Once upon a time, back in the early 1800′s, a small family picked out a nice plot of land to settle. The menfolk cut down some trees and shaped some timbers. The womenfolk helped pull up some rocks from a nearby stream. Together, they built a small farmhouse. It was a modest house, kitchen, living room, porch, cellar, and a crawlspace upstairs just tall enough for the children to stand upright. Soon, the crawlspace became bedrooms.
Fast-forward through a few decades. The farmhouse is passed down and sold. Land is surveyed and plotted. A lake is dug. Railroad tracks curve around the perimeter.
In the 1930′s, a small family moves in and they take a ridiculous amount of photos. A new car. A new bathing suit. A new hairstyle. Siding on their little house. Adventures in the lake. Chickens in a newly constructed coop. Hay in the surrounding 23 acres. The family sold it and flourished for a while.
Sixty years later, the house is sold again. This time to a couple who enjoy renovating old properties. They rip off the siding and are delighted to find original stone and timberwork underneath. They take off the original roof and replace it with a metal one, also extending the crawlspace to a full two stories. They add a garage. They add another addition with a new living room, dining room, office, and a master suite upstairs. They dig out a full basement. The chicken coop and barn have fallen into disrepair. The hay farm is gone, replaced by acres of cedar trees.
The wooden siding is the addition. The stonework in the middle is the original farmhouse.
In the late 1990′s, an Englishman, his new wife, and her two children from a previous marriage come look at the house and the land. His wife trains horses and they see the potential for having a boarding stable. The children are tremendously excited about the lake and the land and the huge house that just looks cool. So, they buy it.
So, my freshman year of high school, I moved into a farmhouse.
View from the front porch. Old outdoor kitchen, wood pile, and (unfinished) Guest House.
Wood pile with the old chicken coop, guest house and old garage in the background
Outdoor kitchen
Creek
The Lake
I moved away when I went to college. I moved to Atlanta after that. Now, nearly thirteen years later, I have returned to that same farmhouse with my husband and baby daughter. It’s surreal to be living in the same bedrooms, eating in the same kitchen, walking these same grounds… I’m still processing and getting used to the idea that we [live] here now.
However.
In the meanwhile, we finally fixed our rooms up.
My old bedroom - Master Bedroom and Nursery
Yes, the rooms are enormous.
Standing in the nursery corner
Olivia's space
I picked this room when we first moved in because it’s at the end of the hall upstairs and it’s hardwood. It’s smaller than my brother’s room and he had direct access to our bathroom, but I loved my privacy and I loved the hardwoods. And I adored that shelf. See the shelf on the wall in the pictures above? That’s where the original roof met the house. The renovators just capped it and turned it into a shelf that runs the entire length of the hallway and the outside of my bedroom.
Extinct Red Pine Floorboards. My room and the hallway has these.
My brother's old room - Living Room, Craft Area, Library, Media Center and Office
Standing in the Office area
My craft table
Office
The rooms are L-shaped, with a closet in each corner. So all of our clothing, old baby stuff, and kitchen boxes are stored in those closets. We plan on repainting both rooms at some point. We want to leave them as nice guest rooms when we move out, so we have ideas.
I plan on filling this jar with buttons
I wasn’t going to take a picture of the bathroom because, well…bathroom. However, that shelf in my room and the hallway? It’s in the bathroom because that’s where the original house ended. But, they didn’t encase that one. So this is what’s underneath the wood and drywall:
Original Timber and Plaster-work. See the chisel marks?
Neat, huh?
Anyway, that’s the skinny on where we live. I’ll try to get more pictures in the coming weeks of the horses and the rest of the farm.
So I leave you with this. This has been my gentle reminder throughout this whole move and Stephen being away and Olivia adjusting.
Always
