First night sleeping in the old house

With my condo closing earlier this week, I no longer have an option to stay there while working on the house. In my last cleaning spree, I focused on getting the 3rd floor scrubbed down and getting 1 bathroom somewhat clean so I can use it without feeling gross. I usually arrive in Wildwood late at night so I was a little scared of entering the old house by myself at midnight.

I bought a mattress in a box to sleep on.

Expanding…

Luckily I got no bad vibes in the house and was able to sleep without anxiety. I'm mostly a skeptic but part of me thinks if bad things happen in a place, there could be some residual hauntings. The old house has a lot of creeks and the wind can get pretty strong down in Wildwood, but nothing felt or sounded out of the ordinary the first night there. This weekend was focusing on cleaning up the cottage and meeting with some more contractors.

Shingles as viewed from the attic.

I met a roofer who took a look at the porch roof. He also looked at the cottage roof and thought it looked like cedar shingles under the asphalt. After he left I looked in the attic where it looked like there was definitely cedar shingles or at least old style roof shingles. I didn't realize that in old buildings shingles were the only layer between the exterior and interior. I'm so used to seeing plywood over the roof and then shingles on top of the plywood, but the roofer explained that in old houses the roof is open and shingles are nailed directly on the studs forming the protective layer. Of course now to be up to code you have to put down plywood.

For some reason there was also a bottle of piss in the attic.

I also met with an HVAC contract to discuss installing the UNICO system. This one will probably be the biggest expense, but something I want to do to eliminate all the ductwork in the house. There’s lots of soffits on the 2nd floor and three of the closets are completely filled up with air exchangers. The first floor has the worst amount of ductwork with an acoustic tile drop ceiling hiding all of the HVAC. The UNICO system is a small ductwork system where the ducts are snaked through the walls rather than having to have large metal ducts that require soffits or lowered ceilings.

I’m being watched.