Thursday, November 30, 2006

Old House Fanatic

Despite the fact that I live in a house that's less then five years old (even if it does look like an old farmhouse), I still have a deep and abiding love for Real Old Houses. I get choked up driving past our old house, which I loved despite having 120 years of gunge, broken plaster, odd wiring, and mysterious construction issues. I loved fixing up an old house (well, loved it most of the time!).

I ran across another person who obviously loves old houses -- and her experience in renovating a turn of the century bungalow in Chicago entirely engrossed me for almost five hours. Read through the archives of her blog on doing Bungalow Archaeology -- digging out a hundred years of accumulated "collections" from a previous owner who hoarded everything -- from six WW1 army tents (in original backbacks) to enomrous collections of depression era glass to spare Victrola motors and boxes of rocks.

She has been documenting the finds since 2003. It's fascinating and fun and sad and oh-so-familiar to anyone who has ever looked at an old house and thought, "I can fix that!"

Check out House In Progress. Read from the beginning in the archives. It's worth it.

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