5 Years of Restoring an 1898 Farmhouse

How one old house changed our lives and inspired Reorigination

Where This Story Started

Back in 2020 we wrote our first blog post and titled it Are We Crazy? 

At the time we had just decided to take on the restoration of an 1898 farmhouse, and honestly it felt like the only question we could keep asking each other. Between the start of a pandemic, a devastating tornado in our town, and the decision to take on a historic house that clearly needed a lot of work, the question “Are we crazy?” came up more than once.

5 years later I can confidently say the answer was probably yes.

But it turns out a little craziness can push you to do some pretty incredible things.

This house has given us more stories, lessons, and unexpected adventures than we ever could have imagined. It has also given us a lot to share, which is exactly why I am excited to start this blog journey again.

We are still learning as we go, but sometimes the best way to understand a journey is to share it while you are still in the middle of it.

How We Found the House

If you’re curious how this started, the truth is, we were not out searching for an old house. It found us. 

This whole story actually started through our friendship with the Baird family. We had grown close through church, and their family had owned the property for generations. 

One afternoon after lunch they invited us to come see the house.

I had admired the property from afar for years growing up and always wondered about its story. That day we finally stepped inside.

As we walked through the rooms you could feel the years it had quietly carried. The floors creaked in places. The fireplaces stood like reminders of another era. Every corner hinted at the lives that had passed through it before us, including Mr. Baird, who had lived there over a decade earlier before the house eventually sat vacant.

We did not walk through the property that day expecting to buy the house. We were simply grateful to see and share a place that was special to this family.

But sometimes a place reaches out and grabs hold of you before you realize what is happening.

Not long after that visit, we found ourselves doing something that, on paper, made very little sense. We gave up a wonderful home in a great neighborhood to take a chance on a historic farmhouse with a long legacy and an even longer list of unknowns.

At the time we thought we were buying a project.

What we were really stepping into was a relationship with a house that had already lived many lives before us.

What We Thought We Were Getting Into

The funny part about all of this is that we really went in blind.

We did not have a background in restoring historic homes. What we had was optimism, a rough plan, and probably more confidence and anxiety than experience.

Like most people starting something new, we made a few very confident (and slightly dumb) assumptions.

We originally thought we could get the house to a livable updated state within about a year or 2. At the time, a year sounded like a long time. We assumed that with enough focus we could make meaningful progress fairly quickly.

Financially we also had a number in mind. After selling our previous home we worked through the financial chess moves and landed on what felt like a reasonable budget.

Then we started talking to contractors and quickly realized our numbers and their numbers were living in completely different universes.

That was the moment we realized something important. If we were going to do this, we were going to have to learn a lot of the work ourselves.

So that is exactly what we did.

We slowly started collecting the basic tools and books that helped us learn how to work on an old house ourselves.

We soon discovered that restoring an old house rarely moves in straight lines. It often feels like working inside out and upside down, sometimes with another house in the way at the same time. Every project reveals something new (good, bad, and even ugly), and every decision requires patience, research, and sometimes even a complete rethink.

We wanted to respect the craftsmanship that existed long before us while still updating the house in ways that made sense for modern living. Balancing those 2 things has been one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest joys.

The timelines became unpredictable. The financials still are. And along the way we have certainly had our share of hiccups. I’ll spare you the long list for now. 

We try to take most of it in stride with a good dose of humor, though some days that humor arrives a few hours or even months after the frustration. What excited me most from the beginning was not just the house itself but the idea that we would be doing this together. JM brings the carpenter mindset, the builder and problem solver. I tend to see the design, the feeling, and the larger vision.

Some days we celebrate small victories and milestones.

Other days we are dusty, frustrated, and wondering what exactly possessed us to take this on in the first place, but the goal has always stayed the same… slowly shape this old house into a place where we can continue building and sharing our lives.

What Restoring an Old House Really Means

From the beginning it became clear that this house was going to be something much bigger than a renovation project.

If someone is looking for a quick before and after transformation, restoring a house like this probably is not the path for them.

There are homes that simply need a facelift. Those projects can be satisfying in their own way.

But this house was never going to be that kind of project.

This house and land was part of a century farm that once supported corn and cattle. Today we are the 9th generation to steward the home. When you begin to understand that kind of legacy, it naturally brings a sense of responsibility.

I often think about the families who lived here before us. The work they poured into the land. The decisions they made while building the house. The craftsmanship they left behind in every detail.

They do not build houses like this anymore, and in many ways they cannot.

Throughout this process we have discovered that much of what exists inside this house represents crafts that are slowly disappearing. The materials, the construction methods, and the patience required to build this way have largely been replaced by faster and cheaper alternatives.

Which makes what remains here even more valuable.

This house is finite. There will not be more of these materials. There will not be more of this craftsmanship created in quite the same way again.

So the question was never simply how to update the house.

The real question became how to honor it while making it our own.

That meant learning how to restore things instead of automatically replacing them. It meant researching and teaching ourselves skills that fewer people practice today. Sometimes it meant choosing the slower and harder path simply because it was the right one for the house.

Some of our earliest projects made that clear quickly.

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase through them at no additional cost to you.

Along the way we spent a lot of time learning from books, old house guides, and the wisdom of those who have restored homes before us. (If you're curious, you can explore some of the books that shaped our thinking here.)

I remember the early months and years just cleaning and sealing parts of the house that animals had taken over. There was debris, feces, holes, hoards of nutshells, and more than a few encounters with raccoons, skunks, mice, and snakes. At one point it felt like the house had been hosting its own wildlife convention for quite a while.

It became obvious very quickly that this was not a project for the faint of heart.

But somewhere in the middle of the crumbling mayhem, the learning, and the problem solving, something else started to take shape.

Why Reorigination Was Born

What we were doing did not fit neatly into the usual categories.

It was not renovation.

It was not flipping.

And it was not purely restoration.

What we were really doing was giving this house another beginning without erasing its past.

That realization led to our own created word and philosophy: Reorigination.

To originate is to begin.

To re-originate is to give something another beginning.

Reorigination explores how homes, materials, and meaningful objects can be given renewed purpose and another chapter.

At the heart of the project is a belief that what is aged or overlooked is not lost. It simply awaits another beginning.

The work is guided by a simple process:

Remember. Reimagine. Recreate.

We do not pretend there is only 1 way to restore an old house, but what we can offer is the story of how we have chosen to care for this one!

Beginning Year 6

This year marks the beginning of year 6 with this house.

In many ways it still feels like we are just getting started.

Over the past 5 years we have learned how to repair fireplaces, restore and build windows, understand tongue and groove construction, add plumbing and electrical to spaces that never had it, and make dozens of decisions about what to restore and what to replace. Most of those lessons came through a mix of research, trial and error, and occasionally standing in the middle of a room wondering what the original builders or a simple farmer would have done.

We will be sharing many of those lessons here in the weeks ahead! 

Some upcoming posts will explore the philosophy behind restoring a historic home. Others will walk through the projects themselves and what we learned along the way.

We will also share the pieces that make a house feel collected and lived in, from antique finds to the small details that help old spaces feel alive again.

And along the way we will share the tools, materials, and pieces that have helped us bring this house back to life. (You can find some of our go-to tools and materials in our Reorigination Amazon Store.)

If you thought we might have disappeared over the last few years, I promise we are still here! Still working, still learning, and still showing up for this house.

The question may have started as "Are we crazy?" but somewhere along the way it turned into fully embracing that, “We love a little crazy!”

So if you are new here, welcome to the story.

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