Originally Posted By: Housewright
Andy;

Do you have any photos of when the house was a "wreck". How was it built? Was it added on to? Does anyone know the history?

Jim

Jim,
As a matter of fact this past Dec 3rd the Hysterical Society had an event to raise money for themselves and used my house as one of five to have people walk through on a tour of houses through the centuries. they had three tour guides through out my house speaking about each room. They sold THREE HUNDRED tickets (@$30 each). YIKES!! All walking through my house...and it just snowed that day..ugh.
http://www.huntingtonhistoricalsociety.org/house_tour_2007.htm
The house was built in 1680 and obviously everything used to build it came from right here on the property... I don't think Home Depot was here yet..lol. It was all oak timber framed. It was owned by Andrus Titus and his wife and 15 kids. They were farmers.
Later it was sold to the Valentine family.
I actually have the original deed here... framed.
I do have a photo of the house that maybe was taken about 100 or more years ago but I don't know how to post it. I have the original picture thats a lot older somewhere.

The original house didn't have the dormers. I can see up in the attic that they raised the ridge maybe just under a foot which allowed them to put the two dormers in.
I'm guessing you're looking at the pictures in my web site.
The original house was just the basic square and in the "before" picture with the pool in the back... that small addition was added on maybe 50-75 years ago as was the pool. I ripped down the addition. It was a mess and nothing at all was worth salvaging.
I added the rest on which actually now keeps the original house from falling down which it was on it's way real soon. Seriously lopsided b/c some idiot somewhere down the line added four big windows in the rear of the house. Took out about 15' of wall and added the windows which look original but they're not...and they added NO studs to brace the plate up. When I took that windows out (I reused them) I found the plate which was something like a 10x10 timber cracked clear through just past the windows. I added 4 massive lam beams.

I wish I knew timber framing when I did this house but even still...with what it costs to live here I just wouldn't have had the time $$$ to get it all done that way and living here is outragously expensive (taxes are almost $20,000 a year). My intention was always to sell it. At least what I did do will keep this house alive another 300+ years I'm "sure". The basement is as dry as a bone now unlike when I first moved here. There was a sump pump built in.
I also "hand dug" a trench around the perimeter of the house...power washed the rubble rock foundation wall and poured another wall right up against it allowing the cement to ooze through al the rocks and become one. Thats a whole other story..
I told the truck operator to "slowly" open the cement chute...real slowly..so what does the idiot do?.. Yep...full blast... and what happens? Yep...blows out a huge section of wall...long story but the house is still here and so am I..whewwwwwwww. Oh yeh, What was once a dirt floor is now cement. Turned a lemon into lemonade...lol.
Unfortunatly...REAL unfortunatly my puter crashed a few years ago and I had nothing backed up and lost all my early stage pictures..ugh
Here's a link to the VIRTUAL TOUR from my real estate listing. Works nice in full screen mode..even has music..lol.
Obviously these pictures focused more on the new for resale reasons. Who'd have thought that the word OLD would scare people away? We actually took the age out of the listing after we figured that out.
http://www.vifp.com/p/panorama.php?Branded=0&agent=8628&mls=1987084&r=1