4317 S Clayton Road

 

My Dad first saw Pinehaven one day when he was having a ride with Ginger. He said he had always liked the house and was surprised to see a “for sale” sign in the front yard. He came home and called the real estate agent. She said she had just placed the sign there the same day.

The house, though, came with forty acres and that was something none of us were interested in. Initially the owners didn’t want to break it up. But I suppose a lack of other offers soon turned their head to the idea that something of that sort was at least possible.

I walked with the owner to a spot north of the house. “I’d have to own to here,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want someone else to buy and build closer to the house than this.”

He wasn’t much interested in breaking off such a small piece. In fact it was later measured to be just about two acres. The agent later told us she doubted it would happen.

But soon it did. Our offer was accepted.

The previous owners would keep 38 acres in farmland and rent it out for crops. But would the county allow the division of less than the minimum plot of five acres? I attended a meeting of Zoning Appeals in Dayton and the agreement was approved.

It was the fall of 1986. By New Year’s Day we’d move in.

I’ve been here 34 years already, longer than anywhere else and I’m pretty sure this is the end of the road. So four houses and that’s right at the national average. People generally buy three homes (starting at an average age of 27) but that doesn’t include their childhood home.

We increased our square footage again (to 1496) and that’s enough for me. But it’s tiny compared to the average home in the United States. Here, in 2015, the average square footage stood at nearly 2700 square feet. So we’re just above half.

Now, instead of a bi-level, we had an actual second floor. It contained two bedrooms and a large enough area at the top of the stairs that it could serve as a sleeping area in a pinch. In fact that’s where the previous owners son slept.

Mom and Dad got the back bedroom, slightly larger that the other. I took the front bedroom where the previous owners daughter slept. I preferred a view of the road. Both bedrooms held floor-to-ceiling bookcases and we filled them quickly.

One of my earliest projects was to remove the wallpaper from my bedroom. It sported delicate pink flowers and was layered atop other wallpapers probably going back to when the house was built. I spent quite some time scraping it clean and painting the walls beige.

Both bedrooms – in fact the entire second floor – had linoleum on the floor. It was cracked in places and cold to the feet, especially in an old farmhouse that was hard to heat. I pulled it up and cleaned the wooden floors. Beneath the linoleum I found unfinished red pine. Later we had the house carpeted.

The second floor bathroom was already carpeted but it was a dingy green, long ago past its life expectancy. Surely that bathroom was decorated in the 1970’s when avocado was the rage. The porcelain toilet was avocado; the top of the sink area was avocado; part of the paneling was avocado; the shower was constructed with avocado tiles.

The first floor had a large living room: twenty-five feet long. It was originally two rooms. The front wall became a fireplace with a lovely mantle made from a single piece of lumber from a nearby Farmersville barn. It housed a Buck stove, instrumental in the 1977 blizzard as the only source of heat for a week.

The owner said they draped a sheet across the opening into the dining room, heating a single room.

The dining room was once at the rear of the house and the flu for the stove’s chimney is still on the wall. Later a kitchen was added to the back of the house and another bathroom carved into what was once part of an interior south-facing porch.

Of course when the house was built – either the late nineteenth century or in the early years of the twentieth – there was neither plumbing nor electricity. The plumbers were not concerned with outside walls and so they have to be watched when the temperature dips low enough.

As for electricity, we found one ceiling light didn’t work and discovered a rats nest of wiring in the attic that seemed twisted into knots. We had all the wiring replaced.

While the second floor had linoleum on the floors, the first was actually carpeted but all of it was outdated, well worn and dirty. To save money we had the carpeting replaced in stages. First the living room, dining room and steps. As I pulled the old carpeting up, I cut it into pieces and bundled it for the trash. Much of it was rotten enough that it could be torn by hand.

I remember my paternal grandmother stepping in the back door and seeing the kitchen carpeting for the first time. It was a strange and florid pattern and she was aghast that anyone could buy a house with carpeting of that sort on the floor.

While we never liked it, it was many years before we managed to have it replaced. Again I took up the old carpet, pulling strips of it off the floor and carrying them to the trash. I remember sweeping the floor many times. There always seemed to be more dirt.

My uncle, in fact, said he remembered the house before it was given a brick veneer. He shook his head and smiled. “You wouldn’t have bought it the way it looked when I last saw it,” he said. I imagine that house is still there, just tucked away from view. Beneath the bricks are surely strips of wood with strips of white pint peeling away. We can tolerate what we cannot see.

Mom always wanted the attic cleaned. She had never been up there and had a chance to see it first-hand and I made the mistake of describing it. I told her I had found a bird’s nest when I installed the Fiberglas insulation. She’d have had me remove it and start over.

And above the attic things were even worse. The metal rook with standing seams was painted with a thick coat of tar. But not thick enough because the metal had rusted in placed and the roof leaked. One night when we had a thunderstorm water dripped into my bedroom and took a bulls-eye on my telephone and woke me with the splatter.

I went onto the roof – yes, in the middle of the night and while the rain still fell – and applied thick black roofing cement to the spot. The problem was never solved but repairs were at least postponed. We eventually had the entire roof replaced. Beneath the metal was some of the original clapboards and after the roof was replaced I picked up pieces of clapboards for some time as I mowed.

While the roof leaked from above, the cellar leaked from below. We had long before wondered how smart our purchase had been. Had we been too hasty in wanting a house in the country? How we spent enough time searching?

The cellar walls are field stones and though mortar has been pressed between them, they do not keep out water well. In the early years we worried incessantly about water rising and ruining the furnace and water heater. Of course we had a permanent sump pump installed (there is no drain) where the previous owners used a portable sump pump and a garden hose thrown out the door.

Because we lose power so often, in later years I had a back-up sump pump installed also. This one is powered by a battery. But in the past decade I’ve seen very little water coming into the basement. Has the climate changed or has the removal of flower beds beside the house solved the problem?

Pinehaven is an old house, not built for modern  times. It was built for a small farm family when the Civil War had not yet become a distant memory. Water was pumped by hand from the ground. Candles lit the house at night. Heating was wood and (later) coal. Travel was by way of horse.

But I think of all the people this place has housed. At least five families have owned the house and more have rented it. I know of one old man who died here, in my bedroom yet. How many chilly winter nights did they dive under goose down comforters to allay the cold? How many sweltering summer nights was there not a breath of air?

How many storms have buffeted these walls? How many near-misses of tornadoes have occurred?

And yet for all the faults, Pinehaven still stands proudly two miles east of the village of Farmersville. We’re more comfortable now. Electricity surges through our wiring, water courses through the pipes, heating and cooling are managed by the same furnace. The Internet arrives via the airwaves.

We are comfortable (most of the time), appreciating the past and anticipating the future. We are just a cog in the wheel, steering this place into the future where others may enjoy it as we have done.

© 2021 William G Schmidt