we closed on the house last monday and have now filled our first construction dumpster with the previous owners, eleanor and tillie’s, possessions. most of the valuables have already been looted, but we found a pretty nice owl collection, a boomerang, a bird bath, a dead squirrel, a dead opossum, and 2 human teeth. it’s also been really nice to get to know eleanor and tillie. they left about 40 photo albums and lots of letters. tillie owned a painting and wallpaper company, and eleanor worked for bell telephone company for most of her life. we found eleanor’s certificate and award for twelve years of perfect attendance at work. they had a really impressive garden… they documented it well in their photo albums. now the yard is overgrown with invasive ivy, bamboo, and multiflora rose, so we have a ton of work to do.
we’ve met a lot of our neighbors and they seem really nice. the woman across the street told us that tillie died in the house and was dead for a few days, but eleanor had alzheimer’s and didn’t realize. a friend found him, and then eleanor went to a home 5 years ago and that’s the last anyone has lived there.
below is a really huge unfinished addition that we finally cleared out. our neighbors told us that two turkeys lived there for a while, so there were several inches of turkey crap on the floor. next week we’ll be taking out all of the interior walls of the house, and then it’ll be really cleared out.
