The Story of 53 South St.
As Jake and I prepare to move into another house once again, I’ve been feeling called to share the story of the home we’ve been living in for the past year. 53 South St. in Bath, Maine.
Can you find Zeke?
Back in February 2021, Jake had mailed out a letter to the address of an older gentleman who owned an abandoned house at 53 South St.
The letter said something like, “Hey, we’re a young family looking to restore and revitalize vacant homes in Bath. We’re trying to provide more housing for our community. Can we buy your house?” We included a picture of our family and hoped maybe he’d give us a call.
He did give us a call, he liked the photo of our family and told us a little about the house’s history. The previous owner had happily lived in the home until his wife had died tragically and unexpectedly. One day, him and his son picked up and left.
This house had things strewn everywhere, there was evidence of squatters getting inside, animals, and general house neglect. Of course, there would be after 8 years.
Upstairs Bathroom
Kid’s Room
Once we bought the house, I walked around the trashed home. We hired someone to help us clean it out, but some of the items made me feel…so much. Like the recipe book of a woman who will never cook again, puzzles from a child who had just lost his mother, huge old computers, pots and pans, clothes, and more. It broke my heart.
Yet, these were things that we were told to toss away, and so we honored the family’s wishes. I kept a few useful items that I still think about as I use them in this house today.
Over the kitchen “bedroom” but we used it as our playroom.
The house was neglected, yet, Jake said it had “good bones,” as many say on the TV shows. Once the house was cleaned out, Jake reimagined the house’s interior, and him and his team got to work.
We took down this doorway and these walls to open up the front entry.
We needed some walls to come down, and some walls to be put up. The flow of the downstairs area would be greatly improved with those changes, as well as an opening in the kitchen to the sunroom to brighten the whole space. He tore out the kitchen cabinets and rebuilt the stairs going up to the room above the kitchen.
These cabinets were all torn out. You can see that the floors are still lovely though.
This is the three season room off of the kitchen. Jake opened up the wall to the left to bring light into the kitchen.
Everything needed new paint. It needed new plumbing and electric. The bathrooms needed complete gutting. The exterior needed a lot of love and tons of landscaping. One of the bedrooms had a kitchenette to make it a “unit,” but this home seemed to always want to be a single family home. He tore it out. It was probably the result of the need for WWII BIW housing back in the day.
Upstairs bedroom/second unit. We turned it into a large bedroom.
There he is! The man with a plan.
Cleaning it out.
He got to work making it happen with his business partner, Luc and his carpentry helper, Nathan. I was watching our kids for most of the time, but every so often I would add my thoughts to a paint color or what the kitchen should look like. There was a whole other house to be keeping up on over at 27 Pleasant St.
Sometimes the kids would “help.”
The process of taking out two walls and creating the 4th bedroom/office space.
Adding the opening from the kitchen to the sunroom.
Since I work in the Patten Free Library, I was able to go upstairs to the history room to check out the history of the home.
It was interesting to learn about the Skolfield family who lived here before James Gardini and Mary Demello. I can only imagine what their 40+ years of memories were like here right next to the shipyard!
“For approximately 40 years the Skolfield family lived here. Before his death in 1888, John F. Skolfield worked as a blacksmith, laborer, and a night watchman for the railroad. His son, John M, was a printer, while the older son Charles worked in the Cordage Factory. Caroline stayed on here for the next 23 years of her widowhood. It then passed into the hands of the Wakefields - a letter carrier and his wife for more than 30 years.”
When Jake and Nathan were finally done with all the finishing touches, I washed all the windows and we prepared to move our family inside. It was Christmas Eve 2021, and we made the leap to our beautiful new home.
Click HERE to see all our AFTER photos.
After a year of being here, we’ve made a lot of beautiful memories.
We never intended for this to be our forever home, we knew someday we’d put it on the market for someone else to buy. Even though it’s beautiful, we wanted a bigger yard and a better location. We put the house on the market in December and it sold to a buyer who wrote us a letter saying that the house was exactly what she was looking for.
It makes my heart happy to think that the house is being lived in and loved and passed on to another person who will make it even better than we did.
It makes me hope that perhaps Mary, who left this house too early, might be happy to see it being cared for too. Even though I didn’t know her, I read her obituary yesterday and realized that I shared a lot in common with her: A love for children, for cooking, for her hometown, and we even both graduated from Morse High School and University of Maine at Farmington. I also have spent many years bartending and waitressing and also had my real estate license. Though I’m not a believer of ghosts and never had any odd occurrences in the house, I thought of her often as I cooked and cleaned and danced around the house with my kids.
But now it’s on to the next project. We’re packing our things and moving up the hill to 10 West St! Stay tuned to see how we will transform this beauty. Thanks for reading about our experience at 53 South St. I know that it will have many more memories and stories within its walls.
xoxo the rockweed writer
10 West St. Bath, ME
