Home to Home {Soperton to Fort Worth}

I like personal.  I am not sappy, but I am sentimental.  I like “things” as much as the next person, but I like “things” to mean something.  With new construction, personal can be tricky.  And personal can require a lot of time and effort.  Twenty years ago, my parents had our lake shack on Lake Sinclair torn down and built a lovely modest lake house.  My favorite thing they did was use old wood from Soperton for their kitchen floors.  My Daddy and a couple of his friends took the wood from the ceiling of a tenant house in our county.  It is beautiful and I loved the idea.  I couldn’t get it together for when we built seven years ago but when I was home from Christmas, Hunter, Julia and I went exploring out in the county to see what we could find.  Hunter knew more of the “country” than I ever did!  I saw parts of Treutlen County I didn't remember and a couple of spots that took me back to memories before Kindergarten.  I kept asking her, “Now, you know how to get back, right?”  Every time, she’d answer patiently, “Yes, ma’am,” probably rolling her eyes on the inside.  This was Soperton, right?  Why was I worried?

So we found this interesting place first.

Abandoned.
No one knew the story behind this one, but just one look around and you knew it was full of stories.

I would have left too, if my laundry was this backed up.  Can you say “run for your life”?!

This saddle was in the horse stalls next to the house.  Houses with horse stalls barely 10 feet away must have GREAT stories.

You can see, life was just left here.  Plans were made and plans were forgotten.  I didn’t get a picture but the side porch off the kitchen had jars and jars of things someone had canned-- tomatoes, okra, green beans etc.  The jar lids were rusted, but someone was planning for a few more years there.

Next area to look was on a road that led toward "the river".  {The Oconee to be exact-- I almost {or did I?} lost my "Dennard Card" when I texted Daddy for the name of it.  I couldn't remember for anything.}  We had been so distracted by all the bee houses on the way that we didn't see this house that we spotted on our way back.

I learned this house had been moved and it was actually two houses put together.

 The whole house looked like this.  Some planks were wider but this was typical for every room.

Then my brother called to say a friend had said we could look on the property behind his house to see if there was anything we wanted, so off we went.  We found this.

Yes. Creepy.  

Mind you, this wood was only going to rot right here.  No one had plans to restore these homes.  The homes were long gone but the wood still had many years of life.

So permission was given, plans were made and over Spring Break, Jeff worked really hard.  A friend of mine who teaches at the high school, lined up two young guys to help and my Daddy wanted a handyman on site, so with four of them, they began pulling out the wood.

One ceiling pulled.

CJ and Nathan pulling nails out

 Nathan's family was new in town.  He was the Methodist's preacher's son.  CJ?  Well, I knew his daddy and his grandaddy, but he didn't know me.  I was gone long before he was born.  These boys worked hard and the next few pictures prove that CJ is the poster perfect country boy I thought him to be.  Look closely at what he's after.

Apple in the other hand...... 

 You can imagine Jeff's questions-- CJ assured him 3 times it was NOT poisonous.  You see how confident CJ was in his answer.  Yes, and he owns that shirt.  Love it.  I should get one.

 So my job was to keep them fed so I made lunch and Gatorade runs both days.  I thought you might like to see how hard my city boy worked.  I think he actually had fun.

Hunter, Julia and I risked our lives through a non-existent hallway to make our way back to the kitchen.  We wanted to see it all.

Notice the planks on the walls.

Jeff said there is NEW meaning to the expression "rat's nest".  That is between the walls.  Squirrels do something similar.  Jeff said they pulled out one board and thousands of nuts fell out.  His family was set till the rapture.

Dirty Jeff again

Julia noticed the little bird's nest on the kitchen counter.  Then I noticed the "tastee freez" syrup can.  This was our "Dairy Queen" when I was little.

Here is some of what they pulled out.  There isn't enough for wood floors-- too much continuous square footage on the blueprint-  but we are planning on using it on walls, ceilings and maybe a couple of projects.

Any old wood just wouldn't do.  Wood from "home"-- yes, yes, yes.

Thank you, thank you to everyone who is making this possible!