THE RENOVATION
Throughout the initial fifteen months of renovations, amazing things happened. When I needed something, it would be made available to me. I now know that I had a lot of help from St. Anthony and the spirits in the house. This continues to this day, but on a smaller scale. I needed a lot of help from them in 1994. Here are a few things that happened.
The back cellar wall was a bit problematic. It collapsed within two months of buying the house. It happened while I was at work. When I got home, the yard was covered in stone. Ted had pulled all of the stone out of the cellar with his pickup, and now there it sat on my lawn. I went into the house and looked at the dining room floor. It was at an eight-inch slant. “Rats,” I said, while thinking out loud. “What do we do with that?” Ted asked for money to purchase house supports and I went to my room to beseech St. Anthony one more time.
In 1754 homes were built with dry stone foundations. No mortar was used. They would dig a hole and lay stone around the perimeter, and when they couldn’t lift the stone high enough anymore, they would fill the cellar with dirt and continue laying stones until they reached the desired height. When they were done, they would dig the dirt back out of the cellar. Houses such as Captain Grant’s also have a 6' x 8' center foundation to help hold the house up. There are beams crossing the ceilings in two separate directions. Where they meet there is a large post. All of this makes the house very heavy. The walls are slightly tilted inward so that the weight of the home is supported on the center stone structure as well as the exterior wall. All of this helped keep the home from collapsing.
In March 1994 the yard was full of the stones that once formed
the back cellar of Captain Grant’s. Photo credit: author
I went to work the next day and Ted got house supports to keep the house from falling more than it already had. They didn’t work. I came home that night and he told me that the supports were breaking. The house was just too heavy for ordinary house jacks. He had been asking around about where to find commercial staging. “Providence, Rhode Island, is the only place I found that carries what we need,” he said. He also told me that the rental was $600 a month.
“Okay,” I answered. “Can you get this done in one month?” He said yes and off to Providence we went.
I got the permit for the cellar wall, rebar went in, and Ted ordered the cement block and set up a time for the cement pour. He called the town inspector and told him the date and time for the cement delivery.
The inspector never arrived. After an hour Ted told me to get my camera and start shooting pictures because we had to do the pour. Well, the pour went smoothly, the cement blocks went up, and the inspector approved my pictures. Without Ted there to help me, the project that cost me $1,000 would have cost $12,000.
Ted did not mention the spirits again, and I was too busy to notice if anything paranormal was happening. Once in a while I would go into the attic and talk to the spirits. The air was heavy and I knew they were there, but I still didn’t know how to communicate with them. But after a series of uncanny coincidences, everything was falling into place. I knew without a doubt that I was being helped from beyond this world.
Work continued almost every day. All of the windows were reset, caulked, and reinstalled. The hallway on the second floor was lengthened and a door to what was going to be a second-floor deck was added. Oak was purchased from a saw mill and a foundation for a 10' x 30' deck was going in. When I purchased the oak, I carried it home in my Acura hatchback board by board. I was a determined woman.
In the early 1900s two sisters had inherited the home. One was getting married and the other sister slept with her sister’s intended husband. A life of mutual hatred began, and it was focused on the house. They tried to cut the structure in half. They put in two front and back doors and cut a channel through the house. A wall was set into this channel. It was now impossible to get from one side of the house to the other without going outside. The house was still that way when I purchased it. It was now time for a door to be put in the kitchen wall, opening up the two sides of the house.
It was a miracle in the first place that I even got the house at the price I paid, but now in the throes of renovations miracles or coincidences were happening on a weekly basis. Ted had taken down the ceiling in the east kitchen (each sister had a kitchen) and found that a previous owner had cut through a support beam in order to get plumbing to the second floor. There was a 600-pound tub sitting just above this break in the beam. Ted told me that I was lucky the tub hadn’t gone clear through to the basement.
We weren’t able to lift the tub, so demolition became the method of choice. Even small sections of the tub were heavy. Finally it was removed and the job of replacing the cut beam became primary. What was needed was a six-inch-wide laminated beam. Ted had gone to the lumberyard and was told that what we needed cost $24.95 per running foot. I needed at least seventeen feet. Then he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that I was going to go and pray, and I did just that. I didn’t know if St. Anthony could help with this one, but I was going to pray anyway.
That night, on the way to work the next day, and on the way home, I prayed. And then it was the evening of the next day. When I returned home, Ted told me that he had gone to the dump that day. When he got in line, there was a construction truck in front of him. On that truck was a long laminated beam. He asked the driver how long the beam was. It was a healthy eighteen feet. Then he asked if he could have it. “Thank you.” The universe had just helped me again!
