That 50s House

Several months ago I was lucky enough to make contact with the daughter of the original owner of this house that grew up here in the '50s and '60s, And she gave me several early photographs of the house along with blueprints and a bunch of other interesting stuff.

The picture below was taken Christmas Day. 1956. The chimney and the large aerial antenna are both long gone and I never would have known they were even here and I not obtained this photo. I also found out that as old as it looks, the front door and reed glass side panels are not original, and were replaced sometime around 1962. Before that it had a jalousie window front door and two floor-to-ceiling jalousie panels on each side of the door. What is absolutely insane about this photo is that The house still retains most of its original landscaping. Virtually all the shrubs and plants you see in this 1956 photo are still here today, Just much much larger.

I know that one of the biggest challenges people face when purchasing and restoring a old fixer upper is electrical issues, and man does this place have em, But at the same time there is still some beauty in the chaos.. this for example, The original federal main disconnect box with What appears to be the original cartridge fuses from 1951, still in use. Sure, it's dangerous as all hell but it certainly cool to look at. So much detail that they used to put into things back then that just doesn't exist anymore..

Gotta say living without AC has never been easier than it is here in this house. Was up late last night oiling unsealing and repairing more windows. Cocoa House has 27 windows. That's right, 27! You would think that would be a bit of an overkill, but it actually makes perfect sense now. This house was built before the advent of AC and it is naturally designed to stay cool in the heat. Most places I've been in both new and old without air conditioning. It is absolutely stifling. That is not the case in this house. In fact, there is literally a 15 to 20° temperature difference between the bedrooms and the rest of the house. Also the fact that it's right on the Indian River definitely helps with breezes and things. Slept like a rock. Never broke a sweat and honestly have not woken up. Feeling that refreshed in a long time. The house feels cleaner and nicer and healthier this way now that I have reversed it back to its natural abilities. This house was never supposed to have a central AC and honestly I don't think I even want it anymore, at least for now. A man by the name of Boggs built this house and he was an absolute genius and a master at ventilation. He really did know what he was doing. Luckily I have been able to get most of the windows working again and I really lucked out because whoever removed all of the screens left them in the rafters of the attic so I've been pulling all of those down and cleaning them and putting them back up. Only once I can't seem to find are the ones that go over the big wooden panel window in the dining room, which sucks because that's the biggest window in the house. Maybe I can make my own. Idk yet.

I lived without AC for over a month at my house in Orlando around this time of year and it was absolutely insufferable. That house was built the early 60s and designed to have AC, which is probably why it's so awful without it. Here though? Not the case at all and holy hell I'm going to save so much money in electricity now lol. So yeah, screw ac, atleast for now.

Beautiful day and with the AC on the blink yet again, l I figured I'd take a crack at some of these old windows to see if I can get them working. The wood frame ones are so old and rotting that one of them legitimately started to fall apart when I started to open it so I'm not going to mess with that, however the steel casement windows are solid. They were painted, caulked, and taped shut God knows how many years ago for energy efficient reasons, but f*** that I'm more interested in having working Windows. They are all missing the cranks but got lucky and found one in the garage which does seem to fit the windows. Starting with the smaller ones and working my way across the front of the house. First one was a royal pain in the ass to get open but after fighting with it for a solid hour and half a can of WD-40 I got it to come back. Lucky me the previous owners were nice enough to leave all of the old screens up in the rafters of the garage but they're all different sizes so I've had fun trying to figure out which ones go to which window 🤣 God you just don't see this kind of quality anymore with home materials.

I would like to dedicate this post to the piece of f**k That put an inch and a half of caulking in my kitchen window.. took me 2 hours to get all this garbage out of there.. Yes, it still works but I can tell it hasn't been used in a very very long time so it needs to be fully extended and oiled. Unfortunately this is the back of the house where the mosquitoes and the bugs are the worst. So I know as soon as I open this window there's going to be a thousand mosquitoes in my kitchen... Guess I gotta wait to finish this one till tomorrow, but hey it's a start! I literally filled an entire grocery bag of caulking from this one window panel.. my god!

Trying some different doors around the house that I salvaged from another location. No perfect fits yet and haven't really decided which one I want to use where.

That 50s House updated their phone number.

That 50s House updated their business hours.

So instead of clogging up my page and anybody else's news feed that follows me with pictures of my house projects, I'm moving everything to this page. 👍