AsaHunt1830Farmhouse

OK, we thought, this is really gonna hurt. Folks are going into our house with crowbars and hammers, and they are gonna tear it apart. So we stayed away, hunkered down at our rental house across town, and waited for them to finish. And then one day we drove over, unlocked the side door. And walked in. It was awesome.

Where before there was a burned-out kitchen, there was now a clean open space. All the walls and cabinets and appliances were gone. The chimney was fully exposed. You could see the potential.

The only real architectural issue is the back stairs. They’ve always been steep and twisty – in a cool way – and don’t really get up to the back hall in the best way. Could an architect improve that?

All around and overhead, the windows and skylights are all blown out and destroyed, and they’ll need to be replaced. But with everything exposed, we can insulate things better, remedy some things that didn’t work quite right, and certainly improve on the late 80’s glass technology that our previous windows suffered from. All new? Bring it on.

And check out those chimneys! The house has three stacks and four hearths. Do we leave them as they were, or expose more of them? Wallboard, plaster, or brick? Keep the surrounds, or put them back? Lots to think about…

And everywhere there were cool little discoveries. Old-school construction. Evidence of previous fires and repairs. Funny little inconsistencies. And layers of additions and revisions.

At first we started dreaming big, imagining all the changes and improvements we could make. But then we whip-sawed back, and decided to mostly put the house back the way it had been. With maybe a few small improvements…