Stripping

There are five fireplaces in the original house - two in the basement, one in the living room and two on the first floor. The two on the first floor were covered in plaster and we chiseled some holes in them and discovered they were both also made of stone so we just had to uncover them. The plaster turned out to be three inches thick so we were lucky we had a big, strong son who likes to destroy things. Brad jackhammered all the plaster off not only the fireplaces, but also the wall in the kitchen. Our stone mason, Vince Iacampo (www.stonemason.org) from Long Valley, took one look at them and said "cover them up". Look at the photos and you may agree with him. I knew I couldn't live with the fact that right there in my bedroom was a stone fireplace but hidden underneath plaster. Vince took another look and told us he would try to restore both fireplaces. The sandblaster, Jim, came up in his 1950 studebaker truck and sandblasted the fireplaces and the chimneys in the two bedrooms on the second floor. That not only cleaned them up but brought out the color in the stone as well. How do you think they came out?

The First Scary Steps

Well, the house was finally ours.  Yikes!  Now the hard part.  I had gone to a home show with my friend Becky a couple of years ago and remembered I had a card from an architectural firm that had a booth there.  Why did I keep their card?  The stone houses, barns and carriage houses they had built or restored were amazing.  I gave them a call and made an appointment for them to come and look at our little house.  The firm is Archer and Buchanan located in West Chester, PA.  They were very pleasant to work with and came up with a great plan.  Peter, Chad and Michele were great.  I highly recommend them and have provided their website.  To get started we decided to lower the ground floor fourteen inches to give us more ceiling height and to relocate the stairway.  When the builder, Jeff of J. Hill Construction (they don't have a website but they are located in Oxford, NJ), dug out the floor we realized the big, beautiful stone pillar that was holding up the house was balanced precariously on one small rock.  Down it came.  We also found that the hearths of the two massive fireplaces hadn't any footings - they were resting on dirt.  New footings.  Were we ever going to get out of the basement?  During a rainstorm, it filled up with six inches of water.  My husband Gary, looked a little peaked especially when our new neighbor, Brenda, came over and told us that as a teenager she used to babysit there and she remembered a STREAM RUNNING THROUGH THE HOUSE.  She said she would lift a little lid and underneath was a STREAM.  Jeff found a pipe coming into the house from who knows where and filled it with cement and no more water.  At least not so far.  Here are some photos of the ground floor.  Can you see the possibilities?  No?

I love to walk.  One day, about four years ago, I decided to walk a little farther than usual and continued almost to the other side of the mountain.  There behind a big hay field was a stone house and barn.  I could just see a little of it as the property sloped down away from the road and the yard was quite overgrown.  Still, I thought it was beautiful.  I remember going on about it to my husband and then put it away.  Two years ago we were out for a ride and as we approached the house we saw a foreclosure sign.  I was already moved in.  We called the realtor and toured the property the next day.  It was a royal mess inside the house as you can see.  We decided it was just too much work for us to take on and felt almost relieved that we walked away from it.  In the middle of the night, my husband said "Maybe we should do it" knowing that I too would be up thinking about it.  The price was too high and when we came back from Italy, the house had been sold to someone else.  Now we really wanted it.  I went back and forth with the realtor for months always reminding her if the sale did not go through to please call us.  A couple of days before Father's Day she called.  I put a deposit on it without telling my husband and gave him a huge Father's Day surprise with champagne on ice set up behind the house.                                                                       

In the beginning

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog.  I never thought I would start a blog but we are renovating an old stone house and thought it would be a neat thing to chronicle.  Some of you out there who may be renovating, thinking about renovating or who just love old houses might be interested in our project.  I will try to include links to sources I've found while relating stories - some funny, some not so funny - of what we go through trying to add on and update a three hundred year old house.  This is the way we found it.