Come on in and stay a while.
We bought Earl's Old House in May of 2010, and we're planning to stay forever. A little background information: Earl's Old House is in an older, established neighborhood in the Tucker suburb in northeast Atlanta. It was built in 1968, and the same family lived in it until we bought it in 2010. Earl and his wife lived here and raised their family here. Their daughters eventually grew up and moved away, and then Earl lost his wife. Around 2008 or 2009, Earl passed away. His daughter cleaned up the house and put it on the market, and in May 2010, it became ours.
When we walked into the house for the first time, I felt like I was home. The house has an almost-identical floorplan to the house I grew up in until I was 12, down to the sunroom and the hidden door to the attic over the garage in one of the bedroom closets. My childhood home didn't have a basement, and it did have a nice, level, fenced backyard, but otherwise, the homes are remarkably similar. My husband and children fell in love with it as well, and now it is ours.
When neighbors or new friends ask where we live, we'll tell them our neighborhood or our address, and if they look puzzled, all we have to say is "in Earl's Old House," and they instantly know exactly which house is ours.
While the house has fabulous bones, it needs a lot of work. I'm sure the dark molding and the floral wallpaper were the height of fashion back in 1975, but they're old and dated now. Earl smoked cigars in the house every day for 40 years, so there's a fine film of tobacco on everything, leaving the house smelling stale and looking dingy. The light fixtures are atrocious. But, the foundation is strong and it has great potential.
So, this blog is the story of Earl's Old House, and how we will, slowly but surely, bring it up to the present and make it our own.
