Totally distraught!

I felt like I was at the end of my rope. I didn’t know how much more I could endure before I cracked.

After living with my mother-in-law and her live-in companion for a month, I was ready to head for the hills. I can’t believe my then-wife Sharon ever suggested our peculiar living arrangement. I would have rather had my toenails pulled out with a pair of pliers.

But six months? I was ready for the funny farm.

Because that’s how long it took Sharon and I to escape the white-haired witch’s little house of horrors. And I, for one, would have been satisfied to never step across her threshold ever again.

When we purchased the weekly newspaper in Sharon’s hometown, we didn’t have many options at our disposal as far as living arrangements were concerned.

And to complicate matters more, we were living off of our dwindling savings account until generating income from our publication at the end of the first month when advertisers would be billed.

Sharon came up with the hair brained solution prior to making the 500-mile trek north. Her mother had graciously offered for us to stay in her farmhouse on her 120-acre farm in the country near Scenery Hill, Pa.

I had my reservations.

The first time I went to visit my mother-in-law, I discovered she was a habitual hoarder. Sharon and I went into her makeshift office to use her computer; and we had a bit of a problem locating it among haphazard shelving, filing cabinets, stacks of newspapers and halfway folded laundry.

Eureka! We found it behind a laundry basket next to a half-eaten tuna fish sandwich and a full glass of milk.

I looked to the right of the computer and saw a small three-drawer caddy and on the middle drawer was a handwritten sticky note that read, “Sort Through.”

Seriously? Houston, we have a problem!

That was just the tip of the iceberg. Nearly every room in the house was in total disarray. At first, I thought Sharon’s mother was doing a little spring cleaning. But after a couple months, I realized this was my new normal.

I began washing the dishes every night when I came home from work just so I had the peace of mind in knowing they were clean before I ate off of them.

That’s when I realized the solution to our quandary. Outside the kitchen window over the sink I saw the block barn in the distance. It was once used to house sheep on the lower level and farm equipment on the upper level.

The bottom half of the barn, made of terra cotta blocks and set in the side of a hill, was now used by my mother-in-law for her art studio. Although she didn’t have a taste for housework, she had a knack for painting and even taught classes a couple days a week.

Six months before we came to live with her, my then-wife’s mother had to put a new roof on the barn because it leaked water down into her painting workshop every time it rained.

After discovering the upper portion of the barn was filled with nothing but junk collected over a 30 year time span, I thought it would be the perfect space to build an apartment for a couple of newlyweds.

My then-wife loved the idea; and when we presented the proposal to her mother, we agreed to pay for half the renovations, using our credit cards, in exchange for living in it rent free for a couple of years.

She was sold on the plan. And since she was a handy(wo)man of sorts, walking around with her tool belt fixing things all the time, we left her in charge of all the renovations.

The only thing is — I saw one too many of her unfinished projects. It would be interesting to see how this apartment was going to turn out.

But Sharon and I didn’t have much choice in the matter. This was her house and her property, so she could do whatever she pleased. Besides, running a weekly newspaper, working 12-hour days, six days a week, didn’t leave us much time for anything else.

Although she came up with the design plans, my mother-in-law did hire a contractor to complete the work. I think the only reason she did that was because of the strict codes of enforcement in the township. So that was our saving grace.

The plans called for an open floor plan between the kitchen, dining room and living room. It was going to have one bathroom with two entrances, one of which went past a sizable pantry and into the laundry room at the one end of the kitchen.

The small apartment was also going to have two large bedrooms, both with nice size closets, a spacious foyer opening up into the living room and an enormous attic with a “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” pull-down ladder.

Now for the work to begin. It took two huge dumpsters to haul out all of the junk collected from three decades of auctions, yard sales and dumpster diving. I was actually surprised my mother-in-law was able to part with it.

We didn’t see the space until it was all cleaned out. It was a huge empty shell. You could see all the way to the rafters. I was ready to get a sleeping bag and move in. After a four-month process, I thought I was going to do a cartwheel when I saw the last work truck leave the premises for the final time. Sharon was just as ready as me to move out of her mother’s house.

Although the walls had to be painted and the flooring put down, we had a workable kitchen and bathroom; so we blew up an air mattress and spent our first night in our brand new barn home.

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By Mark S. Price

Contributing columnist

Mark S. Price is a former city government/county education reporter for The Sampson Independent. He currently resides in Clinton.