a tour of a run down rabbit warren of a house

Friday Pam and I went to, I hate to call it an estate sale because it was more like walking through an old abandoned house that had been ransacked. It was the second time around for this place so I have no idea what it looked like or offered the first time because we didn't go then. There were some tables set out with dishes and mugs and a lot of very nice wood bowls

and other stuff but mostly it looked like this. This was the largest room in the house and this is about 1/3rd of the room.

The house itself was a wonder and I don't necessarily mean in a good way. It looked like it started out as three rooms and was added onto higgledy piggledy, like a rabbit warren which I would have found to be fun if it all didn't look like it was put together with scrap picked up here and there. Many of the rooms had windows that looked into other rooms where a new room had been added on later. There were two long halls, perpendicular to each other and in our memory driving back home we counted at least 15 rooms, 16 if you include what looked like it might have been an enclosed attached small garage (can't remember if it was open at one end or not), 7 of which seemed to be bedrooms. We wondered if it had been a rooming house, either that or they had a lot of children. The old paneling in places looked like bits and pieces put up whichever way, another part of the house looked like the walls were wood planks, ceilings at least 10' with rows of storage space all the way to the ceiling in every room. One little bathroom and one of the rooms had hot and cold water lines so I assume there was a washer in there and as old and ratty as that house was, the water lines were PEX which I found oddly too modern.

From the biggest room you could get to this hall.

Off this hall were three bedrooms and at the end it opened into a mud room/pantry/store room (below) which is where I was standing when I took the picture above looking back towards the entrance to the kitchen and the first room.

The bedrooms all looked like this with a mountain of clothes? linens? blankets? fabric? who can tell? except for the biggest one at the end of the other hall which was mostly empty.

The other end of the first hall opened into a vestibule with the bathroom off to the right and the kitchen to the left. 

From the kitchen you could get to the dining room or maybe the original living room. 

It had a door to a bedroom on one wall and a short hall off another wall with a small room on the left full of boxes of fabric? and ending at the closed in garage like room which had a big box full of loose lace trims among other junk. Also from the kitchen was a doorway into another small room that I have no idea what it's function was but it led to the second hall with 2 rooms off to the right, the first of which had the PEX water pipes, a room at the end, and on the left closets (full of clothes) and a doorway to a bedroom behind the one you got to from the dining room.

There were also two run down small out buildings full of junk and trash and when we got there a woman was pulling dozens of square glass canisters with metal lids out of one of them. Another couple was digging up narcissus bulbs and iris rhizomes so Pam and I went behind them and pulled up the rest that had been loosened that they didn't take. I did find one item, a lazy susan that was very stiff and wouldn't turn but just needed to be taken apart and the ball bearings cleaned up and now it works fine.

Last night another cold front started blowing in with high NW winds and lows in the 30˚s and today's predicted high in the 40˚s. The last two days started out cool in the morning but warmed up nicely so I got some weeding done and got the narcissus and iris planted temporarily until I figure out where I really want them.

they don't look very happy right now