White Point Manor House (2000)
When I was working at White Point Beach Resort as the house entertainer I stayed at in the Lodge, taking up a room night in the process. This wasn’t too bad in the winter but come July and August it was “a hole in the revenue.” I had reached a point where I would have to live elsewhere and it was a perfectly reasonable request.After searching the cottages and beachfront homes I found that I was about $100K short. So began looking at anything close to the Resort and found an abandoned farmhouse exactly 213 yards from the golf course. The place reaked of mold and mice and there were three windows missing. As well, the place was open to the outside air. What had I done!
We started renovating the place piece-by-piece, starting with bathroom. The old claw tub was kept and refurbished and we put in a shower stall and a new pedestal sink.
The next thing we did was a huge undertaking. The house was L-shaped with the kitchen in the back part. During the 103 years of its existence the weight of the old stove and the chimney had forced the back (the kitchen) into the ground and the joists were rotted at the back.
By using car jacks a resourceful young man ran 2 X12′s up to the eaves and lifted each portion. As he stabilized each side he rebuilt the joists and poured a foundation. Then he went around and repeated the porcess on the other side. When he was finished the back was sound and we went to work putting in the floor. As we did the floor we put the original 12″ to 15″ wide pine boards back in and saved pieces of the oilcloth and vintage lino for keepsakes. We also kept the squared, horseshoe-nails.
The next experiment was to strip one of the upper bedrooms and redo it. After gutting it I realized that the plasterers had shimmed the lathe up perfectly and we had unwisely taken out all those shims! So now came the task of figuring out new shims to place new sheetrock on the odd-sized studs. We did it however I learned my lesson. With the next renos we did we just knocked off the plaster and kept the straight lathe
It’s hard to believe that the now-stately White Point Manor started out as a squirrels palace!
And that was enough for the first 6 months!
Note: The fully completed White Point Manor vacation home is now renting for the 2008 season. See our site: http://www.whitepointmanor.com
Interested buyers can access the contact information as well.
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