Squankum House 1880

03/14/2026

The mudroom is just about finished! A finished room 😱

It was built c. 1930. We don't have a lot of good pictures from before but trust us when we say it was nasty.

02/08/2026

Guess who in her entire 9 years of life never once scratched the door when she was ready to come inside...but decided to start all of the sudden AFTER we restored said door

02/02/2026

Part 2!

This post picks up where the first left off. If you haven’t already, you may want to start with Part 1 before reading on.Last time, we ended with William Irwin, who built the house in 1880 with his wife, Sarah Sandusky. William sold the property in 1899. By then, Sarah and their daughter, Susan, w...

01/11/2026

We had a different kind of "blue Christmas"

The before photograph is from 2021 - because yes, things really do take that long around here 😭

The retirement project that came 40 years early

12/28/2025

No matter how many times we revisit the historical record, we always manage to squeeze out a new piece of Squankum House's story.

Sarah Sandusky and William Irwin divorced in 1895, 15 years after building the house together.

Sarah's own parents, John Sandusky and Harriet McDaniel, separated in 1843 when she was just three years old.

Sarah and William's daughter, Susan, divorced her husband in 1897 only eight months after marrying.

Harriet McDaniel, Sarah Sandusky, and Susan Irwin. Grandmother, mother, and daughter. Three generations in a row of divorced women --- in the 1800s!

The historical record makes it hard to determine whether it was three awful men, three strong women who preferred to live their lives unmarried, a mixture of both, or something else entirely. All three women brought their husbands to court for divorce first.

We recently came across this notice published by Sarah's father, John Sandusky, in an Indianapolis newspaper in January 1843. Goes without saying, this is only his side of the story. But it reads:

"NOTICE.

My wife Harriett has left me without any cause whatever, and refuses to live with me. This is therefore to forewarn all persons from boarding or trusting her on my account, as I will pay no debts of her contracting after this date.

JOHN B. SANDUSKY.

Hendricks county, Ind., Dec. 26, 1842."

12/23/2025

12/08/2025

New level of candles in the windows unlocked 🕯 🕯🕯

12/05/2025

🟦👀

11/30/2025

FIVE years after removing interior window trim on the first floor, we have the first set back up!

There are a lot more pieces to these sets of window trim than those upstairs; the first floor walls are thicker which require more trim pieces to create a box around the window jamb.

Original trim was removed, paint stripped, refinished, and slightly modified to fit the new window profiles. We're excited to start getting the other sets back up!

Photographs from 2019, 2020, 2024, and 2025 showing the progression of one window.

09/20/2025

Side entrance restored

08/30/2025

Every now and then, we find something that re-energizes us 🤩

We're up on the second story sealing windows, and the forsaken aluminum under our eaves was in reach...

So we took off a section. We never expected that the original 1880 frieze boards would be almost immaculate underneath 😭😭😭😭

We're over the moon! This project will have to wait until a future date, but we'll leave this section uncovered to remind us what's to come. These frieze boards, along with the brackets, will be restored and painted in the same green/tan scheme as the rest of the house.