Adventures in Money Pit Ownership!

Well, it's ours- and as expected, it is a semi-wreck, but not as bad as it could be. The things we need to do immediately are winterize the plumbing for the cottage, paint, and have an electrician check out all the electric--- looks to be a strange mish mash of new with a fuse box (good) and old with the old fashioned screw in fuses (not so good). Plus, one of our cottage neighbors told us that lots of these cottages are really wonky electricity-wise--- as in past owners have used crazy things like unrated extension cords to rewire or add outlets and things like that. So, if we want to install electric baseboard heating (we do) we need to get it all updated and up to code.

SPEAKING of cottage neighbors, they are AWESOME. Very down to earth people, who seem to spend a lot of time improving and/or adding on to their cottages-- the extra good thing being that two of them are plumbers, one's an electrician, one's a general contractor, and one does phone systems and also has electrical knowledge so we are neck-deep in helpful neighbors that are happy to pitch in. Actually we already were told we just need to let them know when we want to do the plumbing, and they will help us do it because for them, it's a couple of hours but for us to do ourselves---fuggedaboutit! (yes, direct quote). So I guess we need to stock up on some Coors Light and snacks for them, and we will have winterized plumbing.

Rosemarie and Tony are the longest time residents of Fiume Bello (our bungalow community's name), having helped found it 32 years ago. They are the best. Apparently, this group of cottages was built in 1950, then abandoned shortly thereafter, and purchased by Tony and 11 of his friends 32 years ago. Rosemarie said when they first got their cottage, she was eating lunch in the livingroom under an umbrella until they got the new roofs put on the cottages later that year. Rosemarie's favorite way to describe something bad (a botched home repair, ugly curtains, what-have-you) is "oh my God, it's a HORROR." One of the things that Rosemarie did describe as a HORROR were the beds that came with our cottage. I found out that these 3/4 beds (that is smaller than a full, bigger than a twin) have the original mattresses from 1950 on them, laying over a weird sort of coil spring and steel band support frame. If you ever went to a summer camp or were in boyscouts/girlscouts you perhaps ran into these metal spring contraptions in the platform tents you stayed in-- you would have just laid some cardboard on top, then your bedroll. You can see the image up at the top of the post. Now, here's a fun fact to ponder as you look at that lovely mattress--- in 10 years the average mattress DOUBLES ITS WEIGHT. How is that possible you may ask yourself...well, that weight comes from dust and human skin! Yes, we threw them out immediately, which also improved the smell of the bungalow considerably.