First day in the abandoned house
So I've only seen this property once, and it was rushed and not very gracious from the seller. For some reason (foreshadowing) he was showing me this house with all blinds down, in the near darkness. He turned the lights on, but some rooms didn't have a light bulb, and it was a weak, feeble lightning.
It was enough for me to notice that the plaster has been stripped from walls in many places, to the point where you could see through bricks. One room had a big hole in the ceiling, showing me the boards on the attic floor. Most concernedly, there was a big pile of dead worms on the floor of the last room. He said it must have been some animal that crawled in and died, got eaten by maggots, and then they all died in a pile too. I moved away from it, citing it could have been a disease that killed them all, but he laughed and dragged his shoe all over it.
The walls were either peeling or had mortar and plaster broken off, and the floors were filled with plaster and big pieces of the walls. The tangled spiderwebs and dust accumulated to the point if you touched anything, your fingers turned dark grey.
But the property was in the vicinity of mountains. It had a well. If you walked down the road, you could see breathtaking views. It's more than hundred meters above sea level. It has forests and grassy fields at an arms reach. And its 1500m2. Big enough to do anything.
So I signed the contract for it, wanting that land and the location. The house would be dealt with somehow. I want a big garden and a mountain.
I arrived there at 2pm, exhausted and hot, then immediately latched onto the well in front of the house. It was too pretty. The air inside cool. The water deep down reflecting my face. I didn't dare to use it. I was told the water is of drinking quality but the bucket was on the pavement, filled with baby mosquitos. What if I contaminate it? What if I accidentally make it sick. I got told the neighbours use it regularly, so I figured I'd ask them.
The sellers promised to put a lock on the door, since I'd need to be able to lock myself in, so I shakily put the key in, and it worked. A house and I have the key. It didn't settle in. It still hasn't.
The house remained dark and mysterious, blinds blocking the sun completely, so my first mission was to pull all the blinds open. This would take more than an hour. There were no blinds that worked. Stuck, string broken, string gone completely, unnaproachable due to massive tangle of spiderwebs, unmovable. I revealed one room at the time, and despite the mess and the broken pieces and the awful old smell, once the light poured in, they were beautiful.
Someone had the sense to paint some of the walls blue which is so charming and appealing it was difficult to care about anything else.
My goal for the day was to clean one room that was sufficiently protected from the elements, so I could sleep in there. And yes it is the room with the worm pile. It has the 'least damaged wall and window' situation going on.
I put on a mask, gloves, and grabbed my spray bottle of vinegar to deal with the worms. I learned not to disperse too much dust, so I wouldn't end up inhaling something (that's how you get hantavirus). There was this big showcase piece of furniture I needed to move in order to clean the wall, and when I moved it, I discovered a mouse corpse. Completely dried. I felt fondness and adoration towards it, tiny limbs and teeth. I figured I should clean and keep it. I didn't know exactly how to clean it, so for the start, I just left it in the sun for any remaining bacteria to dry off.
Then I remembered the worm pile. If they had, in fact, eaten an animal, there would have been a skeleton. But there wasn't. Only a permanent wet-looking stain on the wooden floor. What happened.
I saw the neighbour then, so I went to introduce myself and say hi. He was an older man but luckily he has a wife, so that's someone for me to talk to. I asked him about the well and he said he last used it 20 years ago. I was crushed. It was definitely not fit to drink.
I kept dragging pieces of the wall outside, when someone came to visit me; it was the neughbour's wife! I gave her a house tour and she told me the 20 years well thing was a lie. They used that well a year, maybe a year and a half ago, and her husband has a bad memory. A year abandoned well has some hope! She told me I could clean it by pulling all the sitting water up, and once I did that, fresh drinking water would rise from below. The well draws the water from underground so it's capable of producing fresh water again.
Encouraged by this, I tried to use the well for the first time. It was a spiritual experience.
Neighbours borrowed me some water to wash the bucket in, and then I lowered it all the way down, heard it fall into water way deep. Pulling it up was effort but once I saw it? It looked perfect. Crystal clear, perfectly cold, beautiful. This is my god now, the well water is what I worship.
I won't drink it yet, but I used it to wash myself, clean the windows, furniture and floors.
By the time the sun was setting, I was almost done with one room, and I ventured outside, sweaty and exhausted. There was a hill above my house (my house!!) and I haven't seen what's up there so I crawled my way up. I was met with the view of sun setting behind the mountain. And if that wasn't enough, there was a forest up there. I stormed in, excited. Forest so close to me. Saw some beech trees and some I hadn't recognized. No chestnuts though.
Happy and in slight disbelief that I can just have this, the view, the forest, the land, I dropped back down into my front yard, dragged a chair out, and sat outside in the tall grass. I wasn't able to do this in years. Just have a place of my own to sit outside. I watched the moon over a mountain and, started reading a fanfic on my phone because my brain was used to that in my "rest time".
I got interrupted when the night fell and something started twinkling in the grass. Fireflies.
That's when I started sobbing. I haven't seen the fireflies in ages. I wanted to, but had no time, no energy to go. They were in my own front yard now. They made their home in the overgrown grass. It was perfect for them. I spiraled a little thinking about how unethical would it be for me to grow a garden here when this is their home.
Mortified by this, I headed back to the house to sleep. I got surprised when I attempted to lock myself in; the key wouldn't fit from the inside. Confused, I tried it outside again, then on the opened door. Then I peeked inside the lock and realized the lock they installed was not right for the door. The door was too thin, key too long to be able to fit from both sides. There's no way they didn't know they did this. They sold me a house that can only be locked from the outside.
To deal with this, I did what any house owner would do. I locked the door from outside, I hopped in through the window, closed the window. Now it was all locked. But I could only exit the house through the window, I couldn't unlock myself from inside. Ah well. It's enrichment.
Even though my sleeping place was a stiff couch that felt like a wooden board, I was so tired I fell asleep immediately. I thought I would miss my matress but it turned out I couldn't care less what I slept on.
