Jenkins: Introduction
We bought a house…
Not just any house, a one hundred year old abandoned house that is potentially rotting down to the ground. Not just any house, a house that has a spirit, an energy, that seems to be welcoming/inviting me to breathe life back into it. It’s waiting, expectantly for me to see what’s behind the walls, to peer at its bones and see the potential.
So far, it’s been rocky and a little discouraging. Sitting abandoned for over a year containing history in original light fixtures, a couple of sets of double doors with antique hardware, and a glorious clawfoot tub, all to be stolen days before closing. I am trying not to take that as an omen, a precursor to things to come. The spirit of the house does not want me to quit. I feel that every time I walk through. She is warm and almost grateful feeling.
We have begun clearing the property and it has been like a veil being lifted, exposing even more beauty and secrets. I believe the original color was dark, brooding green with pops of red to distinguish it from the nature that surrounds it. There is what seems to be an old well on the side of the house that is heavy with incorporeality. The energy of the house concentrates around this dilapidated brick pile along with the room in the house that overlooks it. I know there is a story there to uncover and, hopefully, it will surface.
Two gloriously old oak trees have been fully revealed and these onlookers of history have almost taken the sting out of the loss of the stolen fixtures. They guard the back corner of the house, specifically the most rotten and deteriorated part of the place, and they wait, expectantly, to hear the coffee talk that hopefully will happen again on the back patio under their shade.
The undertaking is by far the biggest risk I have ever taken. It is a virtual Pandora’s box that is impossible to predict the contents of. I hope I can do the home justice and bring it back to someone out there as a home. At this point, only time, dirt, grime, hard work, and a whole hella lot of nerve will tell!
