TRIP 1 | Friday-Saturday, February 18-19, 2011

A long time ago when Sneakers was a teenager and the kids were little we took a family trip to Yellowstone. On the way we stopped in Wallace, Idaho for lunch. It was a cute old mining town in the Bitterroot mountains along a fork of the Coeur d'Alene River. We went on a silver mine tour and walked through the residential area just off of the downtown.  Allison, Eric, Carolyn, and Paige around 1997 in Wallace, ID 
Carolyn and the kids in Wallace around 1997

We really liked Wallace when we visited. We even walked through the residential area looking at the old homes.  Wallace at night, February 2010

Then last February we stopped in Wallace for dinner one night on the way to Rexburg, ID. While our pizza was baking, we went next door to an old hardware store that is now an antiques shop and bought an antique wood electrician's tool box. Again, we thought the town was charming.
 1910 house

Jump forward to February, 2011. We had so much fun restoring the cabin at Lake Wenatchee that Carolyn started looking for another project. She found an old 3-story Victorian in Wallace that was priced to sell around $50k. She made arrangements with a realtor for us to see it over President's Day. Carolyn, Allison, and I drove out there on a Friday. It's 300 miles away in the Idaho panhandle on the border of Montana. We looked at that Victorian, but it was in too poor of shape to try and fix up from 300 miles away. The seller is in England and someone had come into the house and left open a trap door in the roof for a year. Rain and snow had really wrecked part of the attic floor and the ceilings below.

We looked at 20 other houses. Some of them were wrecks. Others had been remodeled so many times there were doors going nowhere and weird halls and stuff like that. Others were horribly restored, with a big bump in the middle of the floor where someone tried to jack it up underneath. Eventually, we found a house that was just about in perfect condition, but still decorated from the 70's. The house was built in 1910 and lived in by the same family since 1949. Eventually, only the old mother lived there until she was around 95 and then passed away. Her oldest son was selling the house.

The restored train station at the end of the street

Looking up the street in the opposite direction

Living room

We stayed in Wallace for a couple of days and then stopped at the cabin overnight on the way home. A couple of days later we made an offer on the house. The offer was accepted by the morning of the next day. By that evening, the title search had been completed and all the papers drawn up. A week later the house was ours - the world's fastest transaction.

Master bedroom on the second floor

The house came with all the furniture in these pictures.

Third bedroom upstairs

According to the seller, his grandpa built these cabinets and drawers in the early 1950's in two days with only hand tools.

Steps on the second floor down to the upstairs bathroom and third bedroom

Second bedroom on second floor

Another view of the second bedroom on the second floor

We loved the painted wood floors in these two rooms.

Looking up at the upstairs from a lower level of the second floor

Back of the house

Retro basement rec-room

The seller said his family dug out the basement under the house in 1951 when he was eleven years old. Later when he was in high school, they built this finished room in one part of the basement.

Downtown Wallace

Every building in downtown Wallace is on the historical register. Most of the buildings are restaurants, antique shops, and the usual mix of museums, banks, and other stores.

Wallace from the air in the fall

The house we purchased is visible in this photo. The downtown area is just to the left of this picture. The town is constrained by the mountains on either side of the valley.

Little snow left at Lake Wenatchee

We left Wallace on Saturday afternoon and stopped overnight at the cabin at Lake Wenatchee. It was relatively warm and most of the snow had melted. A week later is snowed forty inches in 24 hours!

All the gravel that washed down the driveway

The last time we went to the cabin, rain had washed down the street and covered our dirt driveway with gravel.

Nason Ridge

We woke up early Sunday morning to head back to Redmond in time for church. It was a beautiful day outside.

Alpine Lookout

I digitally zoomed in on the previous photo to expose Alpine Lookout sitting on the ridge between Lake Wenatchee and Highway 2.

We had a fun trip to Wallace and we're looking forward to restoring the house from the 1970's back to its original roots.