A stone fireplace sits on a slab of raw, layered rock inside the house, with glass on either side of it, and @a.bbe stands on the rock beside it. The word on screen at that moment is “centerpiece.”
The 44 second reel, posted on October 2, is the second part of a question she is putting to her followers: “Pt 2 of…Should I bring it back to life???” In the written caption she says her 95 year old grandfather designed and built the house in the 1990s “around this beautiful natural ledge that contains a Native American grinding bowl.”
The tour starts above that ledge. She leans over a wooden balcony rail while the camera looks down on a stone floor with rock lined basins under a wall of glass. Her caption explains what they are: her grandfather “built in a waterfall that trickles down the ledge to feed the 3 pools, and crowned it with a double sided fireplace.” In the next shot she is standing at the edge of the round pool at the bottom.
From there she climbs a wooden staircase that runs up alongside a boulder with a vine growing over it, as the words “unfinished” and “rooms” flash on screen. Upstairs the floors are bare. One room holds a white drafting table tilted upright, and the words that appear there are “Grandpa,” “his” and “brainstorming.” The next room has a weight machine and a bench, and the words are “his” and “gym.”
She dances through the rest of it: across a bare floor past a pair of white buckets, up a railed staircase to what the screen labels a bedroom and bathroom, past a rail of hanging clothes, and into a carpeted room with a made bed, where the screen reads “another,” “bedroom,” “bathroom.”
After the fireplace comes the main living space, with a tile floor, a kitchen of wood cabinets and a loft railing overhead. The words “overlooks” and “pool” appear as she stands in the middle of it.
The last stop is the top of the house. “Spiral,” “staircase” and “leads” run across the screen as she heads up a black spiral stair into a small glass walled room with a wood plank ceiling and stacks of wood on a plywood floor. The word there is “widow’s.” She steps out onto a narrow deck as “150,” “acres” and “family’s” appear, and the final shot looks down over the roof into treetops.
Her caption lists what the camera moves past too quickly to register: “a fountain in the living room, radiant hydronic floors, numerous unfinished rooms, a widow’s watch, and more!”
It also explains why the question matters to her. “I used to spend my family Christmas here growing up,” she writes. “I remember running up and down those stairs with other kids in my family, as the fireplace warmed the space and snow fell beyond the glass window.” She says the land “has been in my family for hundreds of years, leading back to my great, great grandfather,” and that three of her grandfather’s children own homes that abut his plot.
No work has started and nothing has been decided. The caption ends, “I’m seriously considering fixing it up. Should I?”
What to Pin Down Before Restoring a House Built Around a Ledge and a Waterfall
Start with the builder. Her grandfather is 95 and designed the place himself, and the reel shows his drafting table still standing upstairs. Ask him for the drawings, then walk the house with him and record it: where the waterfall’s water comes from and where it drains, how the three pools connect, where the radiant floor lines run.
Check water before anything cosmetic. This house has an indoor waterfall, three pools and a living room fountain. Have the supply, pumps and drains for each one inspected, and look closely at the wood nearest the ledge and the glass wall.
Have the radiant hydronic floors tested before choosing flooring. Several rooms in the reel still have bare floors, so the order matters: confirm the heating works, then cover it.
Price the unfinished rooms one at a time. List each room, write down what it is missing, and ask for a figure per room instead of one number for the whole house, so the work can be staged.
Protect the grinding bowl first. Photograph it, leave it exactly as it is, and tell every contractor where it sits before any work begins near the ledge.
Settle the family side on paper. By her account three relatives own homes bordering the plot. Before money goes in, agree in writing who owns the house, who is paying, and who makes the calls on changes.
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