After Shock Media |
11-02-2009 01:40 PM |
My house is hard to peg down for a original construction date but thanks to neighbors who have lived here all of their lives we have a good idea.
When we started remodeling from the inside out, we learned that it was last remodeled in 1957 according to both the date in the toilet as well as newspapers that were laid under the flooring. Thought we had figured it out until I mentioned it to Dean (has since passed away). He lived here since he was 5 and considering he was in his late 80's at the time he was able to tell me our house along with a couple others on the road were originally old western style shotgun cottages. All but ours got torn down and they added to ours about doubling the footprint of the house.
Apparently a shotgun style cottage was almost just a long box. You could shoot from the toilet out the front door with a shotgun. No extra hallways, bedrooms etc.
We got confirmation when after we finished the much needed bathroom remodel and ripped up the inside spare bedroom floor, we could see that our house had no real foundation. It had a dug out dirt pit under it and several huge boulders had been placed in assorted areas where giant wooden crossbeams were resting on. The rest of of our houses exterior walls just floated on the compacted dirt rim. We pretended we did not see that - we are remodeling from the inside out for a reason. There is were we found some engraving in the rock and judging by the nails used it fit the dates Dean had given us of right around the turn of the century, which for CA is old.
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