Home Body: Welcome to my House

This is my home, where it seems like our work is never done! We moved into this house 11 years ago. The special thing about this house is that my parents lived here when I was born, and my dad's parents lived here when he was born, so it has been in my family for a few generations. It was built in 1910 and according to one of my grandpas, it was an impressive house in its day. By the time I was raised in this house, it was just a simple home with window air conditioning units, a wood burning stove and one bathroom. 

Fast forward 20 years to my adulthood, my parents were still farming in the area and had moved up the road to a newer home and the tenants of this house were getting ready to move out. My husband and I took this as an opportunity to relocate our family and make this house our home. We had recently finished college, started our careers, and just started our family with a 1-year-old when we decided to move. We hadn't saved up a ton of money yet, but my love for older houses told me this is exactly where I wanted to live. 

 

My dad, who is less of a historical conservationist that I am, owned the house and planned to tear it down. When we told my parents we wanted to buy the house, they thought we were crazy, but ended up selling it to us at its value at the time we started the renovations (which wasn't much). 

 

We had decided that once our son fell asleep around 7:00 p.m., we had a few hours every night that we could commit to fixing up the house uninterrupted by our little one. So for the first 6 weeks we moved back, we stayed with my parents up the road and while my husband worked on the house all day during his slow season with his outdoor job, I joined him in the evenings after our son went to bed. 

My goals before moving in were to have central heat and air, a dishwasher, and a larger bathroom than the original tiny bathroom with a tub only. Pretty much the first week was strictly demolition work. My dad helped by backing up a huge dump truck to our front door and we hauled out walls and old fixtures, with me insisting that we preserve all the original woodwork including baseboards, window frames, and doors because I wanted to them it in our finished house.

My father-in-law has had work experience in construction, so his brain and skills were 100% necessary to keep us moving in the right direction! My sister's husband was able to do the electrical work and my dad and Grandpa "think" they were plumbers in a past life, so they handled a lot of the plumbing work on our initial remodel. My husband, oh so patient, helped me pick out all of the appliances, bathroom cabinets, paint, flooring. He even worked with me when I became sure that I wanted to use the original hardwood floors throughout the main floor of our house and figured out the best way to go about refinishing them to showcase their beauty. Through this entire initial remodel, we were amazed at the original craftsmanship that went into this home back in 1910 when their tools were much more limited, but their skills were super impressive! These old guys knew how to build a house! 

All of these pictures are from the "before" photo shoot that I did and during the demolition project. The story of our house continues in phases over the next 11 years as we were financially able to tackle more and more of the renovations. More to come on that ..