This 88-Year-Old Woman Lives in an Old Shed in the Woods – But Wait Until You See Inside!

Leave the outside alone

Edna had one rule for her sons: leave the outside alone. "I like the moss," she says. "The birds like it too." So the outside still looks the way it did. The shingles are still grey and the porch is still crooked. The only new thing you can see is a second small window on the side. Edna wanted to see the trees from her bed.

Inside, almost everything changed. The old shed had a dirt-stained floor, no heat and spiders in every corner. Dan and his brother cleared it out and fixed the roof from below. They put insulation in the walls and ceiling and laid a new wooden floor. An electrician brought power over from the main house. Edna asked for a wood stove, because she has cooked and heated with wood all her life. A professional installed it, with the right chimney pipe and a safe distance from the walls. There is also a small electric heater for nights when nobody wants to carry wood, and a smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide alarm over the door.

Dan walks over every morning with an armful of firewood and the newspaper. Edna has a phone by her chair, and her grandchildren come by after school for cookies. "People think I am lonely out here," she says. "I have more visitors than I had at the farm." Then she opens the crooked green door and lets us in. What is behind it is nothing like the outside. Take a look on the next page.