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Any old house is going to have problems, that’s a fact that most of us can relate to. We recognize that burden comes with the pleasure of an old home. Village Builders works on many old homes in Southern Maine, including this one on Line Road in Buxton. Here we find a typical early 1800’s farm house with a barn attached at the back. Originally constructed in 1812, this home was built with hand cut everything; posts, beams, joists, rafters, etc. Some of the original pieces are still intact today and are even being utilized in our renovation / addition project. Some key pieces are the old structural beams that now give the new kitchen ceiling its beautiful antique look (Image 1). This incorporation of original character while bringing a home into line with current style and technology is something we take pride in here at Village Builders. While we were able to easily make the old beams a nice decorative addition, the waves of the floors were not as easy.
As we mentioned before, the burden of history and age comes along with owning an old house. After 200 years of settling, there can be a substantial slope in a floor. This creates a challenge for contractors and homeowners alike. For the homeowners in this case, progress was set back a little bit, meaning that they were not able to get back into their home as quickly as they had hoped, and for us that meant shifting priorities to keep the project on track for the deadline: a working kitchen by Thanksgiving. In order to lay a new floor it is important that we had a more level surface to work on. This called for some changes. After shimming, shaving, trimming, replacing and rot removal, the new floor was installed and the kitchen was ready to use for the holiday.
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Another charm of this old house is the way is was insulated. As with many older homes, the reality is more how it was not insulated. This house had almost none, just a few scraps of newspaper here and there. The comfort and warmth of this home has been completely transformed by adding blown cellulose insulation to the roof and walls. This new insulation is expected to cut their heating bills by up to 80 percent!! As a pleasant bonus, this also has brought a level of comfort to the home that the current homeowners have never experienced. Their new kitchen will no longer be breezy, the living room will feel heated, and the dining room will no longer require sweaters!
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The little pieces of history within this house have proven especially interesting. Within the walls there was little to no insulation, but there were some snippets of the newspaper “The Maine Farmer”, from 1885. This gave the guys and the homeowner a funny peek into history. For instance, one of the news pieces was that a cow had been sold, and that was it. I guess big news in the late 1800’s is not quite what we may think of today! Also found in the house was a very early telephone, 1902 in fact. With the first phone call being made in 1876 and home telephones only available by the 1890’s, this was surely one of the first home telephones in the US. When sent to a telephone refurbishing specialist (furnisher of many prop phones in Hollywood) they proclaimed it was the oldest that they had ever seen! While it was missing a couple key pieces, the refurbisher can bring the phone back to life, even from 1902.
Throughout the project, upwards of 40 percent of the place has been occupied by contractors at any one time. Even so, it has been possible for the owners to stay in their home. It has created some interesting logistics at times. Their dog, Rauni (Finnish for the goddess of rainbows, is a Finnish Lapphund), greeted the guys every morning from her new living room abode, while the owners mainly lived out of the living room, dining room, and their bedrooms during the job. With two baths and a kitchen being shut down at various times, we managed to get through the job with only one day of complete bathroom shutdown and about three weeks with no kitchen sink. This was all made possible by a variety of temporary plumbing setups, completion of the the new downstairs bath / laundry prior to shutting down the old bathrooms, and most importantly, the patience and cooperation of the owners.
