House Of Escher

Yay! I'm FINALLY posting pictures of my country shack... only a year after promising to do so. It has been dubbed "The House Of Escher" because the varying angles of walls, floors & skewed frames/casings inside might loosely resemble a M.C. Escher painting. Keep in mind that the original structure (built in 1939) is the small section that you see the mudroom/entrance tacked onto on the front (on the left in the picture below), it is also the only part on a proper foundation. All the other rooms sit on a combination of piers, posts, blocks and a slab. Every single room is an add-on and every room is a different age. The house has settled at strange angles and the back half of it sits about a half-foot lower than the front half. Some of the additions were put on after it settled. You all think I'm nuts for taking this place on yet? If not, you will need no further convincing after I post pictures of the interior... I just need to edit out all the dust, grime, vermin, bat-skyte-crazy repairs/"upgrades" and general threats to public health... which I expect will leave a perfect void in place of the original photographs.

East side, the small pine tree has since been removed, and the weird collapsing wood-shelter/whatever-it-is attached on the far right is in the process of being torn off. Note the 3 separate chimneys: I was told that every room used to be heated by a separate woodstove. These will eventually be torn out and replaced with triple-wall metal stovepipe.

South side: again, this section on the front was the original structure, a tiny cabin, now it serves as the kitchen area.

West side.

North Side

Creative engineering/architectural marvel of the 21st century. A toolshed... with a long roof addition to serve as a woodshed... and the sun-porch which was apparently cut off from a mobile home... sitting on the side of it. I've since torn most of the tattered plastic off and enclosed the front of wood-storage area.

Late 70s/early 80s(?) model of mobile home which came with the property. This will be deconstructed at some point within the next year or two and many of the materials will be re-used to upgrade the main cottage as well as the tool shed.


Northwest side


Front yard facing south, dirt road in the background


Main yard facing southeast from the house. The planter is an old hot-water tank which was cut open and welded to angle-iron legs. Some of my friends think it is either hilarious or ugly. I am keeping it because I love to see low-brow junk recycled into something useful.


Main yard facing east from the house. The brick fireplace on the left has since been torn out and replaced with a stone fire pit.


Back part of the main yard facing north. The picnic table and everything you see in these photos came with the place. The random well-tile-turned-flower planter has since been emptied and put on the well: an engineering conquest I am proud of because I did all of it myself using a rope, breaker-bar lever and a come-along winch to move it fifty yards onto the well (and it weighs at least as much as three of me).

"Not so bad" you might be thinking? It is way shabbier and mind-bending up close. These photos were taken in the first week of moving in last year. Much has changed since then: Many trees cut down, a lot of equipment moved around... piles of pallets everywhere... but a lot of the junk has also been consolidated or eliminated. A work in progress for AT LEAST the next half decade I think.