Episode 5 of Doodletown Farm – “Retain! Recycle! Repurpose!”

This is Episode #5 in an eight part series chronicling Bob & Jack as they attempt to bring an 18th Century farmhouse into the 21st Century.  They quit the big city and moved to Columbia County and started a new business selling “interesting old stuff” at the Millerton Antique Center and on-line at doodletownfarm.com. Restoring the house was supposed to be a side project. It didn’t turn out that way.  – Joan

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Installment Five:  Retain! Recycle! Repurpose!

When we asked the contractor how we could help and save money, he said why don’t you start the demolition? Why not indeed.

I don’t know if you remember what June and July of 2008 were like.  I do.  They were very hot and humid.  Just the kind of weather you want for ripping out old walls and scooping up 200 years of cobwebs and rodent droppings.

In the course of the demolition we made a pact to retain as much of the old house as possible.  Luckily, the main structure of the house and the original chestnut beams, were in great shape.   In taking the house down to the shell—we had to remove all plumbing and electrical—we were surprised to find the initials I.L. and the date 1791 carved into one beam.  Since Ancram was part of the original Livingston land grant, we think that the house was possibly built for one of the overseers or many tenant farmers.

We started at the back of the house, ripping off the deck, the 7-11 room, the laundry lean-to and finally the kitchen lean-to.  At this point , the foot print of the house was back to where it was in the 18th-19th Century.

Then we moved upstairs and started ripping out the ceilings and walls.

Original beams were carefully removed and stored to be reused in the new expansion to help meld the new house into the old one.

We were not as lucky with the wide plank floor boards.  The old kitchen, dining room and the upstairs bedrooms all had random width heart pine board floors, up to 22 inches wide.  Sadly, they had been heavily used, repeatedly repaired, repainted and in some rooms, later Victorian parquet floors were laid on over them.  As a result, unless heavily sanded, which would have erased the beautiful worn surfaces, most of the boards were too chewed up to be re-laid as floors.  Carefully, we took out all the nails and repurposed them as wainscoting and pantry cabinets.

Where we would need new floors, we had two great sources.  The first was our next door neighbors who had brought in a portable mill and milled lumber from the property in hopes of using it in their dream house.  Unfortunately, that dream faded and they moved on but generously gave the milled lumber to us.  It was butternut, cherry, and poplar.  While not enough for the downstairs and its contiguous rooms, there were adequate amounts to give each bedroom upstairs its own distinctive floor.  For the floors on the first floor we found great vintage wide plank cherry from Vintage Flooring in Pine Plains.

For interior doors, again we recycled those that could be recycled.  For the other doors, we found two great sources:  The Bottle Shop Antiques outside of Millbrook and the Historic Albany Foundation. For about $50 per door we found solid and heavy, hand-made, age-appropriate doors, some in nineteenth century grained painted surfaces. Others were perfect except for the 200 years of paint that needed to be removed. (How did you spend January ‘10?)

The turned cherry newel post for the new barrel-stair came out of a similarly dated house that had been demolished in Stanfordville.

One of our favorite old finds was a pair of almost-matching, simply designed 19th century marble fireplace mantle pieces that Jack had found in Philadelphia. They had been sitting in our barn in 50 pieces awaiting the renovation.  It took the skill of a local mason (Curtis again) to put them together like two giant jigsaw puzzles. They now serenade each other across a center hall: one in the living room and one in the library.

A friend in Connecticut had given us some old slate which found new life in a powder room. We even found a use for six rolls of Donghia wallpaper that a friend in Manhattan had gifted us with six years ago after she had renovated her Village apartment.

As I mentioned, Dan, the contractor, was not only willing to work in old pieces into the construction, I think he actually liked it better than the start-from-scratch parts.