HOME SWEET RECYCLED HOME
(Page 4 of 6)
September/October 1972
By Mark Gregory
The floors of an old farmhouse may well slant one way or the other and sag a bit in the middle even though the joists in each room are sound and in good condition. There's a good chance that the flooring itself will be solid oak and in pretty good shape (although some of the earlier country homes do have yellow pine planking that will have deteriorated somewhat more than oak).
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Almost any abandoned home loses its windows to vandals or windstorms sooner or later or, at the very least, needs a completely new caulking job around all its panes of glass. Expect to spend a few dollars here.
Check the fireplace if the building you're looking at has one. You should be able to see daylight up the flue and the shaft should be lined with fire brick (or an equivalent) and should draw smoke well. Test that draw by lighting a piece of paper and holding it at the edge of the hearth. The paper should burn quickly and leave no smoke trails in the room. If the fireplace doesn't draw well, a good cleaning for bird and rodent nests (easy) or caked-on tars and resins (difficult) will be in order.
Many old-time farmhouses were warmed with room heaters (first a coal or wood-burner and later, possibly, an LP-gas stove). Such an austere heating system means closing off sections of the house in winter, heating only the kitchen and living room and sleeping in a cold bedroom under frosty blankets. A central furnace (usually in the basement) is far better where comfort is concerned although more expensive to maintain (it takes more fuel to heat a whole house than to heat only a couple rooms).
Most really old farm kitchens started out with a woodburning cook stove, which was probably moved out and replaced with an LP or electric range somewhere along the way. If you look long enough you'll most likely discover the old kitchen flue (covered with wallpaper or patched in) and, if you unplug the vent, you can even move in an honest woodburning range again and cook just like they used to cook in the good ole days. Just make sure the flue is not blocked by falling brick or collapsed liner and that the passage is sound and well tucked all the way up through the roof with metal flashing securely fastened in place and waterproofed with tar.
The majority of early farmsteads had a hand pump and outhouse instead of indoor plumbing and toilets . . . and the older homes you find equipped with modern facilities may well have had one or more individual fixtures removed. In any case, plan almost certainly on cleaning the septic tank before being able to use the toilet.
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