The long-awaited day has come at last, friends. It’s demo day!
When Matt and I bought our fixer-upper farmhouse two and a half years ago, a front porch was on the long list of things to check off. I’ve dreamed about a front porch since I was a young girl. I imagined myself sitting on a classic rocking chair like this one or this one, reading a good book. As I got older, it became sipping coffee in a porch swing, watching the sunrise. Or hanging out with friends and family, chatting while the sun set and the stars started twinkling. Oh, and dreaming of the seasonal decorating possibilities, or course. These are all the things of porch dreams!
Let’s get back to reality. The current situation didn’t take long to destruct
It was pretty embarrassing to look at, so you can imagine I’ve been dreaming of demo day since almost day one. When we moved in, we quickly decided we didn’t want visitors coming in the front door. Why? Oh, maybe because the steps leading up to the house were overgrown with dirt and grass. I know, right? What you could see was covered over by a mossy substance. How does this even happen? We had no idea when we bought the house but were undeterred nonetheless.
Here’s a photo of the rubble after Matt pulled off the overhang shingles, metal rails and bit of siding.
Watch the video!
Demo day always comes with apprehension.
When your farmhouse is over 120 years old, you don’t know what you may uncover or get yourself into. Without fail, we always run into something unexpected. So we’re excited about this project but also a little nervous. We’re just hoping and praying there is no structural damage that will take extra time and money to repair. If all goes well, the plan is to get everything done by the end of September so we can have a solid month or so of nice weather to enjoy before we start preparing for snow. That could come in October or November in Ohio!
Demo Day Finds
Now for a few fun things. The first is that as we were moving cinderblocks, we were thrilled to uncover a few large, buried fieldstone slabs.
These were likely the original front steps to the house before any remodeling took place. The entire foundation of the house is fieldstone and it’s pretty cool (and more than a little humbling) to think about the time and effort it would have taken to have these huge pieces of fieldstone hauled in from the surrounding fields, powered by horses and wagons at the time. We’re thinking of the ways we can incorporate them into the new porch design to honor that history.
The second was this little white clay pot we found.
Part of a child’s tea set? It’s definitely handmade and has an engraving of the numbers 2241 on it. How cool is this? I almost wish I could go back in time to see how it was used and by whom. The stories a little piece like this could tell, and now I have a story to tell about uncovering it! I’ll have to find somewhere in our house to display it.
The last was this glass piece I dug out of the dirt as I was taking photos for this blog post.
It’s a glass car and it’s dated on the bottom.
I’m bummed it’s not all in one piece but the edges aren’t sharp since it’s so old and it’s been buried for years and years.
Fingers crossed on the porch project. We may even find a few other things as we keep digging up fieldstone. I’ll be back in a few weeks to share updates. If you haven’t seen our exterior farmhouse tour, you can watch it here. Stay tuned for more on our front porch construction!
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