ASHEBORO — Mark Dillon viewed the cabin sitting at 426 Worth St. differently than others who checked out the property.
“It just hadn’t been loved,” Dillon said.
He has changed that.
Dillon, and his wife, Carol Schuck Dillon, purchased the cabin and are turning it into a home.
“When we walked in, there was some potential for someone dumb enough to do it,” Mark Dillon said.
It was purchased in December of $48,500 – or about $20,000 below the listed price.
Now, passersby marvel at the structure.
Others have been excited when they’ve seen the possibilities for the cabin, which is located in the historical Greystone Terrace neighborhood.
Dillon said there’s not a straight line in the building, making for some interesting moments during the renovation. So he has tagged the cabin with a nickname.
“It’s named the ‘Crooked Cabin’ for a reason,” he said.
The Dillons have lived in Randleman for about 20 years, a couple of Indiana natives who figured they would stay for a few years and then came to embrace the lifestyle in Randolph County.
The renovations are going to cost about $25,000, with a bulk of that related to windows and roofing. The good thing, Dillon said, is that old craftmanship holds up well.
So in that regard, it stays heated well because of the thick logs.
While the official size of the cabin might be up to 1,200 square feet, it’s about 800 square feet of what Dillon calls practical space, with a low ceiling. There are three bedrooms and a bath, though the Dillons really consider it a two-bedroom place.
The renovation quickly became a passion for the Dillons in any of their spare time. He’s a music technology instructor for Guilford Tech Community College based at the High Point campus and she’s a Spanish teacher at Weaver Academy in Greensboro.
“It feels like the fastest remodel in the history of remodels,” Mr. Dillon said. “There’s nothing about that cabin that should have worked that quickly.”
Dillon is touched by the history of the cabin. He said it was built in 1850 and moved it to its present location in 1936 during the Great Depression.
His research showed that it had been used a rental property for much of the past 30 years, perhaps going back as far as a half-century. It clearly had fallen into disrepair, so among the first order of business was doing something about the broken windows.
Dillon described smoke damage from a fire years ago. Otherwise, the interior needed mostly structural work.
“For an 1850s cabin, it’s not in bad shape,” he said. “It’s kind of shocking that cabin has held up as well as it has.”
The Dillons will live in the cabin as their Randleman home is remodeled.
