colonial farmhouse
Hold Your Horses: Bringing Back the Original “Parking Spot”
The only thing related to transportation that has not changed since our home was built in the 1780s is probably a kid asking, “Are we there yet?” Everything else, of course, from how we get places to where we park, has. A 1780s “parking spot” would have been a hitching post to tie up a horse. The hitching posts and the horses are long gone from here, but we decided to pay homage to this home’s original parking spot and install an antique cast-iron hitching post next to our Carriage House. Specifically, we chose an antique hitching post with a horse head. These were popular in the 1800s, and I…
Out With the Sad Mailbox In With the New Mailbox
Goodbye, sad mailbox. Hello, new mailbox that is the best-looking one on the block. Not that it’s a competition. It’s not. But if it were… Our old mailbox was competing for the worst one on the block. Here it is after it made its acquaintance with a snowplow. There was no coming back from this. That door never opened or closed well after that unfortunate encounter. Who needs dry junk mail anyway? We’ve been working on reducing our curb appall and maximizing our curb appeal by restoring the low stone walls that run along the front of our property facing the road. It seemed natural to include a new mailbox…
Colonial Farmhouse 7 Year Anniversary
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…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 1, Why Now
A new series chronicling our basement workshop stone repointing project (say that three times fast) starts today! Get your popcorn ready. I’m about to overshare the nitty-gritty details and drama. Project Background: Our house was originally built in the 1780s and has a stone foundation. It pains me to tell you that most of the exterior of that foundation has been skimmed with modern mortar, but that’s a project for a different blog post. Historic stone foundations are made with fieldstone, which is stone used in its natural form as it came out of the ground. There was no grinding or chipping to make the stones uniform in any way,…
Lime Mortar Pointing on Brick Stairs
It took two years, but I finally finished the lime mortar pointing on our brick stair risers in the basement. *takes a bow in an empty room* The stair treads are flagstone, but the risers are brick. Someone had a “one and done” approach to building these basement stairs, and I wish I could throw them a ticker tape parade for their decision because they will never rot or need to be rebuilt. Repointing is another issue. That needs to be done every one hundred years or so. I’m just the lucky homeowner whose game piece landed on the “must repoint” square on this board game called “Money Pit.” We…
Colonial Farmhouse Six Year Anniversary
Time flies when you’re restoring, renovating, and generally making a home! We have been the stewards of this colonial farmhouse for 6 years now. The anniversary was actually in June, but I was ankle deep in mortar dust with the Carriage House renovation. Besides, it’s really a blip, as is our ownership, in the grand scheme of this old gal’s 250(ish) year history. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I enjoy poetry. It is so relatable because it often captures what we are feeling but don’t know how to express with our own words. There’s a poem called Old Houses by Robert Cording. It…
Did We Finally Find Buried Treasure?
If you’ve been reading this blog for five minutes, you’ll know that I am unabashedly on the hunt for buried treasure on our 250-year-old property. Surely, surely, there must be something hidden around here somewhere. Preferably, this something would be valuable enough to pay off our mortgage, but I’m not picky. We recently dug a trench alongside our Carriage House and that trench was full and I do mean FULL of buried treasure. I don’t mean the valuable sort of treasure. More like this was someone’s garbage pile. An actual garbage pile that had been buried over time, and now I’m donning my proverbial Indiana Jones hat and saying under…
Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 2, Demo
If you missed it, we are expanding our home gym. This space, that I affectionately refer to as the ‘little torture chamber,’ is located in our stone Carriage House. The part of the home gym we completed in 2024 looks like this now. The other half of the building, where we want to expand the home gym, looked like this (see photo below) last month. It was a tad bit creepy. When I say creepy, I mean that’s where the cave crickets lived. I think they are gone now. *fingers crossed* You can catch up on why we are doing this expansion and feast your eyes on all the creepy…
Entryway Refresh and a New Front Door Window
Last month we did an entryway refresh on our home and now I’m wondering why we waited so long? That’s how it always goes. I prefer to sit with things before I write about them. It gives me some perspective on the change. It helps minimize the number of instances where I have to apologize because whatever thing we changed didn’t hold up or perform as expected. Also, it gives us time to “laugh about this later” when things go wrong and they always do with our projects. I really want to meet these people where things seem to run like clockwork for them. What’s that like? How do they…
What We Found In Our Kitchen Wall – Copper Tiles
While repairing the trim in our kitchen we found 4-inch copper tiles behind the drywall. Surprise, surprise. It’s not exactly the hidden treasure I’ve been looking for in this old house of ours. I was thinking more along the lines of a stash of gold coins or Prohibition-era liquor, but copper tiles are pretty cool. The internet is curiously vague on the subject of metal wall tiles. There is plenty of information about metal ceiling tiles or tin ceilings as they were called. Fun fact, they weren’t made from tin for very long, but the name stuck. They were made from sheet metal. Tin ceilings gained popularity in the United…
