It started as a disaster so how bad can it get?
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.
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.
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!
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.