of these great stories for a comedy routine of my life- ha!
Anyway- good luck on your fixer upper- I am always ready to take a break and have a good read, so look forward to reading your book !
Anita
homestory-anita.blogspot.com
I was so tickled when my grandmother informed me she was selling my great-grandparents house to me. I grew up playing in this house, my grandmother was married in this house, and my father came home from the hospital in this house. The people living in the house had multiple cats and dogs living inside the house. The people did not pay rent and generally left the house trashed. My father (the caretaker) evicted the people living in the house. The heat and electricity was shut off. Unbeknownst to me, the people broke in and began removing belongings that they had left behind. When I arrived home (which was across the street at the time), I noticed multiple flickers of light from inside the house. They continued to grow before my eyes. I realized it was fire. I started screaming, dialing 911, in a pure tizzy because my beloved fixer-upper was going up in flames. My husband rushed home from work about the same time my father showed up. My husband bravely broke down the windows, barrelled inside the house, to attempt to put out the flames before the fire department arrived. Much to my hubby’s surprise, it wasn’t fire, but a multiple candles being reflected in a mirror making the flames appear to be growing. The day got worse however. It was then we noticed the full extent of the damage of the occupants. The house reeked of cat and dog urine, the sink was broken in two and spewing water everywhere, and there were dead birds mixed with…yep…very dirty underwear. It was a horrid sight. The rooms had been painted horrible shades of mustard yellow and institution green. The beautiful unfinished hard wood floors under the carpet were stained and ruined because one room was used as a “dog run”. Three years later the house no longer resembles this mess. My father, husband and I have lovingly returned it to the glory days when my brother and I hunted Easter eggs in the backyard and opened Christmas presents in the living room. I bake biscuits where my Nanny used to and my daughter opens presents in the exact same spot my father did 45 years ago.
egads… I SO want one of those advanced copies… I missed the deadline because I have not one but THREE abcess teeth and was knocked OUT yesterday afternoon and last night after my first visit to the oral surgeon… so.. I suppose I would be the fixer upper in this story!
I have never bought a fixer upper though there is this little cottage a block from my current home what I am lusting after… I dream of fixing this little house up… for me… and only me! A place close enough to run away to but far enough away that I can’t hear my teens or Yorkie for a little while LOL Nonetheless, I shall acquire this little cottage, I’m simply biding my time and then from the looks of it I’ll have a MEGAstory to tell. For now though… I’m the fixer upper!
I know I’m past the deadline, but as a fellow old house sucker and fan of Weezie Foley, I could tell a few fixer upper horror stories myself.
We bought our 1915 kit house 7 years ago and lived in a borrowed pop up trailer in the back yard for 6 weeks while we put in new plumbing and electric. Our friends and family thought we were nuts. Heck, out 3 children thought we were nuts and promised they would be scarred for life. (they are turning out fine so far)
We had the incoherent disappearing plumber who said it’d be better to tear down, the electrician who thought our simple request to have our outlets level instead of willy-nilly was, well, silly and I can’t forget the day my food started to go through the dining room floor which led to the discovery of massive termite damage. We had to replace half the dining room floor and rebuild the basement stairs.
Best of luck with your current reno and can’t wait to read Fixer Upper!
I know it is past the deadline, but wanted to share this story. My husband and I had a friend that decided to remodel his new house. He was moving from 33 rooms to a smaller country home, but decided it was not big enough. I do not think he had a plan in mind though as he kept adding room after room without any thought as to flow. I am not sure if it was him or his much younger bride that thought they should have each addition added. This house ended up with two kitchens (one close to the inground pool, but in the house. Not an outside kitchen, which is so popular right now in warmer climates). They had rooms without a purpose and multiple small bedrooms and a bathroom that did not have floor to ceiling walls, very strange. Because the house was on the side of a hill you had to go up to get into the house and then up some floors or down some floors to move about the house. It would take a person many days to clean this monstrosity, and you would certainly get your exercise. The outside decking was not put on correctly and it all warped and did not have any protective coating, so it looked terrible after a few years. The roofline was all cut up and at different levels. To make a long story short, his wife was fulling around with the builder and that is why he was kept on so long at the expense of the husband. They divorced and the husband died not long after. Another friend of ours bought the house and tried to make apartments out of the multiple levels, without much luck. He had renters that did not pay and trashed the house. He had a roommate that did not pay and had to store all of his stuff to boot. The pool was falling in. He lost it to the bank and it was sold to another person at a sheriff’s sale. That poor house!
Susan Mary