Fall was on the way, with winter not far behind. The house had no insulation. The outside walls of the home had posts and beams. Between the posts were wide boards of wood. The outside siding was nailed to the wood. Inside they had attached lath to the wood and plastered over that. That left no inner wall for insulation. The walls were cold and wind blew through the windows. Ted had an idea for how to insulate: put up 2 x 3s on the inside of the existing walls, insulate, and then sheetrock. “Great idea,” I thought. We went forward and I bought the lumber that was needed for the new inside walls. Now, Ted was ready to install sheetrock. More money was needed. I thought, “I won’t eat next week. That will give me some money.”
It was Sunday morning and I was at the big house talking with Ted about the sheetrock. We had the radio on, tuned to a Norwich station. For fifteen minutes on Sunday morning they had a program called “Swap and Sell.” I had it on but was not listening very closely. Then a women spoke up and said she was from Preston and had twelve sheets of 4' x 12' sheetrock to give away. I listened, then took her number and called her immediately. I told her that I was Carol Collette and I was restoring the old Congdon home. She told me that she admired what I was doing and would save the sheetrock for me. So it turned out that I did not have to purchase any more sheetrock for the first floor. Another amazing coincidence! Thank you, God.
The guys at the dump started to save things for me. I got eighteenth-century doors complete with hardware, wagons for hauling stuff around, bedsprings, and all in all about $12,000 worth of building materials for the initial renovation. If it was old, they saved it for me to look at. I can’t say enough about how wonderful those guys at the dump were.
One day I got a call from the first selectman (mayor to most). He said, “They’re tearing down a home on Route 165 near Fleming’s Feed and Seed. It’s eighteenth century. They have some old siding set aside for you. Do you need it?” When Ted had removed the asbestos shakes, there were several runs of ruined siding underneath.
I was also informed that the zoning board had talked about the house at their last meeting and they had a suggestion for me. “Yes,” I said hesitantly. “What is it?”
“We would like you to paint the house the same color that it was in the 1700s.”
They couldn’t order me to comply with their color choice, but I was flattered that they had noticed the house was coming along. After restoring the siding with what they had given me, I began to paint the outside and decided to go with light yellow siding and dark green trim. This was just what they wanted. I figured it was a good idea to have a happy zoning board.
Now that the painting was done, I began to think about having a walkway to the front door. Ted had a suggestion. All that stone from the basement wall would be perfect for the job. We would use the stone for a front walkway. I agreed. He also wanted to contour the front yard so that the incline was less steep. “Great idea,” I replied, while thinking of how much work this would entail. Well, it turned out to be one of the most difficult jobs I have ever done.
I rented a front end loader. Ted did the contouring of the lawn. Then my son, Glen, came to help. He lifted the heavy stones from the backyard with the front end loader and placed them on what was becoming the new walkway. Once that was done, my daughter, Holly, helped me put in the smaller stones. Some of these smaller stones weighed well over two hundred pounds. It’s amazing what a person can do when they put their mind to it!
When the walkway was finally done, I started to build a retaining wall to hold up the soil that had been pushed against the house. By the end of the job I had lost twenty pounds.
It was now time for the interior work to begin. I did all of the painting. I scraped and sanded the original bedroom floors by hand. My son would come over after work and help by sanding the first-level floors and hooking up plumbing in the kitchen. I had purchased some cheap wood paneling and had Ted cut it to fit between the ceiling beams before he left. That autumn, Ted returned to Minnesota. He had reestablished a relationship with his adult children, Glen and Holly, and Ted and I departed friends. It was truly a healing experience for all of us.
The first thing I did was clean the beams. Ted had tried sand blasting. The wood was so hard that nothing happened except a large mess ended up on the floor. My next attempt was to make a mixture of Murphy’s Oil Soap, bleach, and water and start to scrub, using old towels for rags. It worked like a charm. By now I had muscles like a man. I was a real he-woman!
I bought Williamsburg Whitewash and painted the paneling strips that Ted had cut into a thick crosshatch pattern. The thick paint stood up on the surface and gave the boards a three-dimensional look. Once they were dry, my daughter came over and together we hung the boards between the beams with a nail gun that I had purchased. The beams had all been cleaned and stained an even color ahead of time. Over the course of the winter, the home took on a look of completion. I was beginning to think about opening my doors to the public. By now I was talking to the spirits on a daily basis. I really had no idea if they were listening to me—but they were.
