Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Our c. 1860 House -

Overview & Plan

Contents:

Going Forward

In our original plan, we estimated ten years to restore the inside and outside of both the house and the "Gentleman's Barn".  We intended to do most of the work ourselves, using contractors only for major projects beyond our skills.  Despite having had the house "inspected" before buying it, the reality is that it is in much worse condition than we thought.  We have had to do a lot of infrastructural work before embarking on the cosmetics.   As you can see in the photograph, it was painted bright yellow with electric blue trim.  The picture does not really reflect the true yellow-ness; it was vivid; it screamed at you.  The paint was applied very badly, with drips and runs, and no attempt to ensure neat cut-lines between the yellow and blue.  There were leaks in the main house roof, the roof of the porch and the roof of the mud room, which we discovered only after the first serious storm.  We had to have them all replaced.  Then the roof in the barn was damaged by branches from adjacent trees, so we had to replace that and have the trees trimmed back as well. 
Generally, we are working on one room at a time, but this is not always possible.  We are limited by the weather when doing outside work, so replacing windows is only feasible from around May to October.  The house does not have central air conditioning, so in Summer, the heat is sometime so brutal that all work comes to a stop.  We are detailing all the work we do, or have done, on a room-by-room basis in the Renovations section. 

We started on the entrance lobby, master bedroom and the guest bedroom, as these were all particularly bad areas, and all required the services of a professional plasterer.  I also embarked on a major project to replace a number of windows that were in disastrous shape.  We then moved on to the master bathroom, then Deborah's study followed by my study.  We started on the upstairs guest room in 2009, but could not finish replacing the windows before winter.  I completed the library over the winter, and have started to finish off the upstairs guest room.  I have also started some renovations in the porch, where we have removed one of the doors to the outside, which was badly rotted, and put in display shelving and new windows.  One the upstairs guest room is complete, the next projects for 2010 are the living and dining rooms; at least I have replaced the windows there already. 

The kitchen is a huge project as it requires stripping out to the joists and studs, and combining some of the minor rooms into the kitchen proper.  We should end up with a 20' x 15' kitchen, a good sized laundry and a pantry.  I will have to work on the mud room at the same time, and that also requires new floor, walls, windows and ceiling.  We hope to start that project in 2011. 

It is obvious to us that we will not complete the house in the ten years originally planned.  We are now taking it day-by-day, and spending a lot more time in other pursuits, and a lot less time on the rebuilding.  I hope the pages on the individual rooms are interesting. 
We started to paint the outside of the house and the barn ourselves, but decided to have a contractor come in to finish them, together with the restoration that is needed on the eaves.  Hopefully, we will finish by the end of summer, 2011.