For the Love of Old Houses

I’ve always loved old houses. I remember being a little girl, driving down country roads with my family, looking out at old farmhouses with wrap around porches and imagining what life was like in them long ago, before they were old and chippy. The squeaky screen door, the old smell, even the worn flaking paint, it all screams home to me.

The old house journey begins

In 2014, my husband was offered a job in Oklahoma. He made the move before the kids and I did and, while living in our RV, he started the house hunt. We wanted more land. I wanted an old house. The realtor assured my husband that there were not many around anymore, but we kept searching. While I was there during a weekend visit, I drove down a back road to town and I saw it. It was an old house with a wrap-around porch that was half falling down. The place was obviously empty. There were old weathered barns behind it and a squeaky old windmill. It was perfect. I thought to myself, “If I could only find a place like this.” Not long after, my husband called me to say that a “For Sale” sign was put up on the fence of the old place. And so began our journey of bringing life back to old houses.

Fast forward to 2019

Work relocated us again. This time back to Texas but on the opposite side of the state from where we were born and raised. Dry and dusty west Texas. A place my grandma, a west Texas native, claimed had nothing but “dirt, rocks and rattlesnakes.” (She wasn’t wrong.) And so, the search began, once again, for an old house to call home. This one took a while, but finally, we found a place that felt right. It was a smaller house and not as old, built in the early 30s, that had been moved from town to the family farm in the 90s. It was vacant and wind beaten but it had charm. There were old barns and good fences. Sold! Round two began.

We felt the tug

We were hesitant. Honestly, other than to be closer to family, we didn’t have a desire to go back to east Texas. But, we had been away from “home” for a while and felt like it was time to head back. Once again, my husband left before us while the kids and I stayed behind to wrap up open projects and get the house packed and ready to sell. By this time, only our youngest was still home full time and if you have ever moved not just a house, but a whole farm, you know this is not an easy task. I was tired, I had less help, I was ready to do things differently. We had spent the last 10 years moving and working on old houses. I wanted another old house but I did not want another project this time.

Then my mother sent me an old house listing

I responded with a big “NOPE!” It was a neat house but it needed work and I did not want to do it! My husband reluctantly went to see it. I say “see it,” but that may be stretching it a bit. There were trees and vines covering the house. There was a tenant staying in the house to keep it from being vacant but the owners had not lived there in years and the maintenance and upkeep had been minimal. The poor tenant had done what she could but this place needed more attention than she could give it. My husband wasn’t feeling it but encouraged me to drive over and go take a look. We got there and I wasn’t feeling it either. Our son got out of the truck, looked up at it, then got right back in the truck. My mother on the other hand was smiling and saying, “Do it!” What part of “I don’t want another project, is so hard to understand?” I thought. But after much back and forth and shopping around, we kept going back to the crusty old place. And here we are, a year into owning a worn turn-of-the-century home, tucked in the woods of the Big Thicket. Never would I have imagined being here again. But, never say never, and the journey continues.