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Built in 1816, the oldest part of our house (far right in the color photo, below) had originally served as a store run by the Hogentogler family who probably lived upstairs. A later owner, Benjamin Streeter, put on the first addition. (It's the slightly recessed section.) Streeter was probably also responsible for the numerous animal bones we still find in the garden. (He was a butcher.)
Still, the house was solid and meshed with the old-farmhouse fantasies of a childless couple freshly arrived from Texas. (In Dallas, we'd rehabbed a 1911 Queen Anne cottage but always hankered for an old house.) We plunked down our money, moved in and started work. Among the first things to go was the aluminum siding. (We sold it to a recycling plant which, we hope, turned it into something useful -- soda cans, maybe.) Most recently, we tossed Jerry and Violet's 1942 kitchen into a trash dumpster and put on our own addition, some of which can see at the extreme left of the photo above. And, that's it. Two old houses is enough. Time to do something else. Your writing project, maybe?
Above, left and center, is our old house as it came to us in 1989: a big, literally white "elephant" covered with flaking paint and cheap-o aluminum siding. Ripping off the siding -- above, right -- was one of my first projects after we closed. (And it was really, really a pleasure.) Those were the days when we worked from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every weekend. In 1991, I spent a month recreating a small side porch (below, left) that went missing decades ago, a project that led the Philadelphia Inquirer's Alan Heavens to call me a "poster child" for do-it-yourself. (Read his account here.) Then, in 2000, we got serious with a 400-square-foot addition (below, center) for which we had to hire, um, "helpers." BUT...I still got to do the painting (below, right).
 Mark
E. Dixon
757 Upper Gulph Road
Wayne, PA 19087-2022
USA
610-971-0649
dixon_mark@verizon.net
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In 1989, we bought the house from a couple that had
lived here since 1942. Jerry and Violet had put on the second addition (just
to the left of the circa 1880 Streeter addition) and added amenities such as central heat,
plumbing and asbestos insulation. Then, they got tired. They
opened the door to an aluminum siding salesman, skipped maintenance and
eventually moved into smaller and smaller sections of the house as things broke
down.
