House Pictures

Well, long story, so to save time, I'll just tell you that I grew up in this house, and Dad and Mom bought this farm on auction in October after renting it for 30 years. They had bought a different farm last year, so Shay and I are going to buy half of this farm from them with a Beginning Farmer loan from the FSA. It'll be about 55 acres of cropland with about 10 acres of place and windbreaks. There are a bunch of old outbuildings that I will probably have removed, and I'd like to plant a new windbreak to the north of the house. Anyway. Here's a picture of the house:

The original part of the house is over 100 years old. Grandpa thinks it could be 125-135 years old, but no one is around who remember what the original part looked like or when it was built. The original part was what is now the kitchen, which is basically where the porch is. Where the big picture window is was originally a barn, Dad added on the part with the two windows, there's another bedroom added on, and the second story was an add on. It's been interesting tearing stuff out.

Here's me with my sweet safety goggles. These walls had horsehair plaster on them, and it only takes one plaster rocket to hit you in the face to realize taking one in the eye might not feel too hot.

I'm not sure if the above wall and the wall with the window are the original barn wood, but I know the wall that my brother Sam is working on here is an original barn wall:

Yes, the barn was attached to the house. Shay and I have decided to sand the walls and stain them, instead of painting, paneling or wallpapering. We want to use as much of the original house material as we can. The ceiling had tiles on it. We're going to paint it.

This picture looks into the kitchen, The kitchen had linoleum laid over the original wood flooring, and then had carpet laid over that. I'm going to sand the floors down and refinish them.

The above picture is from the kitchen looking into the barn/living room. Below is a picture of the west wall:

I forgot to mention that when the walls were plastered, arches were installed. I started ripping one out, and Dad finished it. There's another one to go. This picture is also looking into the kitchen:

And in one of the other rooms, we pulled up the carpet to find the most awesome linoleum ever.

Underneath? More of the original pine hardwood, which will also be sanded and refinished.

In the bedroom on the first floor, I tore out the carpet and ripped down the ceiling tiles as the roof had leaked at one point and some of them needed replaced. We also need a new window. It has some sweet paneling straight out of 1977, but to keep costs down, we're just going to paint it. Dad and I are going to put new ceiling tiles in tomorrow, hopefully. Mom primed the walls today. We need to get the ceiling, paint and window done so we can get new carpet installed.

Originally, Shay and I had talked about living in this house for 10-15 years until we could build a new house. The more we get into this project, the more we've discussed having someone completely renovate it instead of building a new one (when we get rich...). We live in a 35 year old manufactured home now, and I can't believe how much more solidly built this 100 year old house is. I guess I should've known better. The house has never been insulated, so I'm going to talk to some people about that next week. I'm also going to get soft water installed. It doesn't have central heating and air, and I have no idea if it could, but that's about all that will be lacking when we're done.