Taken from Google street view, may or may not have had tenants then.
Street View Circa 2012
The Good Parts. Roof View
It was a cold winter day when these were taken so will be much nicer in the summer. One day we hope to move the cupola (the little house that sits on the roof) so it’s in the center of the house, making it slightly larger and adding more windows etc.
If you don’t know what a cupula is or it’s purpose then this is a nice little article.
The Bad Parts. Back Deck and Stairs
It will be nice when we have removed up all this stuff, the junk, the rotting deck and the staircase. The staircase isn’t original and was probably added when they split the place into apartments. Yes, they are cement asbestos tiles but we will remove them carefully (with correct dust masks etc) and dispose of it in a proper fashion. We will keep the upper deck until the time comes to replace it.
The Bad Parts. The Roof
No denying it is pretty bad. Looks like work was just abandoned…. very Mary Celeste of the roof. Nice views from the top though.
Clearing out the Garden
According to the neighbours the garden had been unattended for about a decade. In that time many hundreds of saplings (they looked like ash) have taken root. The small ones could be pulled out by hand but most needed digging out. Not hard but when you have hundreds it can get tiring. Spend two weekends on it so far and probably have half the garden cleared.
Worse than the trees are the creepers which are thick on the ground and like to put down roots every 6 or so inches which makes pulling them out hard.
The garden is a good space and we will first get accustomed to the levels and how we start to use it before we do anything. Currently we are thinking of some lovely blossoming trees and beautiful blue stone walls. We will visit https://www.opus40.org/ again to give us some inspiration.
The Good Parts. Door and Bannister
Pretty much everyone, without prompting, notices the good parts, the door, the banister and the decent sized garden. The door looks pretty art deco to me and we may try and recreate this style elsewhere. It’s also nice that the door is so wide.
The banister, while not looking much is black walnut and should come up a treat. There is a chunk missing but that can be fixed in time. Shame I never learnt to use a wood lathe when I was at the Crucible as quite a few of the balusters are missing.
Left in a hurry
The previous owner(s) seemed to have left in a hurry. They had started ripping out all the lath and plaster and drywall. Shame they hadn’t removed it as it took us a few weekends and two huge dumpsters to remove it all, plus it was hard work, icy and wet. They left furniture, books, credit cards, sex toys etc. Shame nothing was worth keeping.
First Impressions
On entering the house for the first time and so far for all subsequent visits, you find yourself muttering “Oh my golly gosh!!!!”. The place is a mess, needs a lot of work and can feel overwhelming, but then I say to myself, well it’s only a wooden box, how difficult can that be? The pictures don’t really illustrate the true horror!!!!
A good few of these pictures were taken by my brother Matt before we bought it. He was brave enough to climb up the rear stairs which were covered in animal shit, both old and new. The house also had a quite a few similar gifts waiting for us and we were told one of the previous owners didn’t like to walk their dogs so they just let them use the top floor as their toilet. Classy!!!
I think pretty much everyone who has visited the place is left a little shocked at the amount of work needed, but at the same time, they do see the potential of the place. As my friend Eric put it, “I didn’t expect it to be in such a state, but I didn’t expect it to have such potential.” Even 3.8 year old Daphne, Eric’s daughter and my goddaughter, wanted to leave!
The Tax Auction
I have always loved old, interesting, bizarre, industrial buildings. As you can imagine I am not the easiest person to buy a property with. Luckily Aimee does share some common ground which is how we ended up with Gill House. Aimee must have been searching for auctions as we came across an auction by the City of Kingston, who had acquired numerous properties over the years, due to abandonment etc. Aimee must have searched each property on the internet and Gill House was the top of her list. We did drive past the house once or twice but that was it. The property was boarded up and with all properties in this auction the buyer was buying as seen. There were no tours, you could not get into the properties as all the doors had been locked and screwed up etc. The best you could do was to peer through windows etc.
The rest is history, but how much did you pay I hear you ask, more that we had planned but less than the assessed value.