Our house could be the “before” in “before-and-after” photos in home improvement magazines, or a “Remember when …?” journey into memories past.

There is no central heating. Wall-mounted propane heaters provide most of the heat, with a “box of rocks,” technically an electronic thermal storage unit, and baseboard electrical heaters as backup.

This gives us uneven heating by comparison with central heating, but it is much better than the frost-on-inside windows of my childhood bedroom. The heat is also gravity-dispersed. We avoid annoying noises and swooshes. The propane suffices if the electricity fails.

We like that. My wife and I spend “together” time in near-zero winter days standing side-by-side near one of the wall heaters, moving in unison forward and backward to achieve “toasty warm” status. “Toasty warm,” for the uninitiated, means that one side is warm while the other side is chilled, accounting for the sometimes comical chugga-chugga rotational movements that we can accomplish without even interrupting our conversations.

In summer, we rarely need air conditioning because of frequent hilltop breezes and the sun shelter of tall evergreens. We have window air conditioner units, three for bedrooms and one for a middle room in the relatively tiny first floor.

They suffice.

The house has a “captive” bedroom. One has to walk through one bedroom to get to and from another bedroom. When we have guests, my wife and I usually sleep in the “captive” room. It bothers us not at all to have sleepy people ka-slapping slippered or bare feet through where we sleep, en route to and from nocturnal ablutions.

It bothers our guests not at all, either, if they are family members, judging by the repeat visits.

A “captive” bedroom is just one of the anachronistic features of the old farmhouse.

The house has indoor plumbing, true. But the water pressure is 40 pounds per square inch, contrasted with the 60 or so pounds found in homes served by “city” water or modernized well systems.

“Please don’t flush!” is the cry from shower-bound visitors, sometimes followed by screeches indicating that other occupants did not get the message.

My wife and I know each other’s shower/bath habits.

The house suits us.

Our televisions are 1990s-style elephantine boxes, not today’s slim flat screens. The sound is monaural. So are we.

The house has a cellar, not a basement. I define “cellar” as equating to “dirt floor.” It is well-packed dirt, with shelving for canned goods and some root-cellar qualities. We like that.

Beneath the kitchen, laundry room and mudroom are crawl spaces, traversed by water pipes to the kitchen sink and washing machine.

In deepest, coldest windiest winter weather, these tend to freeze up. We do the drip-all-night thingie with the kitchen sink when we remember. But if the wind howls past 35 mph in zero temperatures, the pipes sometimes freeze and the water stops.

That necessitates a dirt-on-me crawl with a paint-removal gun and/or a hair dryer affixed to a 100-foot extension cord, spitting spider webs and wearing a headband LED light gizmo to leave both hands free for the pipe-warming movements needed to thaw without fracturing.

Thanks to my wife, who bought the house before she and I were married, the house has a modern, delightful feature: An attached garage. It has no separate heat source, but the plank construction and not-airtight construction of the main house ease air into the garage, keeping it above freezing in all but the most brutal weather conditions. I love not having to carry grocery bags through snow or up ice-coated steps.

Outside the garage are a graveled garage pad, and a 20-foot hill leading to the main driveway. In winter, that must be cleared by snow thrower or plow-equipped ATV before either car can make it up that hill. As blizzard insurance, the truck equipped with four-wheel-drive is parked above that main driveway, giving it a level roll to the main road. Happily, the truck has remote start, so we can enter it without freezing solid.

It takes, on average, 45 minutes with the snow thrower or a half-hour with the plow to clear a six-inch snowfall from the parts of the 350-foot driveway that we use in winter. One of its semicircular mouths drifts shut with such ferocity that we just leave it unplowed, providing happy fun for when I want to bust through the drifts with the truck or four-wheeler. Guests do that, too, on occasion. They chortle.

But generally, we make do with a one-entrance driveway in winter.

It suits us.

Eventually, we’ll move into town, abandoning the chickens, cats, blueberry bushes, pond and 30 acres, when we can’t physically cope with cellar or second-floor stairways, snow blowers in winter or lugging window air conditioners in summer.

When it suits us.

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.