... at first sight

The first thing you noticed outside the cottage was the size of the property... we were informed it was almost an acre, with just under 200' (59.5m) on the lakefront.... used to be much more, actually six lots, but a couple of them are sub-aqua.  On this hot, sunny summer day, the opportunity of this permanent view across Lake Erie was an irresistible drug.

Instinctively, we debark the PT and walk straight to the breakwall, a thick steel corrugated wall, pounded down deep in the early 70s in response to the wild storms of that era, approximately twelve/fifteen feet up from the beach to the lawn.  Nowadays, a definite no-go, a big ecological denial on such protection, even reinforcing your rock breakwalls must be done with natural boulders, no cement breakwalls with their chemical make-up.  But if we didn't see that iron, there'd be no gold - we've lived on Erie before. 

Ten feet out from the wall is a free standing cement stairway - in the water, connecting to nothing, wetly waiting for a rope bridge to link it to the mainland again.  Me to Kee: "I'm thinking this breakwall went in right after the bridge seceded".  Emotionally, we're already standing on our lawn, jutting far ahead of any other cottage's property - because of this wall, and below us is a lovely sandy beach, made private because of a massive push-out bulwark in the right side of the breakwall and a rock pile on the left side of (again) our lot.  Today, shallow, easily stirred-up Lake Erie is calm and extremely clear.  We see large cement blocks from previous walls and smooth, waved sand stretching out clearly for an impressive distance.  An endless ribbon of minnows flow in the shallows.

Look to the west... cottage homes fronted by breakwalls and sandy beach curve in and out to gently point out Wheatley Harbour, then further stretch out into the lake forming the misty, treed east side of Point Pelee.  Turn east, cottages and rows of small breakwalls, stone and rusting metal, breaking the beach up as the shore heads to Holiday Harbour, then Wheatley Provincial Park, then along the cliffs heading towards Erieau and points east.

Tubby, stolid commercial fishing boats are close in and far out in the lake around us; one, picking it's nets, wears a mobile halo of gulls.  "Perch are running off Holiday Harbour", says Kee as he points my attention to the dozen pleasure boats of varying sizes not far out from that point.  We look out at the water, we look around at the old cottage, then look at each other....

Our backyard will go to Ohio. 
Now that's a selling point.
Although I do see Visitor Waivers and tethered-down grandchildren in our future.

The cottage exterior needs work.  No garage, no driveway, needs new roof, plus has a flat roof that needs to be peaked/roofed, crumbling faux Tudor details that need to be repaired or replaced, gorgeous old paned windows that are as high on the "you don't get windows like these anymore" scale as they are on the "and there's a damn good reason for it" measurement.  I immediately fixate on vertical board and batten siding and metal roof..... which, a year later, is out the proverbial leaky, picturesque window - I like the faux Tudor - it belongs, and a metal roof is too expensive and I've found scalloped shingles, cheaper and more period looking, plus good looking, period. 

There's no insulation.  And my son the millwright tells me the house's wiring was put in and signed by someone called Edison and what wiring/electricity set-up there is, is a world class non-funny joke.  And the boiler is unoperable.  And the plumbing is ancient and untrustworthy.  No air conditioning.... about the only thing I didn't care about.

The entire house is surrounded by a short inpenetrable jungle of perennials, an angry horde of "we were here first" hostas, militant legions of lily of the valley, ant-palaces of peonies and Alpes and Rockies of Snow on the Mountain.  I'll find their root systems to be as densely interwoven and pervasive as absolutely any densely interwoven, pervasive simile you can come up with.

Open the main door, the east side door into the mudroom.  Inside, the first thing you notice is the smell.  We're talking almost eighty years of two months only use.... Doing the math makes that around 2 months x 78 = 156 months open and 10 months x 78 = 780 months closed.  But right off, I found that smell exciting - to me, it was the smell of waiting adventure, change, genuineness, challenge, discovery, creativity.... with a side order of possible Black Spore Death. I think we really took possession the day we noticed people didn't come into the place, cock their heads upwards, sniff, and blither something along the lines of, well, it was closed up since Capone had his first communion.

There's actually two constructions:  1932 and 1952.  At this point in our education of the house, I do - like the inhabitants of Riseholme (E F Benson's Lucia series) - some inductive reasoning:  1932 - height of the Great Depression, therefore for Americans to build a quality second home in another land (the fishing village of Wheatley was a great haven for USers, especially Michiganers; to cottage in, from the turn of the century onwards), at such of time of economic straits, they must have been well-off.  We found all parts of the cottage buildt solidly, tongue and groove pine, proving very tight when we had it energy evaluated, with poured cement foundations (at least in the older section, bit of a bitch to follow about the newer section at a later date).

The old section had six rooms:  facing the lake, on the left/east, a kitchen with a large mudroom/entry behind it, then the living room in the middle and a master bedroom on the right/west side.  A small hall at the side of the living room held three doors:  the master bedrom, a small shower/bath and a small bedroom that faced the road front and east side of the lot.  In 1932, on  the left/east roadside wall of the living room was the front door.... a small entry, a coat closet, and across from the closet - a semi-sunk "boiler" room for the hot water boiler and the water tank.  This room is lined with cedar for some reason.... smells very nice.  In 1952, in front of the front door a big addition went up, down the east side of the new long central hall, went a large tiled bath and a large bedroom, and on the west side, an equally large bedroom and behind it, a miscellany room.  Sometime later, a lake-facing sunroom was added in front of the living room, a couple of steps lower from the french doors that originally had led straight out to the backyard.  These sunroom windows, lovely new, are all around, open up or down and add another communal living space.

In bad, bad and even worser shape - all the floors in the old side, made of 3 3/4" pine, except for the linoleum of the bathrooms, kitchen, mudroom and sunroom.  The floors in the 50s addition are of oak and of equally rough shape.  The walls are all of a rougher plaster and the walls go up to the ceiling and gently curve over to meet them.  The living room is panelled up ten feet with varying width pine, then plastered up another five feet.  Five arched pine beams were added later, by the slightly different look of them.  The unusually wide fireplace is encased in the same pine, with red brick facings and red tile hearths.  Two heatilators on each side of the fireplace helped stave of the chilblains in the fall and winter of 2009 and 2010 while renovating.  The old boiler wasn't winter-prepared, froze and cracked.  No heat.

Every wall is cracked.  The entire front bedroom lakeside wall is rotting... "I can see the lake through here" rotting.  Every ceiling is cracked.  The kitchen is orderly, neat - completely headed for a gut - but totally fine for a summer cottage.  I notice the ceiling is wallpapered - ominous, not a good sign.  And let's just say....... and so on ..... and leave it at that.

As "I'm sorry, but there is no brain activity" as it sounds, all of the above does not flatten the vision, clear the romantic "could be" fog, doesn't put the brakes on either of us.  We've done most repair and maintenance ourselves. Kee is a "can see it to do it" miracle worker.  I've always done my own painting, decorating, gardening.  We're not daunted... yet.

Because - the pine glows underneath the grime in that big central living room.  Those large windows have dozens of separate panes in them - and not many are cracked and the bedrooms have two large ones each.  The kitchen has three windows nooked out with a window seat that faces the lake.  Some of the doors are still unpainted mellow grained slabs.  The hardware is vintage.  The lot is captivating.  We are not seeing straight, especially me.

Two months after buying the cottage, the real estate agent is still getting inquiries.  If we hadn't moved with the swiftness of the unthinking, someone else would have yanked it off the pages, either doing a reno like us, or, the previous owner's dread, tearing it down for the large property and building.

We start now.