Tyler and I had a most welcome visitor this afternoon... Kim, the daughter of the previous owners, stopped by the house. She was on her way to see her mother who still resides in the area. Since she saw us peeking out the windows at her, she decided to stop by and introduce herself.

This car that stopped in front of the house turned out to be the daughter of the previous owners.

When Kim pulled into the yard, I rushed out to meet her. After she introduced herself, I offered to take her on a tour of the house so she could see what we'd been up to. Although, I put a condition on the offer... she had to keep from crying. Tyler and I had just started to demolish the bathroom walls and everything was dishoveled and coated in dust. Kim agreed and we started the tour.

While I took her around the house, she told me several stories. When she was very little, she remembered that her parents completly gutted the house and remodeled it like we were. She remembered that the great room had previously been two separate rooms and that her parents combined them into a single room.

Kim also explained that she and her sisters had helped her father do all of the flatwork around the house. And, that her father was the one who put on the portico. He constructed the pillars out of an old building that had been on the property. I think she said it was a corn crib.

And, she also informed us that she lost out to her older siblings and got the tiny NW corner bedroom. Since buying the house, Tyler and I had always wondered how that room had been used. During the summers, the little room would get really warm and Kim would opt instead to spend her nights in the little outbuilding that I'm now using as my feed room for the horses. I can imagine that it would have been a lot of fun staying out there at night and listening to all of the critters. Plus, with the three windows and large door, it probably stayed pretty cool. Although, I think Kim is far braver than I since the first distant howl of a coyote would have sent me scrambling back into the house. :-)

Kim also told me of how the spiral staircase came to the house... IN ONE PIECE! (In a previous post, we explain how we came to find out that the staircase weighed approximately 1 ton.) Her father gathered several of his friends - as Kim put it, 'every male in the area' - and enlisted their help to move the staircase into position. The double window in the North wall of the great room was added so that an opening could be made thru which the staircase could fit into the house.

During Kim's visit, she also told us of her last drive she took with her father - he recently succumbed to a long battle with cancer. I chuckled as she explained to me that he couldn't understand why we were replacing the roof since he'd just put new shingles up there only a couple years ago. I chuckled, because it reminded me a lot of my own dad.

Tyler and I were very happy that Kim decided to stop by. It was great meeting her and hearing about her family and the time the spent in the house. We're hoping that she'll make it a point to stop by the house regularly.