Hello! Dianna and Peter Osickey here [with tot Oliver]. The summer of 2016 we purchased the Wilder Home from a friend we met through one of my best buds and architecture school classmates. He owned the home with his three brothers and had been renting it out while living in Nashville. The home had fallen into a state of disrepair and the current renter was living in unsafe conditions. Luckily the city had not condemned the house. It is much harder to pull construction permits and get loans once a house is condemned.
We considered buying the house in 2011 and had kept an eye out for it ever since then. It was fortunate for us that we were unable to make the purchase work out in 2011 as we were in no emotional or financial state to commit to such a large project and we had grossly under estimated the cost to renovate a home of this size and condition.
The last time the house was fully utilized it served as a community residence for the 4 brothers who all played rugby at the University of Tennessee. It was clear that at some point in time there were 8 rentable rooms in the house. Rooms on the ground level that will now become the dining room, kitchen, and living room were used as bedrooms during that era.
Somehow Peter and I never attending a college party at the house while in school but we know many people that had. This adds an interesting twist for us and will enjoy hearing more and more memories generated by this home.
At the time of purchase we had a lot of clean up work to do. The garage was still full of old sofas, beer pong tables, a mini bar, and lots of other relics from the previous party days. The house was packed full of old box TV’s, clothing, furniture. As you can image pretty much anything you would leave behind when making a college move. The gentleman living in the house was pretty well confined to a single room. He had rigged a hot power line from the box in the basement that fed a TV, satellite dish, and an extension cord for his use. There was evidence of several small electrical fires. In it’s current state there was no working plumbing…we did not ask him the obvious question. It is still a mystery.
We spent the rest of the summer cleaning out the house and garage with dreams of what the next chapter of the Wilder Home will look like.
The Wild[er] Adventure 
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