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Antiques! => Antique Questions Forum => Topic started by: talesofthesevenseas on January 30, 2020, 08:05:06 AM
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Ghopper1924 wanted to know what the interior of my old house is like and asked if I would post some photos. You guys will recognize a lot of the things in the house, as many of them made their way onto the pages of this website over the years. There are a lot of little details you guys might find interesting, so I will throw stuff in here as I think of it. I'll start you guys out with the real estate video of the house from before we bought it, which gives you a good feel for the whole place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjxEYx6STu0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjxEYx6STu0)
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Upstairs guest bedroom
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Damn, that house is even more awesome than I remembered!!
Thanks for taking the time to post that video, as well as your photographs.
Once I got in that front door, I don't think I'd ever leave. Just beautiful! Love it!
Keep those photos coming.
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Wow....much more fabulous than I had imagined. On stress days just listen to the creek/river. Like vacation at home!
You are blessed to have this fabulous piece of the past that extends into the present/future.
Do you use the cottage?
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The cottage was in very rough shape when we bought the place. It has an interesting story. Part of the cottage sits over a below ground summer kitchen where they used to cook. It was a much smaller building originally. You can see it in a couple of the old photos. At some point a second piece was added to the small building. It appears to have been an outbuilding moved against the original building. In the 1950s it was a cottage for one of the daughters as she was becoming independent. After she grew up it fell into disrepair, and owners in the 1990s did some minor work to it, but never finished it. The owners before us used it only for storage for 14 years. It was not in a livable state.
However, it had very good, sturdy "bones" and a lot of potential. We had it inspected when we bought the place. So when my stepfather passed away, we offered it to my mother that she could live in it if renovated for her. We had it done with lots of attention to make it safe for a senior. We added a bedroom with a little porch on the back and a screen porch on the front. All redone inside for mom, but the beautiful, old rough-hewn beams were left untouched. It came out great and I'll post some photos of the cottage next. In the attached photo, you can see the little outbuilding over the summer kitchen as it originally was. It is to the right of the stone house. That was the beginning of the cottage.
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Here is Mom and her cottage today. Can you see the little outbuilding? It is still there. It is the part of the cottage on the left of the photo that has a bush in front of it.
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Great work!!
If it's not already, you should seriously consider putting this property on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
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How exciting that you were able to re-life the cottage and have new life in it for your Mom!!!!
It really looks nice and keeps the historic style!
Admirable!!!!
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How soon can I move in Tales ?? You can just adopt me if I can live there !! Love it !!
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Lets go Mart!
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I am ready !! Just need to pack a few clothes !!
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The next few posts are the progress photos of the cottage. First, here is the cottage as it was:
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More "before pics" of the cottage
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Construction starts with a tear-out, then we start building mom's bedroom on the back side:
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Mom's bedroom, exterior/interior, adding a little porch off her bedroom that overlooks the creek below:
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The kitchen going in. The kitchen is in the part of the house that is the little outbuilding mentioned in the first few photos. Then a progress photo in the living room and the porch going on. The next set will be things starting to come together.
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Progress...
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and final pics of the cottage
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Beautiful. What a perfect job you've done!
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I love love love it!!!!
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Thanks all, we did a lot of things to enable her physically. The towel rack in the bathroom is actually a second grab bar, there are smooth, level transitions from room to room and all the electrical outlets are a little higher up than average. I loved those old, hand-hewn beams in the living room and those were left untouched. She loves her cottage and splits time between the cottage and her senior apartment in town.
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Nice! It sounds like she lives a wonderful life, thanks in no small part to you!
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Its a lovely cottage !!
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Back inside the stone house... Here's the kitchen.
I love that the previous owners stayed true to the old time look of the house and didn't put a modern kitchen in. However, I am in a quandary over it. Behind the wall on the left side of the first photo is an old cooking hearth. I would love to uncover it, but to do so is to open a perpetual can of worms and would mean a major remodel to a kitchen that I already love.
To get a sense of if it would be worth it, I got a cheap endoscope and looked behind the wall. I located one small opening in the stones that appears to be a small warming oven... then I dropped the endoscope and it broke. However I learned that it is not one large hearth as we thought. It is also not where we expected it to be at ground level, but is apparently raised or filled in. We're just not sure at this point. We drilled a couple of small holes and came right against stone where we expected to find an open void. I need to buy another scope.
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More gorgeous work. Interesting about your hearth. Just one more reason why old houses are the best! :)
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Once you start changing things you can run into all kinds of problems with new building codes. If you love what you have be careful.
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There are a few things I'd like to do- I'd like to expose the original floorboards and remove the modern floor tile. I would also like to install an antique sink and facet set that I've been carrying around for years!