It all starts with an old farm house located on the edge of a small town in central Indiana. The house was built in 1916, and boasts 1.17 acres zoned for agricultural.
The farmhouse offers 5 bedrooms, but just one bathroom. There is very large and well-built grain barn on the northwest corner. There is also a large rusty shed on the southwest corner that has already started to fall down; but we'll salvage what we can to use for other projects. The property has well water, and a manual pump house on the northwest corner of the house.
Perfect, right? Not so much.....
The house has been started on a complete overhaul, but not finished. The house is in major need of significant repair. Walls have been ripped out, some ceilings have been ripped out. There isn't a single room in the house that hasn't seen significant destruction.
Then there is the one-and-only bathroom which still needs to be completely gutted.
There is a ton of work to be done - but that equates to a ton of potential that we can tap into.
We also have some other problems. There is a severe drainage problem on the property. During the winter, the basement walls were covered in a sheet of ice. When the snow melted, the basement had 6 inches of standard water. There is also standing water on the backside of the house. This is a problem we have to solve, and quickly!
Some of the ideas that we plan to explore (that I can think of right now):
- Wind Power
- Wood Chip Heating System
- Radiant Heat and Cooling (maybe not cooling)
- Solar Water Heater
- Greenhouse with geothermal heat source
- Gardening - Lots of gardening for plenty of home-grown, organic fruits and vegetables
- Chickens for eggs and meat
We have approximately 100 days before we'd like to move into the property. In that time we hope to have completed work on the kitchen, bathroom, and the downstairs bedroom. There is reportedly a problem with the plumbing, so we've yet to be able to determine the exact scope of getting the kitchen and bathroom completed.
As for me... the building and most of the technical aspects of getting this house back into shape are beyond my knowledge set. My initial project will be researching what we need for chickens.