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?
A sweet hello from Frog Hollow Farm. This project certainly sounds like a challenge, but I know you two are up to it! That stream that flowed through the basement was probably a positive thing at one point, maybe a cool place to store milk and other dairy foods? Looking forward to more pics! Ciao, bella!
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