Our Plan

Firstly, we have no intention of restoring the house to how it would have looked when it was first built, as so many people try to do.  Over the years, there have been so many changes, both structural and cosmetic, that it would be unrealistic, and well beyond our budget.  While many of the original features remain, much is in poor condition, and there is much that has been lost; moldings in particular that are badly damaged or were removed and never replaced.  The house has also been seriously neglected for, probably, the last forty or fifty years.  So we decided to do something more radical. 

When complete, we hope the place will look as though it was thoroughly refurbished in the 1930s and 1940s, and then maintained like that until today.  This gives us the opportunity to include Victorian features as well as aspects of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism.  I guess this will not surprise many people who know me as I have collected Art Deco and Modernist furniture and decorative objects for the last 25 years!  I also need space to hang my collection of Graham Illingworth pictures, as well as many other works; around fifty pictures in all.  Then I need to display our collection of well over 200 vintage wine glasses, cordial glasses and champagne coupes, plus all the vintage cocktail shakers, figurines, cigarette cases and whatever else we have collected over the years.  Finally, there are thousands of books, thousands of LP records and CDs and hundreds of DVDs to accomodate.  Storage, storage and more storage. 
House & Home - The Plan

Contents:

In our original plan, we estimated ten years to complete the inside and outside of both the house and the 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, or were told.  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 horror of the combination, and 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.  In total, it cost a fortune that we did not anticipate. 
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 sometimes 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.  Once 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 demolishing some non-load bearing walls.  We should end up with a 20' x 15' kitchen, a good sized laundry room 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. 
 
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard