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Feature > The Joy of Owning an Old Home
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
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By Anne M. Downey | photography by John W. Hession
A couple discovered some surprises and reaped ma ny rewards renovating their old Francestown home.
Joe Valentine and Paula Hunter are “old house people” who, quite by accident, ended up in an “old house” New Hampshire town.
Ten years ago, they were looking for a rural weekend retreat, concentrating their search in the Grafton, Vermont, area. Valentine has a Ph.D. in psychobiology and worked in biomedical research before his recent retirement. Hunter is a high-tech marketing consultant with many international clients and needed to be near an airport. “Grafton isn’t, which is why we figured we’d only be using the house on weekends,” she explains.
When they began their search, Hunter and Valentine were living in Concord, Massachusetts, leasing a one-hundred-year-old cabin on the Ralph Waldo Emerson family estate. They lovedbeing immersed in the history that saturates Concord and took evening walks through the Estabrook Woods, much as Emerson and Henry David Thoreau did in the nineteenth century. Valentine served on Concord’s Historical Commission, working to preserve Thoreau’s birthplace, and wrote a book about Thoreau’s conservation efforts.
But the house they were renting was very small. “It had actually been a children’s playhouse,” Valentine says. “We figured we’d stay a year.” They ended up staying for ten. “It got to be ridiculous!” Hunter says. “We didn’t even have a proper closet.”
A chance discovery
Valentine stumbled upon Francestown one day while driving through the area and was captured by its beautifully preserved Colonial architecture. (Incorporated in 1772, a purported 50 percent of Francestown’s homes were built before 1850.) An oftenrepeated description of the town likens it to “an old-fashioned hymn,” an apt summary of its simple elegance. “I called Paula on her cell and said, ‘You have to see this place,’” he remembers.
The couple purchased the Israel Balch farm, which was built in 1789 on a hillside just outside the village, on the old coach road from Greenfield. Balch was a mason and subsistence farmer who owned six hundred acres; the property now consists of thirty acres, which was plenty for Hunter and Valentine’s plans. “We are passionate gardeners, and we wanted a working country place with room to build gardens and raise animals,” Valentine says.
The house and property needed cosmetic work—much of the land was either overgrown or had too much grass for Hunter and Valentine’s tastes. During the last ten years, the couple have added perennial gardens, a raised-bed vegetable garden, a lilac garden, a wildflower meadow, a patio and a variety of fencing, all of which they have done themselves.
Valentine also has designed and built several outbuildings from rough-cut hemlock and pine. The heritage-breed animals the couple raises and boards on the farm include Cotswold sheep, a variety of poultry, Oberhasli goats and Randall cattle, a rare breed of New England hill cattle (the Randalls pull an oxcart in Concord’s annual Patriots Day reenactment).
True to history
The house was originally a four-room, gambrel farmer’s cottage, with a small detached barn. In the early 1800s, a keeping room was added, and the house was joined with the barn, which now holds Valentine and Hunter’s renovated kitchen—which they gutted and rebuilt three years ago—and family room. A bigger barn was added in the mid-1800s; Valentine and Hunter bring their sheep there to give birth in winter. The carriage sheds are now a mudroom, laundry room and woodshop.
In renovating the house, Valentine and Hunter have stayed true to what it would have looked like in the late 1700s. “When we first saw the house, I examined all the mantels, the plaster and the doors, and they were all original, as are the beams and the wide-board flooring,” Valentine says. “If you can find a place from that era that’s intact, I don’t think you should ruin it.” The couple gave the house a new roof of cedar shakes, and replaced Victorian-era two-over-two windows with Colonial-era, nine-over-six and eight-over-twelve reproduction windows.
The previous owners had wallpapered most of the interior. Valentine and Hunter stripped it, uncovering the original plaster. In the entry foyer, they discovered the plaster had been tinted a pale yellow. “We restored that small area with a custom yellow, which I then washed with a Ralph Lauren product called Smoke Stain,” Valentine says. “We also used it on small areas around the fireplace and above the candle chandeliers to give the paint the almost-had-tocall- the-fire-department look.”
Under the wallpaper in several of the rooms, Valentine and Hunter discovered faint stencils. A specialist identified them as the work of Moses Eaton, an itinerant stenciler who settled in Hancock in 1792, and whose work has been found in homes and inns in Francestown, Hancock, Dublin and Peterborough. (Valentine was once an antiques dealer, and much of the furniture in the house is either from his collection or was handed down from family members. But when Valentine and Hunter found a tavern table in a local antiques store that came from Moses Eaton’s house, the couple found a place for it in their borning room.)
They painted the rooms at the front of the house in Palace Ballroom Ceiling White. The couple chose this Martin-Senour Williamsburg color because it closely matches the appearance of a true whitewash. “Most plaster was whitewashed back then because it was the cheapest option,” Valentine explains.
In their renovations, Valentine and Hunter also have been conscious of local industry, both historic and present-day. The sinks they added are made of soapstone, a nod to the productive soapstone quarry that Francestown was known for throughout the nineteenth century. The couple replaced the Sears metal kitchen cabinets with handmade ones built by local cabinetmaker Rino Sanchioni.
Rewards of an old home
For Valentine and Hunter, owning an old house requires a special commitment but also reaps singular rewards. “Most of the standing houses from this era were cobbled together with no forethought,” Valentine says, “so there are always challenges in maintaining them. The plumbing, for example, is unconventional, and frozen pipes are common. Recently, we also needed to dig a new well.” There are always surprises, too; when they gutted their kitchen, Valentine and Hunter found a beautifulstone well under the floor.
The most pleasant surprise, they say, is the community that comes with owning an old home. Since they moved in, they have been visited by Balch family descendants, who have helped with genealogical information about Israel Balch; people who used to live in the house, who seek to reconnect with their past and add to Hunter and Valentine’s information store; and a constant stream of family and friends who love the experience of living in history. Valentine and Hunter have met new friends who are also passionate gardeners and “old house people,” and who share the love of preserving and maintaining America’s domestic history. “Francestown has an incredibly active conservation community, with three different groups working to preserve its land and history,”
Hunter says. “We were looking for a weekend place, but given our proximity to Manchester’s airport, we can live here full-time. And, without looking for it, we found a community with a wonderful preservation ethic.”