MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1972 - Missouri Years I

New House

The house we wanted to have built was a version of the so called ‘salt box’. This design has two sections, a two story part with a long sloping roof off one side that covers a single story part. The lower part of the two story part was mostly garage with the bedrooms in the upper part. The single story part had living room and dining room with a long sloping high ceiling coming down to normal height, plus a standard kitchen and a tall entry way to the house in the center. There was a basement under the lower part, thus a lower level to the lower part. There was also a family room with a fireplace in the lower part behind the garage. There wasn’t another house in our subdivision nor in the city like it. It was a beautiful spacious open-style home.

I hired a local contractor to build the house that was going to cost $50,000 by the time it was finished. To save money I was my own Electrical Contractor and we also did all of the staining and finishing of the woodwork and all of the painting inside and out.

I went to a local bank in Maryville and arranged for a mortgage. I had 20% as a down payment from the selling of the Ames house. The mortgage was fairly easy to get with the size of the down payment, since I was told many people wanted that size mortgage with as little as 5% down.