The year of 2007 was in full swing, and our various house projects were staggering forward in their own fashion. The kitchen was finally starting to resemble a “Reformed Gothic” folly, and my new washer and dryer were installed in the master suite, so that I no longer had to haul all of the laundry two floors down and up again.
Our carpenter had recently dubbed our house “The Stairmaster” and was predicting that the last thing we would have installed was an elevator, and our roofer fell in love and moved off to West “By God” Virginia.
We were pondering the difficult situation of running additional electrical and plumbing lines. All of the plaster in the house is adhered directly onto the brick exterior walls, with no space for plumbing or electric lines to be pulled through. The interior walls are brick as well, with the same plaster treatment, so we were happy to have finally found a single chase (empty space inside the walls, for those uninitiated in “old-house-speak”) that traveled from the basement all the way to the attic, which allowed us to bring plumbing up to the third floor.
In addition, the new boilers were finally being installed, and we were excited about the prospect about having heat after two entire winters without a functioning boiler. The heat pump that serviced the basement kept the pipes from freezing, but the occupants were left out in the cold, so the prospect of heat was exhilarating, even in the throes of a sweltering Southern Virginia in June. Though we still don’t have heat, which is the subject of a future post, things did heat up that Summer.
Flash back to December 7th, 2006. Six months earlier, the house diagonally across the street from our house was ablaze. The owner was found in the basement with two gunshot wounds to the back of his head, and a fire had been intentionally set in a nearby basement room. The blaze continued for hours even after the fire department was called, and the flames erupted through the roof, eventually devouring a significant portion of the interior of the structure. The sturdy brick walls of the 1884 home held fast, so the building was still standing when the smoke cleared, but the insurance company called it a total loss, and the City police department declared it a suicide. While my typing is quite accurate, and I did say “two gunshot wounds to the back of his head,” apparently the City’s accuracy in such matters is far superior to mine.
The new view from my master bedroom was less than appealing, now.
The house was a wreck, you could smell it from a block away whenever it rained. The roof had half collapsed in upon itself, and the new plywood panels on the boarded-up windows were the only bright spots on an otherwise blighted and burned out building. Not even the stray cats in the neighborhood would occupy its slowly rotting carcass. Something had to be done. Everyone agreed that someone had to do something. Indeed, if nothing were done soon, we would lose another significant property in the Historic District. The City also agreed, and in their preservation-antagonistic fashion, promptly slapped a condemnation order on the house.
The main hallway was awash in debris and the main staircase had been wholly destroyed. The center of the house had the most damage done to it, but all of the surrounding rooms had their fair share of smoke and water damage.
The wood trim and interior doors suffered significant damage, and all of the plasterwork was a total loss. It was left soggy, crumbling and soft.
The butler’s pantry was charred beyond saving, and the hardwood floors were all completely heaved, warped and popping up, hindering any ability to walk without the risk of tripping among the debris.
The smoke had been super-heated in the conflagration so that its remains had been baked into the porcelain of fixtures, both new and old. Yet somehow the pink wainscotting remained relatively unscathed. What is it about pink that must haunt and torture me in these old houses? I would outlaw the color as a decorative choice if I were made Queen of such things. Until then, it is my lot in life to exterminate it wherever I can.
One of the biggest losses were the beautiful original plaster ceiling medallions, crumbling and soft and falling to pieces from the heat and the water damage. Fortunately there were no original chandeliers in situ before the fire, so I had no twisted metal carcasses to mourn.
the upstairs fared no better, with the debris from the falling roof, a full floor above, ending up in the main hallway. As we could only reach the second floor by a ladder placed against the front porch roof, we had to scramble across the curled asphalt roofing and in through a shattered window. Even still, we were unable to reach the staircase to the attic for many weeks, as sections of the second floor hallway were too fragile to support our weight.
Even a peripheral file room in the basement at the other end from the fire’s origin suffered significant damage, with scorched files, melted computers and crumbling reference books. Because the owner had operated his law office out of the home, we had to wait until the American Bar Association removed all of the remains of the legal files throughout the house before we could even commence the demolition phase and start shoveling out the debris. In other parts of the basement, mushrooms were growing abundantly in the soggy rotting floorboards, now exposed to the elements for the last six months, and a myriad of tiny flying insects were breeding in the moist darkness.
the collapsed roof in the attic was allowing the weather to continue to have its way with the building, and every day that we were delayed in keeping out the rain only added to the ultimate damage we would have to reckon with.
Though the kitchen was in the far periphery from the center of the blaze, the heat of the fire melted the plastic parts of the appliances, leaving the microwave, refrigerator and television resembling a Salvador Dali landscape. It was a bit surreal with the crisped potted plants still sitting where they had been placed, and paintings on the walls with their images dripping off their canvases.
We anticipated that we could start immediately after the Bar Association was through with the file removal, and estimated we would be done in twelve months. We set our budget, hired our first general contractor, and started the process of dumping many wheelbarrows full of money into the endless gaping maw of #841, the Flinn House. And so, the insanity had begun.
Carla Minosh
While I am new to Blogging, I have always enjoyed sharing the stories of my crazy life, so this is simply another medium to share, and hopefully entertain and enrich others. Perhaps you can feel thankful that your life is so steady and predictable after reading these, perhaps you can appreciate the insanity and wish you had more of it in your life. Either way, the crazy tales are all true (to the best of my spotty recollection) and simply tell the tale of a life full of exploration, enthusiasm, curiosity and hard work. I hope you all enjoy being a part of the journey.
It is now confirmed: you are both insane.
Funny though, I really admire this type insanity…