The Dirt House & Storage Unit.

we already call our house the “dirt house” and the “storage unit”, it’s a stilt house and the lower portion was not intended as living space due to potential hurricane storm surge.  It provides us residency in Florida where they have no income taxes, a side benefit.  Upper area is a one bedroom 800 square foot house.  Below is utilities & storage, but there is still a bedroom from PO and 1/2 finished bath.  We took out the “kitchenette”.

we’ve had it about 10 years  now and it continues to get improvements.  When we first found it, it was overgrown, abandoned, hole in the garage roof, termites & black mold!  Some bank in New York had bought it for back taxes.  The water system had been stolen and there was no power.  Someone had smashed in a window to look around rather than call a realtor.  i called.

well in true “ask forgiveness” form, we got a key from the realtor and started storing stuff.  There was a detached shed and both roofs were good.   the previous sale had fallen through because there was a $120,000 lien still on the property.  We got it for about what we paid for the used Lance, a steal.   We received permission to turn on the electric, just to try and dry out the house & take some control.

It was in pretty rough shape, half remodeled.  Apparently the PO had died in a motorcycle accident and it was sold for back taxes.  upstairs was plywood floors, old kitchen, lousy windows and a nice sunporch with those leaky Florida jalouise windows.  It had three huge decks, but they were old, rotting and moldy.  They were treated 2x material though, so plenty strong.

The upstairs connected to the lower level via a spiral staircase.  It had a bamboo bar surrounding the opening.  We ripped it all out and sealed off the floor.  Downstairs was in somewhat better shape than up.  Bedroom tiles & finished, funny kitchen and half finished bath with jacuzzi tub.  The garage was nasty, hole in the flat roof, falling in, one whole wall showing distress.

The yard was big, 3 lots and 1.1 acre of overgrown florida.  About 50 palm trees, nice mossy oaks, pines & lots of growth, including invasive pepper plants and three stands of enormous bamboo.  There were so many leaves in the back that we had no idea there was a brick patio out there.

The funny thing is it took more than a year to close.  By the time it happened we were squatters with a ton of stuff in the shed and vehicles stored in the yard.  Just before closing, the bank received notice that they could not store stuff at an unoccupied residence!  WTF. We had to move all the vehicles off property before we could close.  Campers, boats, truck.  Luckily, no big deal. 

We hired a landscaping contractor and ordered the largest dumpster we could.  We believe the PO was in the construction trades as there was a lot of things that look recycled and mismatched, even outdoors with the plants, like a Norwegian pine and some landscaping plants.  But also a lot of junk.  I think I still have a couple of old tires on rims to get rid of!

We have remodeled numerous houses & condo’s over the years, 15-20 or so.  This one was a project!  We had the stands of bamboo removed, a few trees and lots of ground debris.  Then they spread loads of fill shell gravel creating large open areas that would become the future Fat Point Campground.  We permitted and installed a culvert to give us road access to the east and a circle drive around the house.

Inside, we took out everything and started over.  The kitchen cabinets made it down to the garage for a wall of storage.  We tiled the upstairs, found a kitchen on Craigslist and put in a sliding door to the back deck.  All new hurricane glass windows were installed throughout.  New fixtures, bathroom tiled with shower door.  New countertops, kitchen appliances.  The old countertop is now out in the outdoor kitchen. Most everything we did ourselves.

There’s not a lot left of the old place, maybe the walls and front entry door.  i ripped off part of the deck that I think was dog exercise area using by pickup.  The garage was interesting too.  I used a series of 2x4’s to temporarily hold up the rafters as i cut away the side wall that was rotted.  replaced it with treated wood and some concrete sheathing board.  Same with the header over the garage double door.  Hooked up the truck and pulled it down.  Almost took my head off releasing the spring when I disassembled the big door.

My son lived here when we evicted him from our condo nearby.  First by himself with his dog Sunny ( ) then with move in girlfriend.  She came with two kids so we converted the sunroom into a bunkbed room for the boy & girl.  Still have footprints on our ceiling!  They were here for a few months before finding a foreclosure during the crash....hmmm, did a lot of painting in his new house too.

We sold our nearby condo at Burnt Store and reluctantly stay here, preferring to be boating or camping.  But, with time and improvement comes more fondness, maybe.  The deck rebuilding projects last year provided big improvement.  The brick patio was raised and expanded.  The itinerant hot tub, now with RO water.  The smokers kitchen too.  Slowly we have taken back our yard from the jungle.

We have sold properties and shuffled stuff back and forth to Michigan for about 10 years now.  One storage unit in MI, one condo nearby, 3 condo flips in MI and a commercial building we had since 2000.  As of this writing we are hoping to close on the sale of the building which stalled due to coronavirus complications.  But man, do we have boxes full of stuff.  I am tempted to join Flywheelers and be a flea market tycoon.  Maybe movin’ to Montana soon.

I’m off to the roof to blow leaves out of the gutters.