Transformation

This post was written on March 29, 2018.

Last week, the yearlong renovation of our historic Appalachian home in Connellsville, PA, finally ended. (You can read about our partnership in restoring a $17K ruin here and see pics here.) All the tools and construction detritus were removed; the dust and grit were cleaned from the floors, windows, and counters. The house was finally, fully new. Empty. A home waiting for something, just as it had been when we began, but waiting now with hope and pride. This house is no longer a blighted eyesore. It can hold its chin up. It’s the kind of meticulously designed home the kids these days would call #goals.

In fact, this house has been called a lot of things over the past two weeks. A post on the Facebook page we created for the house, which featured our realtor’s professional pictures, went viral, reaching, to date, 1,178,132 people. The pictures have been shared 7,000+ times, and 4,000+ people have left comments. Most of the comments claim this is the most gorgeous house they’ve ever seen (“OMG dream house”). Many claim the house is haunted AF. A particularly besotted reader, without the funds to make an offer, said (all-caps original) “TIME TO SELL MY KIDNEYS.” Another woman, exchanging comments with a friend, expressed her love for the house but wondered where her cows would go. Still another said the house was perfect: it could fit all her goats. (You get all kinds, when your post goes viral.)

A lot of blood, sweat, and money went into this restoration, so the adoring comments were gratifying. More gratifying, however, were the comments that began appearing from people who once lived in the house. Split into a triplex in the 1940s, this house saw countless families move through, and--slowly--many of these former residents have learned about the restoration and made their way to the pictures. I lived on the first floor in the 1970s, some wrote. Or, I remember that fireplace. One man said he’d lived in the first-floor apartment as a newlywed and was still madly in love forty years later. There’s magic in the house, he said. Some private-messaged us pictures taken within the old rooms, with some of the house’s most iconic features--the tiled fireplaces, the red oak columns--clearly visible in the background. 

A few shared memories of the tunnel in the basement, clearing up--at least partially--the mystery of its purpose. One woman said she lived on the first floor as a child, and her father was in charge of manning the coal-fired furnace in the basement. Coal would be delivered to the tunnel from the street, through a manhole. The tunnel likely had other uses as well, and other people have talked about the existence of an entire tunnel system in the neighborhood, so more discoveries surely await. 

This house was built in 1898 and was purchased by a local business magnate named Joseph Soisson, who owned a brick manufacturing company as well as a theater on the main street of town. The Soisson family is enormous, and many ancestors were among the people viewing and commenting on the photos. Many of them came to the open house last weekend. They’ve told us how excited they are to learn about this piece of their family history, and to see the house brought back from the dead. 

Logistically and financially, the restoration of this home has been more of a challenge than we expected. (Ahem.) But it has also been more fun, and more interesting, and more gratifying. This was always going to be a labor of love (saying we’re “flipping a house in Pennsylvania,” though technically true, is laughably misleading), but I’m not sure we fully understood how excited and pleased the community as a whole would be with this effort. An article about the project ran on the front page of the local paper; over two hundred people came to the open house. We’ve done something good for our hometown. Something small, but something real. 

Now someone please buy this house so we can do it again.