We’ve featured sweat-equity palace opportunities in Madison and Sangerville, Maine recently. How about something a little smaller? More manageable. Maybe you’re just starting out, and your toolbox only has a few screwdrivers and your lunch in it. Don’t worry, you’ll get there. Why not buy this place In Byron, Maine, for a relative pittance, and bang on it until it’s livable, and your toolbox is full?
It’s just under 1,000 square feet of problems, so you won’t get overwhelmed. And, not to exaggerate or anything, but it’s kind of adorable. It’s got a jerkinhead roof! A curved, glassed-in porch! Exposed rafter ends! Original equipment shingles on the sidewalls! Those sort of proto-toboggan shutters that were popular with houses built 75 years ago!
Sorry, I got infected with the realtor flu and started shotgunning exclamation points all over. But my point stands: It’s kinda peachy, ain’t it?
Well, look on the bright side. You’re not likely to get lost in there. It’s tighter than a landlord’s wallet, but it’s just short of livable.
Small might be good, because you’re going to have to heat it, and if you haven’t noticed, the United States gets winter once a year. Byron gets it plenty. You’ll need beaucoup heat. In the last picture, you can see a version of a Franklin Stove to heat the main part of the house. Believe me, there’s no thermostat on the wall you can turn to get anything out of that thing. But firewood is easy to come by in Byron, Maine. You spend all your time at the gym lifting weights. Why not lift some firewood instead, and save on the gym membership fee?
There’s a more traditional fireplace in the back, and some form of direct vent furnace on the wall somewhere. Probably burns propane, or maybe kerosene. As far as utilities go, Byron is out in the landscape, and many people go “upta camp” around there. Camp can require pooping outdoors in that vicinity, but this little house has a well and some kind of septic in place. And while the meter’s not currently on the place, it can have regular electrical service turned back on. Practically luxurious.
A cooking stove is currently MIA, but there’s room for one in the kitchen-y area. The house probably wouldn’t seem so small after you cleaned out some of the junk:
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
There are a couple of bedrooms, and a sleeping loft area for your manservant.
Byron Maine isn’t overcrowded just yet. There are 103 residents as of 2020. It’s home to Coos Canyon, a picturesque and popular spot to go swimming in the summer and to shiver in the winter. If you keep wandering north, it’s not too far to Mooselookmeguntic Lake, and one of my favorite spots in western Maine, the Height of Land.
So it’s sixty grand. You could live in it right away, more or less, and fix it up. It’s not a dangerous place, unless you decide to fight with the bears over the trash you left outside. You could hike and hunt and fish and birdwatch and snowshoe and ski and snowmobile in Byron. What say you? Feeling Byronic?
4 Responses
Getting rid of the tons of crappola would be the first big challenge.
But then the potentialities would become obvious.
I dunno…there was some kind of white porcelainized steel thingy with a kind of pot sitting on it in one of those realtor’s pictures. It might be a stove or range or something like that. How are you going to cook up your meth without a stove? You can always use a portable gas camp stove, but open flames usually result in a medium-sized explosion when combined with the necessary chemicals.
But it’s nice that they’ve got a dual-fuel heating system…a wood stove AND a wood-burning fireplace.
As far as I can see, the problem with banging on a house until it’s livable is that you have to be both young enough to have the energy with which to do it, but old enough to have the knowledge with which to do it. For me, that cross-over point came-and-went while I was trying to work for both a living and retirement. Now that my time is completely and totally worthless I finally have some of the experience and knowledge necessary…but none of the energy. As the saying goes, “I love hard work. I could sit and watch it all day.”
I like the kitchen cabinets. All that wood reminds me of my childhood home in New England.
Does it have a basement? Basements are more comfortable–and energy saving–than upstairs in cold New England winters, or hot Texas summers. My father didn’t do anything with our dirt floor (perhaps modernized with sand) basement, as he had already done more than enough work on the house. Neighbors who built a colonial style house in the ’50s modernized the colonial design by including a livable basement, which they used as a games room.
A New England hometown friend added a wood stove to her oil-heated 300 year old house. Her oil bill has gone down by 50%. A friend with a chainsaw cuts down trees on her property. She–robust at 80 years old–takes an ax to the pieces of chain-sawed wood to fit them for her wood stove.
Liked your pun on junk in the house and the Chinese junk. Which reminds me of a song. Kate Wolf – In China or a Woman’s Heart.