Home Tour

At this month's Boone County Old House Forum we toured one of the member's home, a beautiful two story American Foursquare farm house. Located out of town, it was built in 1911 and had four bedrooms. Their 20 acres also included the old dairy barn which now houses the wife's beloved horse. Since he's worked as an architect and still has all his CAD equipment, we were treated to architectural renderings of the original floor plans compared to the current layout. Over the past thirteen years they have updated the downstairs bathroom, totally renovated the kitchen and repaired/replaced most of the failing plaster.
They had volumes of photos, all sorted by room and presented in a before/after composition. The kitchen was temporarily moved to the dining room (plumbing and electric included) while the kitchen was gutted. Doors were salvaged and reused in new locations and sagging floors were reinforced.
But a couple of the really impressive things were the woodwork and his homemade drywall lifter. All the wood trim had been sanded, stained and top coated. They had taken the time to test several stain combinations and finally found a "home brew" cocktail that best matched the original. And in the spirit of DIY he made a fascinating contraption out of 1x4 and PVC that would allow him to hang drywall on the ceiling all by himself.
Like us, they are only the second family to own the home but were able to develop a relationship with the previous generation. They have some old photos of the place but are wanting to research the home more. Even though attendance was low, we had a great time (attested by the three hours spent visiting) and even learned a thing or two.

Comments

  1. You tease! You tell a story about a wonderful Foursquare and then you don't show any pictures... Shame! :)

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