OMG I’m So Excited!
Yes, I really just typed OMG.
Shalom and I stopped at the Windham Historical Society last weekend after visiting the Heritage Festival in Newfane. I’ve been meaning to stop in there to see if I could get any information about our house, and since they are closed all winter I thought it was a good chance to get in there before it’s too late.
About all the woman there could do was provide a stack of photos from our town, but we were able to find one photo of our house that’s about 100 years old. The unfortunate part is that the only option she had for us to get a copy was to bring in our camera and take a picture of it. Of course we didn’t have ours, so I have another week to get down there before it’s too late.
The lightbulb goes off.
After drooling over that photo for a while, on the way home I remembered that our neighbors once told me they had at least one old photo of our house. Our neighbors are the pastor, and his family of a church just down the road. The church recently celebrated its 200th anniversary, so they collected many pictures from the area. So today I decided (after cleaning up the mess from our firewood pile) to walk over and see what they had. Below is what I found. It’s not the same exact photo we saw at the Historical Society, but it’s from almost the same location, with a slightly different angle. I’m assuming they are both from the same photographer.
Our house in all it’s glory.
Please click the image to see it full sized!
The picture was taken from what now is a beaver pond, but used to be part of a farm’s field. I’m not 100% sure if this side of the road was part of “our” farm, but the brook that feeds the beaver ponds runs right below the road, at the bottom of the hill.
What have I learned?
What really has me excited is that the photo shows what the original porch looked like, wrapping all the way around the front of the house. The porch no longer exists, except for a small section alongside the road. From what I’ve heard from others, the porch was torn off only within the last 10 years or so. I’d love to rebuild it, because Shalom has become addicted to buying rocking chairs at the auction, and we really need a place to put them. It’ll also help reshape the house. Right now the front facing roof looks out of place. It’s very large, and throws the proportions of the house off. Also note the tree in the middle of the porch. The tree is no longer there. I don’t know which went first, the tree, the porch, or maybe the tree took out the porch, but I really like how someone obviously wanted the porch, but didn’t want to cut down the tree to build it.
We also have now confirmed that our garage wasn’t always positioned as it is now. The far left of the house in this photo shows a blank wall. After repeatedly shoveling out the snow that was plowed in by our town road crews, I wanted to put the garage doors on the North side of the garage. (Basically just around the corner from this photo.) Now I have evidence to prove that doing so would help bring our house closer to its original look.
Bigger and better!
One thing we’ve always know is that our house once stood on a working farm. I’ve had all sorts of ideas for building a barn. Whether it’s for actual farm use, or as a workshop, there have been plenty of ideas in my head. What I never envisioned was a barn as large as the one behind the house in this photo. Did you view the large version? If not you probably didn’t even notice. Look closely above the house. Just to the right of the tree in the foreground you can see the barns peek sneaking into the shot. Now my mind is really running wild with my dreams of a barn!
Comparing
This is a photo I took in May. You can see what I meant about the garage doors. Also, there is a new chimney on the road-side of the house. The cookstove chimney has also been relocated, amongst many other small details. The final image below from April shows the big ugly roof. A porch along that side of the house would definitely help out.
Anything else?
Please share other changes you notice. I’ve been looking over this photo quite a bit to find things, and have a good list going, but what else do you see that has changed? Share with us in the comments below.
Tell us what you are really thinking... leave a comment below.
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October 20th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Are those shutters on the upper windows and on the side windows by the garage in the old picture? You definitely need to put the porch back on!
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 am
I agree that the porch needs to be replaced. If it’s in the budget, I’d get rid of the new chimney – the house really looked lovely without it – but I do understand that it would be really expensive.
The biggest thing that I notice is the movement of the two windows (and disappearance of one) on the left side of the house (when standing on the road, looking at the house). I think that the original placement looks better.
Visually, the best thing that I think you could do for the house right now would be to remove the aluminum siding. It would really clean up the lines, especially around the windows. Right now, it feels like the windows just blend into the house, but the removal of the aluminum siding would allow them to stick out a bit and be sharper. With prices for scrap aluminum as there are right now, you ought to be able to get a good chunk of cash for the siding as scrap metal – for other houses, I’ve heard figures in the ballpark of $750 to $2000. That ought to cover the cost of painting the wood underneath and replacing any damage wood.
I’d be really interested to see what the side door used to look like – the shape of it right now doesn’t provide me much insight into that.
I apologize if I’ve been rambling, but I love your house and wish I could find something like that around here. Alas, there simply aren’t any farmhouses of that vintage around here, and the ones that are a bit later (say, the 1850s) are simply too small for my family.
Keep up the good work.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Jennifer All of the shutters on the house need to be replaced. Right now there are ugly plastic shutters on the front windows, but when the porch was in place there weren’t. Most of the windows will need to be replaced or rebuilt, so the shutters will happen then.
@Christopher There isn’t much of a budget right now, but in time it will happen. THere will need to be alot of planning before relocating the chimney. Right now it serves both our oil and wood furnaces, and a fireplace. With winter coming, we can do some planning, but I’m not going to dare remove anything. Same goes for most projects as I don’t want to make any opening where the subfreezing air can come in.
Many of the windows were relocated as part of adding the chimney. Unfortunately the siding isn’t aluminum, it’s vinyl. If it were aluminum, I’d already have ripped it off and sold it to help pay for wood as a replacement.
Don’t worry about the rambling. We love hearing other peoples opinions, and helps us figure out how we are going to move forward with everything. About 30 years from now we should have all the basic stuff completed!
October 28th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Loved the picture of Your house in all its glory. How wonderful the porch was. Now you can see why Shalom can’t pass up a good old rocker! Porch Porch Porch
We really really want to put one across the front of our house.