Thanks for taking time and posting all this information. This is such a great resource and I use it constantly. Tom in Clayton, NY

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Beginnings

Posted to Gypsy-Love by Jennifer in Highland, NY on 3/12/2007

We have a tiny [700 sq foot] old [150 years] farmhouse on a beautiful acre of land in the heart of a 300-year-old family holding in the Hudson Valley, with huge spruce trees and an old garden, about a half mile from a golf course. The house has great potential, but it's also tiny and old, and the victim of many amateur repairs.

I'm fortunate in that I am a freelance artist who started out doing drafting for contractors, plus I've worked doing all kinds of interior finish work, and was living with/engaged to a very experienced contractor for ten years. I worked on many jobs with him, including doing tile, finish work, and major repairs on dozens of old houses - everything from replacing powder-post-beetle-eaten sills to tiling around kidney shaped Jacuzzis and building glass brick walls. So I know a bit. I have lots of ideas for converting this place into a small jewel.

Last January, my soon-to-be husband came here from Kansas to be with me - we're getting married end of May. He knows a lot about plumbing, and has all the energy I lack [Lyme's disease]. Between us we make a good team, and we like working together.

We made an offer on this house in May, planning to have the summer to get a bunch of things done before the snow flew, but of course the woman dragged her feet for four months and we didn't close till the end of August, and then we had a wet Fall. We'd planned on getting the exterior painted [a 20-year paint job - tinted oil-based primer, two oil-based topcoats] before winter. We got the north side and the front done, the two sides that were the worst off. The woman who sold us this place was definitely doing the quick fix. I really know my paint after all that work I've done and could tell she'd used a cheap solid-body stain over peeling paint in an effort to avoid doing remediation properly. It was all falling off the house. So we'll have to go invest in the balance of our oil-based paint before it's all recalled in two months, and knock out the rest of the place over the first few months this spring.

This year's projects, beside finishing up the exterior paint, include excavating and parging the stone foundations, working on the insulation [which we've found all the gaps in over this last winter], refinishing the existing bedrooms, turning the one that is too small for human habitation into a laundry/sewing room, and adding a passive solar sun room off the back [southeast] corner of the house to be the eat-in part of the kitchen.

The kitchen is horrible, tiny, and completely impractical, and will have to be completely redone... I just entered a local "ugliest kitchen" contest with all confidence we'll win it. I already have the plans in my head, and will have to draw them up for the permits soon. The sunroom, which in summer is in the shade of a huge Catalpa tree, won't be too hot, and will be slab heated and tied into the existing baseboard water heat, so that the sun coming in in winter will soak into the trombe/slab floor and add heat to the existing propane system. Already with just a slate patio outside the kitchen, we get nice morning warmth in winter - this will make it solid.

Next year we’ll do a big addition on the north side of the house, which while maintaining its character and general feel, will double the size of the place. The ground floor will be the new living room, with a wood stove on the north wall [am hoping to barter for a fieldstone chimney with a stonemason friend of mine], a new entryway, and a half-bath and pantry. Upstairs will be a master bedroom suite, perhaps with a balcony over the front porch for our beautiful mountain sunsets. I am leaning towards also making the addition a slab-heat arrangement, perhaps working with a post and beam outfit to do the main frame and then finishing it myself. Am unsure about tying in the rafters to the existing roof with post and beam, but I’m sure we can work that out.

The plumbing has all been redone with mini-tubing and PVC drains - which I like. And there are plenty of extra connection points on the system for our planned addition and the upstairs laundry room. The laundry room is first on the list, we're already set with an electrician friend of mine to get the service put in for the stackable, and I'm at the tearing-out point as of tomorrow. 

The circuit breaker panel is new, and the wiring is old - and atrocious. There are two rolls of wire in a corner of the basement - when the electrician is here I'll ask him to run the outlet cords for the laundry room along w/the machine service.

The screen name I'm using here is our joke with one another - I pored over different shades of red for the siding color for several days, and finally decided on this one - the Benjamin Moore name is "Gypsy Love". Worse yet, the choice for the trim color was named "Happily Ever After". How sappy can you get?

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Posted by Jeff in Provo, UT on 3/14/2007 Editor Jeff's Forum Posts: 148 Interview Answers: 206 Average Forum Rating: 3.83 Jeff's Selected Image 3/14/2007

Welcome!