Our home was built by hand in 1917 using a Sear's Craftsman plan and materials from throughout the west and mid-western United States. When they finished the home, the man who owned the house signed it with pride.
Twelve years later, the stock market crashed. A few years later, a severe drought and the subsequent dust bowl hit the continental United States and Canada.
To stay afloat, the man who built this home sold the special features. The lead glass windows disappeared. The stained glass windows vanished. The large French doors and siding doors disappeared soon enough. Like many of the homes here, the features disappeared and the home fell into disrepair.
In the 1980s, the home was flipped - cleaned up, painted, and sold. The folks we bought the house from had lived in the home for fifteen years and done nothing.
The husband fell in love with our home the moment he walked in. We closed around his birthday and set to work.
The electrical and water had to go.
The foundation needed shoring up.
The basement needed cleaning up.
We needed a new porch.
And... oh gosh, just thinking about it makes me exhausted.
I always wanted to replace the mantle windows. My dream was to replace the plain windows with what had been before - leaded windows on either side of the fireplace mantle.
Last weekend, the husband found four leaded windows circa 1916 on eBay. The advertisement said they were from a home that was demolished somewhere in Michigan. The windows were ridiculously inexpensive.
They arrived yesterday and are gorgeous.
If you read Denver Cereal, you know what will happen next. We'll call Jim from Commercial Art Glass. He's helped us with our stained glass window before. He also built the stained glass windows for Delphie's chapel in Denver Cereal. He'll come over sometime next week and tell me all about the windows. In a month or so, these will hang in our mantle windows.
One step at a time, with any luck, we'll put this house back together.
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