Before and After

BEFORE

For those who are interested in our project to rebuild my great-great grandmother's house in a new, more desireable location (i.e., ocean front rather than a dying village on a tidal river), here's an update.

The house is gone. Having stood for 200+ years, the house succumbed to Charlie the demolition guy, his bulldozer and his picker.  Charlie does not have a phone, or if he has one, he doesn't answer it.  He also doesn't appear to have a mailing address.  However, he was described as someone who liked to knock things down, so he seemed ideal for the job. He was hired by a third party who knows him, since he doesn't answer his phone.  Wonder how he makes a living?

Floorboards, mouldings, tin ceiling, beams, doors, and miscellaneous lumber were saved, along with a field of massive granite blocks and lots of bricks, made in the local brickyard.  The town has two roads that give a hint about industries once found there: Brickyard Road and Shipyard Road.  We got the bricks but would be very surprised if there were any ships still left.

And, even though I knew that many of the beams in the house were hollowed out by carpenter ants and it was only a matter of time before the structure collapsed, I still feel a pang that it had to come down.

We have actually sold the land (or will by next Friday) where the house stood.  Embedded in the sales contract was permission to store all the stuff saved from the house on the property until we could move it.

We have purchased some spectacular waterfront land about eight miles away.

We have a designer and builder, Chris from Belfast, who thinks we are nuts and that it is his job to convince us to be sensible.  Classic words from Chris: "Of course you can do that, but it will cost more." We need his wisdom as we progress.

Bottom line: This is not an investment.

Boundary issues

Once upon a time there was a nice hardworking family living on a tidal river in darkest Maine.  The father was a blacksmith with several sons, one of whom abandoned blacksmithing and opened a village store.  After the blacksmith died, the storekeeper moved his mother down the hill so that she would be closer to the store where he could keep an eye on her -- a necessity, because by all accounts she was a formidable lady.  He not only moved her, but also moved her house. He owned quite a bit of land up the hill from the store, some of which became the house lot for his mother. Although by the end of the 19th century the land had been broken up into family parcels, it was still all in the family.

Fast forward 75 years and several generations.  The store closed in the early 1950s. The mother's house had been empty or nearly empty for some years, occasionally used as a summer house by visiting family members. The family members who had inherited the various bits of property began to sell them off, in some cases to other family members or friends, but in other cases to strangers from away.  These family members were not stupid and had little wish to live in a town with a population in decline since the 1910 census.

The house of the storekeeper's mother left the family in 1961 and was owned by several people from away who used it as a summer house.  At some point, one of the owners bought some of the land up the hill so that the lot attached to the house, originally very small, would expand to about two acres.  However, the boundaries of the land were not entirely clear, and were described as being 75 yards from an elm tree no longer present, or bounded by a woodshed, also no longer present.  Town tax maps did not even associate this new purchase with the house.  

Fast forward a few more years. Along came the great-great granddaughter of the formidable lady, who decided that she wanted this house.  And, not all that strangely, it was for sale.  An offer was made and accepted and all was good to go when the lawyer helping the great-great granddaughter and her husband mentioned that he couldn't figure out the boundaries, didn't know what was actually being sold, and was not yet ready to issue a title opinion.  This delayed the closing by several weeks while the helpful lawyer tried to get title insurance,  

Title insurance was finally secured, with so many exclusions that it really didn't protect anyone from anything.  However, with that issue settled, the helpful lawyer decided that he could issue a title opinion and set a closing date.  

It's about time that another formidable lady owned that house.