Old cottage is a survivor
With the help of her parents, 21-year-old builds dream house on a budget
Building a dream house on a budget
EDITOR'S NOTE: On the Saving Abandoned Nova Scotia Facebook page, a small, determined community of creative and hardworking DIYers share their experiences saving neglected buildings throughout Nova Scotia. These are forgotten structures throughout the province which are being rescued, nail by nail. Here is the story of one of those abandoned buildings.
IT'S A STUBBORN BEAST
Surviving fire and decades of abandonment where the only inhabitants were the four-legged or flying kind, this former family cottage in Lake Charlotte, on the eastern shore of the Halifax Regional Municipality, is finally seeing life and renewal.
But it’s a painful process, requiring a lift off its foundation and an entirely new front wall, roof, windows and a whole lot else.
But its bones, and fighting spirit, are still intact.
This past winter, 21-yearold Megan Whitman had $18,000 in the bank, two handy parents, and a dream of being a homeowner. She’s lived in the area her whole life, same as her mom, Gail and her dad, Dave.
Whitman drove past the rundown house a million times and didn’t think much of it, it was just part of the scenery.
Then in January, it was posted in a tax sale and she scooped up the hidden gem for $6,500.
“I thought it would be nice to save it,” Whitman said. “It’s not going to crumble down, it’s not another place that’s going to be left. It will be good to get more use out of it.”
THE FOUNDATION
It started as a one and a half storey summer cottage built in 1956 for the Trenaman family who lived in Halifax. Wendy Jones was five when her family first vacationed there.
“We spent every summer down there,” Jones said. “We didn’t have hot water but we had a little stove and a fireplace and that’s how we heated the house.”
Summer vacations were blissful for the family of four, but more and more, the cottage sat empty.
By the 1980s, Jones was living across the street and her brother Robert Trenaman lived nearby too. Trenaman started renovating the old family cottage, thinking he’d eventually live there with his son. He added onto the cottage, making it a full twostorey, year-round house.
THE FIRE
For a small community like Lake Charlotte, the fire (around 1985 or ‘86) was a much-discussed event for a long time.
Jones said her nephew liked to hang out there with his friends, but no one was living there at the time.
One night someone tossed a cigarette butt off the balcony or out the door, she said, starting a blaze that licked up the corner of the house to the roof before it was extinguished.
“It was quite the event in the little community like that,” Jones said.
Her brother decided not to move in and the house sat empty until it was eventually sold off for taxes.
Now walking through the upper level of the gutted house he’s helping to build for his daughter, Dave Whitman said you can still see the fire and smoke damage from that night.
“I wanted to tear it down to the ground, it was bad. The worst of it was from the fire, the roof leaked and there was so much rotten wood from where the roof was leaking.”
He said it’s more work to renovate than to tear it down and start from scratch.
“I’d have had it built by now.”
A BIG MESS
In March, Dave, Gail and Megan donned masks and gloves and toted garbage bags into the house. What they found was a giant mess. Correction: A giant wet mess.
“It was overwhelming at first,” said Gail. “We knew we had to get it cleaned out before the warmer weather came because we didn’t know if there were more critters in there or just the smell that would be coming with warmer weather.”
There were signs raccoons had moved in and Dave said two pigeons still come by every night to try to build a nest.
Everything had been left. It seemed like someone had just shut the door on the place. There were soggy couches, a stove and fridge and all kinds of forgotten debris. And plenty of mould.
“I thought the coolest thing we found was the old TV,” Megan said. "It was hard to date, but the TV was older than the ‘80s for sure, said Gail. But they didn’t keep anything, there was nothing worth saving.
Dave, a mechanic by trade, said the toughest job so far was tearing off the roof. It took five days to take it off, and four hours to put up a new roof.
“We gutted it, took out all the drywall and took out the insulation. We jacked the house and put new sills in the front,” he said. They also put up a new exterior wall up on the front of the house.
“Pretty much the hardest work is done now,” he said.
Summer jobs and working with his father, who was also a mechanic, taught Dave everything he needed to know to renovate the house. Gail and Megan, who both work as educational program assistants, had time to spare when schools were shut down in March due to COVID-19.
Now the big stuff is out of the way, the focus is to shingle the roof, get on the doors and windows and put up the siding to get it ready for the winter.
“And I still have to jack the back side of the house and replace the sills back there because you can see some rot on the backside,” added Dave.
But Megan is nearing the end of her savings and has to decide if she’ll take out a mortgage for around $50,000 and finish it off right away, or build up another nest egg and slowly get it done over the next few years.
“For $60,000-$70,000 in the end, you wouldn’t have a house for that if you went out and bought it,” she said.
FOR NO ONE ELSE
They’ve done all this work themselves, just the three of them, with family members helping out now and then.
Whitman knows full well how lucky she is in the parent department.
“They are so incredible and I’m so grateful for the help they’re giving me with this.”
Mom Gail said she’s happy to help her daughter get into the housing market on the cheap. And while her husband sees things differently, Gail said she likes to know she’s saving an old house that definitely has character.
“I grew up on this road my whole life, so this is history on the road. And just working together as a family, it’s rewarding that way,” Gail said.
“I saw the potential in it, that it had good bones.”
When asked if he would do this for anyone else, without missing a beat, Dave shouts “No!”
“Not a chance. None whatsoever,” he said over the laughter from his wife and daughter.
“I wouldn’t do it again for her.
"I’d say, ‘No, tear it down and start fresh.’”
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Megan Whitman’s soon-to-be home in Lake Charlotte will have two bedrooms, a laundry room and a bathroom upstairs and a living room, dining room and kitchen downstairs.
Completion date: TBD