In late spring of that year, my father died. I immediately flew out to North Dakota to be with my mother and three sisters. My father was eighty-four years old at the time of his passing. He was very close to my mother and my sister Brenda, who lived at home. Shortly after he died, they saw him come through the front door of their apartment. They were watching television at the time. Although startled, my mother had the wherewithal to ask him what he was doing there. They both heard him answer, “I’m here to shave.” With that, he walked into the bathroom and vanished. My mother was afraid that she wouldn’t be believed, but I believed every word of what she said. I had seen my own spirits and I knew they existed. After five days I returned home to Connecticut.
It is said that God acts in mysterious ways. We don’t always know that a hardship may be a path to where we need to be. After returning from my sojourn in North Dakota, I was told that I was on a two-week suspension due to being depressed about my father. I was not depressed. I knew it and they knew it. I was in a leadership position and knew enough about the company to know that something was coming down the pike.
After I returned to work after my two-week suspension for being “depressed,” I was taken out to lunch by my supervisor. I was questioned about what had happened at work while I was gone. An employee had brought her child to work and let her sleep overnight. The employee said that I had given her permission. Even though none of this might have happened, it gave them an excuse to fire me. Now I felt depressed. I was told that if I wanted to get unemployment, I needed to work two more weeks and keep my mouth shut. I did just that and then they fought unemployment anyway.
After applying for unemployment benefits, I received a call from the unemployment office telling me that I had been turned down and would receive nothing. I burst into tears and raged against God. I was not at home at the time. I cried all the way back home in my car. How could I make it with the bed and breakfast? It still wasn’t open. After getting fired, it would be very hard to find other employment. My mind raced. What would I do?
When I pulled into the driveway I had finally stopped sobbing. My eyes were red and puffy and I looked like hell. I went into the house and noticed the answering machine light blinking. “Is that more bad news?” I wondered. I hit the button on the machine to listen to the recording.
“Hello. This is State Unemployment. We need to apologize. When we spoke to you earlier we told you that you were denied unemployment. That is incorrect. You will be getting unemployment for up to one year. Call us to verify that you got this message.”
Well, I wasn’t done sobbing. I spent the next minutes apologizing to God and thanking him over and over again. I wouldn’t lose the big house. Another unexpected turn of good fortune! Thank you.
I now had to try to find a new job, but I didn’t have to settle for less pay to keep my unemployment. That was an advantage since I had received a decent salary at my last job. I also had to open the doors of the bed and breakfast soon. I had four weeks of severance pay, and if I could work my buns off, I could start to rent out rooms. I called my aunt Shirley and she agreed to fly out. I bought used furniture and took whatever I was living with and got the home furnished. Two weeks after being fired, I opened my doors to the public—all two rooms.
It was Memorial Day weekend of 1995 and the big house officially became “Captain Grant’s, 1754.” I was in business. My first four guests stayed, had breakfast, and left. I was ecstatic. I was making a few dollars on my own, but it wasn’t enough to sustain me. I needed another job or more rooms.
I had been applying for jobs. I finally took a freelance job with an insurance company. I was to assess individuals that had AIDS and determine if they could work or not. After two weeks I couldn’t stand it any longer. The job was really to determine that, no matter how sick they were, they were able to work. My last interview was with a man who was clearly dying. When I sent in my report, I received a call telling me that was not what I was supposed to determine. I told them that there was no way the man could work. That was it—the end of freelancing for an insurance company.
I applied for jobs every week. There was no Internet at that time and job hunting meant sending out resumes, having interviews, being turned down, and feeling anxious about having no money. Every day that I was out looking for work meant nothing was getting done on the bed and breakfast.
I happened to have a 1952 Buick Roadmaster. It was an asset that I decided I didn’t need to have. On a Friday I drove the car onto the front lawn of the bed and breakfast and put a large “for sale” sign on it. Shortly thereafter, Ted called from Minnesota and asked if he could renovate the two front bedrooms in exchange for the car. I had mentioned to him before he left that I wanted to sell the car. I was ecstatic.
“Absolutely!” I said. Then the “for sale” sign came down. I left the car on the lawn just in case he decided not to take it.
Ted returned from Minnesota in less than a week and immediately began working. Two bathrooms had to go into the two bedrooms that were situated in the front of the house on the second floor. With not enough inner wall space, we had to get creative. We decided to create a channel going up the wall for a plumbing route. This channel looked exactly like a covered post. It worked perfectly. Two more bedrooms were in the making.