ABANDONED HOUSE REVISITED: INTERIOR

As I stated in my prior post, I have been spending some time taking pictures at the abandoned house that is located a few miles from our home.  In the last post I showed some of the exterior shots of the house.  In this one, I am showing some of the photos I took of the house's interior.

Given the No Trespassing signs on the property, including on the side of the house, if I felt a little uncomfortable walking around outside the house, I felt a lot more uneasy walking around inside.  My guess is that it isn't so much that there are objects of value on the property--there aren't--it is more that the owner wants to protect himself from anyone who might get hurt while wandering around on the property and then brings some sort of lawsuit for tortious injury.  All the time I was in the house there was a concern in the back of my mind that the owner or his agent (or worse yet the police) would spot my car parked out by the road, would come to investigate, and would "trap" me in the house with my camera and without the shred of an excuse for being there.  And I'm not the sort of person who could talk my way out of the situation based on my "charm."  Well, in the four recent visits--nothing.

As indicated before, for the most part the house has been stripped down to the studs.  With few exceptions the plaster walls, insulation, doors, plumbing, electrical, and heating and cooling systems (actually there probably wasn't any cooling system) have all been removed.  Here are a couple of shots of the interior that reflect that fact.  (These are not the award winning shots, by the way, in case you were wondering.)

But there were a few exceptions that caught my eye.  First, although the house had obviously been a relatively small, unpretentious farmhouse in its day, one interesting touch was that the wall next to the stairs leading to the second floor had been curved, a relatively expensive architectural touch for what otherwise must have been a very unexceptional design.  Here are a couple of shots of that wall.

Beautiful, eh?  What fascinated me was apparent history that this wall reflected.  Originally, of course, it had been newly plastered and painted, and then painted and painted and painted again.  I counted at least five successive layers of paint on the wall.  And then, ultimately, the house was abandoned and left to the elements, which had the effect of revealing those different layers.  Here are a couple of closer shots.

There were a few technical issues with taking these shots.  These were interior shots in a relatively dark area in the house, requiring relatively long exposures.  In addition, as mentioned, the wall was curved.  As a result, the surface was not flat.  Consequently, I could not rely on all portions of the image being the same distance from the lens.  To compensate, I used a relatively narrow aperture to increase depth of field, as well as a relatively long exposure.  The above shot was taken at f/11 with a 4-second exposure.

And there was a bit of peeling paint elsewhere in the house, as in the following examples.

Here the late afternoon sun that was coming through a (missing) window provided ample light and shadows to create a three-dinensionality that I found interesting.  Yes, that was the color of the wall.

Although most of the interior doors had been removed, along with the door jambs, baseboards, and moulding (why? could they really have been of any value?), there was a bit left, as in the following shots.  

I especially like this last shot, probably because of the warm late afternoon light available.

Finally, there was one spot that still had a bit of wallpaper.  Here are a few shots of that.

Obviously some major wall deterioration going on there.

Looking back over what could be 20 years or more of exposure to the elements--moisture and great variations in temperature--I am beginning to understand that the house may have been somewhat presentable at the time it was vacated.  I have to believe, though, that it had seen a fair amount of neglect before that abandonment, particularly based on what was evidently a long-term lack of cleanliness.

Taken with my Nikon D7000 and Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 lens.