Snowman on Miami Beach

            

            I still had plenty to learn when I left home after high school and the world began roughing me up before I even unpacked my suitcase. I was dragging bottom by age twenty, with the confidence of a snowman on Miami Beach when I visited the Cincinnati Public Library and checked out the book, The Power of Positive Thinking. The cover of this edition said, "Read this book and change your life," and this sentence would ring true for me as I became a young man capable of surviving in the Queen City.  

                        

            My struggles with pessimism and negative thoughts still haunt me, but three decades later I’m acutely aware of how profoundly Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s most popular book impacted my life and my career renovating houses, which I lovingly call ‘pig’s ears.’

We all know the classic example of a positive mindset: seeing a glass as half-full instead of half-empty. This attitude has become such a part of my life that I apply it to everything, most especially my project houses. I’m not sure how I could do what I do without this steadfast optimism.

My third pig’s ear was a home I call the Hurricane House. It was severely damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and its owners sold it to me for the value of the land in 2006. Soon after the closing, I walked the property with the head of the building department and said, “It's really not that bad,” since my approach to saving a condemned house focuses on what’s good and what’s salvageable. My ability to focus on real estate assets and past liabilities is the most significant quality I honed and cultivated from Dr. Peale's book.

However, as I finished my optimistic property appraisal, the building department chief, without much hesitation, said: “This house has to be torn down.” Clearly, he was looking at the all the damage and rot that dominated the Hurricane House. He was looking at the building as half bad or 50% rotten, while I was looking at it as half redeemable. After he said that a thought bolted into my head; “Oh. Now it’s on.” At this stage of my career, I was a confident freelance home renovator, verging on cocky, and his pessimism was the nudge I needed to get ready to grind. In addition, I had enjoyed enough success with my own projects that I had money in my savings to finance this one without a mortgage from the bank. The only person who needed convinced that this was a viable effort was me, and I was certain it was a winner. 

The roof of 
The Hurricane House

        The foundation and the brick façade of the Hurricane House were sound. Half the roof sheathing was fine, as well as half the structural framing. The sewer line to the street was good to go, plus the site had a beautiful grand live oak tree, a towering magnolia, and some antique camellias that survived the demolition/clean up phase. There was a lot going for this property before I even started, but it looked awful because Hurricane Hugo had torn it up.

Inside the Hurricane House
after the demolition phase:
a lot of good to work with.

                        The head inspector’s negative estimation could have doomed the Hurricane House to a date with a bulldozer and a trip to the landfill. Yet, in a quirky way this vocalized hopelessness became a blessing that echoed in my head throughout this project, energizing me until I received my Certificate of Occupancy and beyond. And when I closed out the project, the Hurricane House was the biggest profit margin of any of my houses thus far. 

I’m not saying the Hurricane House was an easy project. I don’t think I’ve had a simple rehab yet, so I’m not sure what that looks like. It was a good challenge, and I had a team of talented contractors helping me get it done. But my point is this; the positive attitude that began with that library book made it possible. I don't think I would have made it through college, moved to South Carolina, gotten my General Contractors License, or defied that building official without knowing everything I learned from Dr. Peale.

Maybe you want to be a home renovator and lack the confidence to take the next step. Or perhaps you're renovating a home right now and are at that stage in the middle where you feel like you’re never going to finish. Besides telling you these are normal feelings, I’d like to recommend that you go to your local library and borrow The Power of Positive Thinking. It just might change your life, too.

How the House in the Woods became Annie Leila's

     My projects have received names. With each one, the identifying moniker happened naturally. My first pig's ear had been devastated by a dryer fire that grew out of control. When folks would ask me about that project, they'd call it things like, "That house you did that was condemned after the fire." So it became "the Fire House." In 2004, I bought another home that building officials had declared uninhabitable. This rotting place was a victim of Hurricane Hugo that slammed into South Carolina in 1989, and it became my "Hurricane House." With each project came similar stories. Another example is the Country Victorian I bought in 2013 that was in American Rehab Charleston. It was, "The house you fixed up on TV," or the "TV House," until I did Restoring Charleston, and then it became the "American Rehab House." 

    In 2016, I needed three more houses for television. Along with the Appleby House, I bought a nine acre property on the other side of St. George with two houses: a bridal cabin that producers named the "Lowcountry Cottage" and the home which I called "the House in the Woods." Schedule and budget demands forced us to pull one home from our plans, so when we wrapped up our filming in August, I was left with my current project house shown in the pictures above. It was back off the main street in town and so engulfed by trees, bushes, and vines that many local residents didn't realize there was a home back in there. 

    The county library has a book that documents all the historic houses in area. In this book, the house is tagged as the "Whetsell House," but when neighbors mention the old home, they regularly call it "Annie Leila's House" or more simply "Annie Leila's," a reference to Annie Leila Whetsell, the previous owner who had lived in the house for most of their lives. 

    Annie Leila is a very pretty name. I've never known anyone named Leila and certainly no one named Annie Leila. I liked the name, The House in the Woods, but I like Annie Leila's much more. She called it home for decades and surrounded it with beautiful plants that I now enjoy. The neighborhood is still full of people that Annie Leila called friends and loved like family. So naming the property after her just feels right... and sounds a lot better than "Trent's." :)