Frugal Bugle: Free house

Every Up North grocery store has a community bulletin board somewhere near the entrance.  Here customers may post their business cards, their flyers about spaghetti supper fundraisers for the school band, their For Sale notices featuring photos of trucks or bedroom furniture.  But even at the Eastport Market, a place notably tolerant of eccentricity in postings, it is fairly unusual to spot a notice on a paper plate.  

Hmm, I thought.  One of my neighbors on the Bay had a nice old family cottage, but longed for a larger, modern house.  Tearing down the old place seemed, well, disrespectful, not to mention wasteful.  Solution: load it onto a flatbed trailer and haul it to a new location in the woods, where it could be plopped down on a new foundation, tidied up a bit, and sold.  Brilliant.  Babs Young’s old family cottage on Torch Lake was removed to a woodsy parcel near Barnes Park and Babs built her dream house on the lake.  Recycling is good.

Torch Lake Township has a big supply of expensive houses and a big demand for inexpensive ones.  Life Up North.  Sooo . . . would the Free House be a candidate for such a recycling project?  I did some research.  I went to the address.  There was a sofa in the front yard.  It was spray-painted Free House.  Hmmm.

But the house itself had possibilities.  Or maybe they were talking about the cute little playhouse in the back yard?  A great mystery.

As I was nosing about, I spotted Dottie Potrafke getting into her car at her daughter’s house nearby.  I ambushed her and got the whole story out of her.  It seems that the owner of the Free House had not been up all winter.  Secretly, over the course of a long, cold season, the pipes froze.  The pipes burst.  The house was flooded.  When the owner came up in the spring, the house was a wreck.  The floors were buckled.  The walls and the furniture were covered with mold.  There was mold on the ceiling.  The owner was distraught.  The insurance company was called.  The adjustor determined that the house was a total loss.  It will be torn down and a replacement built on the foundation.  Or, it can be jacked up, put on a flatbed, and moved to a new spot where someone very energetic will have a major project to do.  And a replacement will still be built on the foundation.

I took some photos of the interior through the windows, but I don’t have the heart to show them to you.  It’s just too sad.  I tried to reach the owner but haven’t gotten through.  From what I hear, a lot of people have been calling, and the paper plate keeps disappearing from the Eastport Market bulletin board.  Then it gets put back up.  The Free House is a big topic of conversation. 

Most people don’t have the skills or the resources to tackle that kind of project, but there are some flood damage experts in these parts who might be interested.  It’s possible the Free House will be rescued.  It’s more likely it will find its way to a landfill.  Ah well.  When disaster strikes, says Pastor Janie Beasley, “At least don’t let me lose the lesson!”  Here’s the lesson:  If you’re going to leave your house by itself in a cold place, drain its pipes before you go.  Note to self: Yes, this means you.  Here are some lilacs to take your mind off the mold.