Seven years, folks! We are celebrating seven years of living in and loving this money pit Colonial Farmhouse we call home.
Not going to lie, though. After we dealt with squirrels – there’s never just one – in the attic this winter, I did wonder for half a second if we really love it here, or if it’s Stockholm Syndrome? Can that happen with a house?
Maybe it’s best if we leave that one unanswered, and we’ll take a trip down memory lane instead.
Here’s our Colonial Farmhouse, the first time I went to look at it.
Imagine our real estate agent standing next to me, cringing a little while I’m texting this photo to Handy Husband and saying, “I found THE house. It only needs a little work. How soon can you get here for a second showing?”
He looks at this photo with the misaligned shutter and says, “I’ll wrap things up now.”
You might be questioning my use of the phrase “a little work.” Let’s call it a subjective assessment when compared to other homes on the market at that time.
We had toured a house that was a crack den and appeared to have been the venue for satanic rituals. A fine place to bring children for a showing.
Another house we toured had, honest to the old house gods, rolling wood floors on the second level. It still boggles my mind how wood could warp that badly and not crack, but the bigger problem was the black mold everywhere. Kudos to the photographer for cropping that out in the listing photos.
A third house we toured had, much to our surprise, because there was no heads up, chickens in the basement. That’s right. Chickens. In. The. Basement. We smelled them before we heard or saw them. Even a crack den smelled better.
We were okay with living in a fixer-upper.
Our intent wasn’t necessarily to buy a colonial-era home. We were primarily concerned with price and commute time.
Compared to the other houses on the market, this fixer-upper looked downright reasonable with its brand-new septic system and a price in our budget.
More importantly, it was “move-in ready” as long as we were willing to move the previous owner’s stuff out.
But there was one thing that had to go immediately: the embellishments on the shutters.
Handy Husband is pretty easy-going and was fine with the leaky roof, dry rot, and cracked counter, but the man draws a line at cats and flowers on shutters. There are some situations where you don’t know how you will react until you are staring at the sleeping face of a wood cat glued to your shutters. These are the moments that define you.
He also started removing the brush right away. Part of it was a safety concern, as we couldn’t see the pool from the house or tell if a car was coming when we pulled out of the driveway. The adrenaline!
Part of it was an emotional concern, as it was super depressing to live in this Jumanji-like state. The lack of adrenaline!
The rest of it was a practical concern. The vegetation, if left alone, would have overtaken the house. It had already overtaken the Carriage House, a second structure on this property, including the interior.
The photo below was taken after we cleared the view to the pool from around those wooden steps.
Plus, we didn’t know we had a rock wall – one of the most defining features of our curb appeal – that extended most of the length of our property because it was covered by overgrown brush.
The tree trunk in the photo below is from the elm tree by the stone wall that we are reconstructing right now.
Can you see the road that’s two steps away? No.
Can you see the rock wall that is touching the tree? Also, no.
(There’s a $20 price tag on that chicken feeder because the previous owner had an estate sale, and this didn’t sell. You can see the fun way I used it at Halloween here.)
Long story short, you can see why I wanted this house, right?
Even though nothing was our style, and the house desperately needed a deep clean and some repairs, we felt right at home from day one. In fact, we were downright gleeful.
Like “pinch ourselves” gleeful because the bank gave us money to live here.
It always comes as a surprise when people learn that we became friends of sorts with the previous owner. It was a bit of a surprise for us, too, as it was the first time we ever got to know a previous owner of a home we had purchased.
During a visit with him, I told him that the first night we slept here, one of our kids, who would never fall asleep without drama, went to sleep on their own with zero drama, and what a relief that had been for two parents who had dreaded bedtime for years. There was something about this house, and maybe its quirky layout, that helped this child settle for the night.
The previous owner, who naturally had a hard time leaving this house after fifty years, said in response, “I think you were the right people for this house, and things work out how they are supposed to.”
Based on what I learned about the previous owner, I don’t think he ever wanted the house to fall into disrepair. I’m confident he did the best he could with the time, knowledge, abilities, and resources he had at any given time.
To his credit, he kept the house standing, which is the most important thing, and installed a new septic system. We had enough…stuff to deal with, so we were grateful for that.
Many of our decisions about how to care for this house are made with the thought of how we will keep the house standing and how it will affect us in twenty or thirty years, should we be lucky enough to live here that long.
Of course, we still want to honor the history and character of this Colonial Farmhouse, but we do thoughtfully consider how the choices we make can help us more easily maintain the house in the future. (Metal roof on the Carriage House, I’m talking about you!)
We don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know what adventures await us. We don’t know how circumstances or health will change. Anything could happen. We can count on that!
We do try to appreciate each memory we make here, each old house discovery, and every beautiful sunset we have the privilege of watching from our deck.
We’re also extremely grateful to you for following along with our old house adventures. We would continue to do what we do even if no one was watching, but it is more fun to share it with friends.
It would make us so happy to know how long you’ve been following along! You can comment here on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via direct message on Instagram or Facebook.
Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy reading from our highlight reel. Kidding. There’s no highlight reel. Just my whims on any given day.
Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 3, The Reveal
Under-A-Table Pull-Out Trash Cabinet