Remodeled an 1800's farm house

My wife's aunt and uncle both passed away a few years ago and willed their daughter their 80 acre farm. She didn't want the property so my wife and I purchased it at a decent price.

Here's the original house. The center section is the original house from the 1800's and over the years since e it has had additions added to both sides.


My wife and I along with help from her father and a couple others completely gutted the house. We tore out everything all the way down to the verticle plank walls. It was a slow process that took almost a year since we could only work on it nights and weekends when not at our full time jobs. Once we had it fully gutted we hired a contractor to do the full remodel.


It's been a whole lot of work and almost two years start to finish, but on Sunday we were finally able to spend the first night in our new home. The main home is half of the first floor and the whole upstairs and there's an inlaw sweet on the other half of the first floor. My wife and our 4 kids are living in the main house and her parents sold their house and moved in with us on the inlaw side.

I'm happy to finally be in, but now the real work of cleaning up the many outbuildings and surrounding 80 acres starts.

 

Congrats!

 

beautiful ! need more pictures

 

Nice! We would love to see some interior shots, especially from the oldest part of the house.

 

I'll get some more pictures posted later. Most of them that I took are on my computer and that's one of the boxes that still needs to be unpacked.

 

Yeah that barn or structure to the left looks like a huge fire hazard. I am sure there is a lot of lumber you could get out of it or there are persons who will tear it down for you for the lumber.

 

Sounds good. I bet there is alot of history there.

 

Speaking of the old lumber that @IowaGuy mentioned.....it would be cool to salvage some to make something like a picture frame for an old photo or a small table or something for the porch.

 

F'g awesome. I imagine that as you continue on to the outbuildings and the rest of the property, there will be new finds and ideas coming. Good job.

 

My old neighbour's bought an old house not far from here to remodel it. When they pulled the flooring, it was covered in newspaper articles from the 1920's, when newspaper was used for insulation. It was awesome to see. You could still read most of it....the dates, car ads, 15 cent movie tickets, grocery store prices, etc. It made the news....I'll see if I can find it.

 

Congrats! Would love to see more pics - I'm kind of an old house geek.

 

might be able to re-use some for some interior decoration on the wall

something like that for the man cave...

 

Going from the living room to kitchen on inlaw side was just a 32" doorway. We had the contractor extend it to an 8ft opening which required cutting out a beam and replacing it with a new engineered beam. Part of what was cut out got repurposed for the fireplace mantle.

 

We found newspaper under the plaster in one part of the house, but nothing that had a date on it. Knowing when that addition was added the newspapers would have been around the 1930's.

 

No bumps, but squeaks. Lol. Caught 3 field mice in traps under the stoves already and our cat got one.

 

Awesome!!! That is a lot of work. By the looks of the place it had a great outcome!!!

 

Here's the backside of the house before the new siding went on. Best shot to see the different additions and ages. Middle section is ~1850 and was built with verticle planks that run from 1st floor sill to 2nd floor top plate. Addition on either side was early 1900's, around 20 or 30, and built with horizontal planks. Far left side we had to replace due to rot from a roof leak but was an addition in late 1950's and was regular 2x4 framing.


All 3 plank sections are double layered solid walls. 1x10-18" verticle or horizontal planks on exterior and an interior layer of 1x10-18" verticle planks with horse hair plaster on top.

There were a few places inside where the additions were noticeable as well once the plaster was removed from old window openings that were boarded over.


Every wall in the house was studded out for running electric, water, etc in the walls. 2x4 on all exterior walls and 1x3 on interior walls. After all wires and pipes were ran cavities were filled with spray foam.

This is the kitchen on our side and I really wanted to leave the ceiling open, but that word wasn't passed to the plumbers so they had holes drilled thru a bunch of beams and their pex ran thru the ceiling for upstairs bathroom before I caught them. Ended up with drywall on the ceiling as a result.


I'll post some finished interior pics later today.

 

That really is awesome that you and your family took this project on.

 

That is awesome. Congrats

 

Awesome work! I've always enjoyed seeing old houses tastefully updated.

 

Here's the finished interior. Main house where my wife and our kids live.
Upstairs:




Downstairs main house:




In-law suite that my wife's parents moved into:

 

Wow! Absolutely amazing Luke!

 

Great job Luke.

 

I won't bore you with all of the pics, but here are a few before and during shots to give an idea of what we had to work with. There were several spots that walls and ceilings were so rotted we had to do some structural repairs and changes.


The original stairs we managed to save and have refinished.

 

Excellent...love it and the amount of land is incredible!

SPP

 

Thanks for the compliments everyone! It was a whole lot of work the last two years, but turned out to be well worth the hassle and wait. The fun is just beginning though as now that we are moved in we have two barns and several smaller out buildings to work on getting fixed up.

 

very nice job ! has so much more character than a cookie cutter home

 

Wow...congrats man. Looks GREAT!