My readers often tell me they enjoy the details I share about our old cape cod farmhouse that sits on sloped, rocky, wooded 14 acres, so you may not understand Bill’s lack of love.

Yet, truth be told, we tend to romanticize the joys of owning old homes, we call their quirks “character” and their money-draining problems “projects.” If you think you may someday fall in love with an old farmhouse yourself, stop right now, make sure you get the inside scoop on these secrets, and then proceed with caution.

Wanna know where you can unearth some rustic farmhouse treasures of your own? You will LOVE this site I just discovered–Antique Farmhouse.

Secret #1: The projects are like that Lamb Chop song.

First, there are the bitter truths (and joys) of owning an old farmhouse. But even more, there are the endless projects. Not only endless in the fact that there’s always something to do (that’s true for all homeowners), but endless like that never-ending Lamb Chop song that my daughters used to love…

“This is the project that never ends. It just goes on and on my friend. Somebody started doing it, not knowing how bad it was. And they’ll continue doing it forever just because this is the project that never ends. It just goes on and on my friend…”

So, to be fair to Bill, maybe I’ll start sharing some of the ugly truths here on the blog once in a while behind owing an old farmhouse. Plus, I’m guessing you’ll find some of the projects rather interesting, like the time he went to install a new storm door and discovered a 217-year-old support beam had rotted so badly we could see into our basement from our front step. Or the time he was merely replacing a door and wound up realizing he needed to replace two windows as well and had to take off 80% of the clapboard on the back side of our house. Oh, wait, I can’t talk about that project in past tense. That project was the reason behind his epitaph-like angry utterances just yesterday about his hatred toward these old, slanted, rotted posts and beams.

Secret #2: The stories are only fragmented sentences.

Since I’m not the one involved in these frustrating projects, beyond lending encouraging words and documenting them with photographs, I have remained faithful to my romantic notions about our wonderful old farmhouse.

Last month I was elated to frame an old photo I had enlarged. We had inherited the picture with the house when we moved here a few years ago. It shows a distant view of our cape, taken from the dirt road that is riddled with wagon tracks.

I hung the photo beside two prized pieces of artwork that I am very thankful to still have. Two pictures, one in oil pastels, one in watercolors, of barns, created by my youngest two daughters in days long ago. Days when it was not even a thought in any of our minds that our family would someday own a barn of our own.

Needless to say, I was beyond excited this month when a rock-star friend offered to memorialize another photograph of our home in a very special way. Now when you drive over the dam that curves around the cool river that hugs our property, pull up our tree-lined, curved drive, and step onto our front poor, you’re greeted by a beautiful photo of Asa (read on for more info about Asa), standing in front of his home circa 1890.

Gina memorialized this photo on slate and shipped it to me, and I did a jig as I was unwrapping it. Then I waltzed it right to the perfect hanging spot.

Gina knew I had named our homestead the first week we lived here. I mean, all self-respecting homesteads need a name.

Our homestead’s name

I dubbed our new homestead “Restful Falls Farm.” The “Falls” part is because of the mountain lake that our property borders that flows over a dam into the river that winds around our farm. The adjective in our farm’s name reminds me that I need to continually rest. Not rest in the typical sense. Heck no. There’s always so very much to do around here, because as I often say, “simple joys require hard work.” But I need to rest amidst the hard work, in the middle of grief, and even under sagging roofs. I need to rest in my soul.

So the sign announces our farm name, our address (which I blurred out in the photo), and est. circa 1800. I haven’t been able to document history of our home past 1860, but previous owners told us they were told the home was built in 1800, so for now that’s what we’re going by.

The photograph

The actual photo was delivered to our door one sunny Saturday afternoon last summer, by the woman who had married Asa’s great grandson. It’s a photo of Asa, who was I imagine named after the good king of Judah, around the age of 60 I’d guess. Asa is standing in his front yard, wearing his work pants and suspenders and looking intently at the photographer. The bearer of this gift to me that Saturday in June explained that her husband, who had passed away the year before, had fond childhood memories of our house, and his own father, Asa’s grandson, had been born in our house in 1899, some years after this picture was taken.

My pieced-together story

The rest of the story I have to piece together myself.

No matter how many photographs I had of our house, at best I’d only have fragments of stories.

I can imagine Asa’s daughter had married another hard-working farmer like her daddy and they lived here, on her family farm, in this charming cape that sits by the dam. Here her children were born. Here her momma taught her daughters how to gather eggs, butcher a chicken, and make a pie that was out-of-this-world delicious (here I’m imagining my own grandmom’s pie). Her daddy taught her sons how to milk a cow, gather eggs, turn over rocky fields, plant crops, hoe the rows, and reap the harvest late into the chilly autumn nights under a harvest moon

But at best, I can only piece together fragments of stories.

Secret #3: A house divided cannot stand.

I’ve seen the stones that make up the foundation of our old cape cod farmhouse. I’ve seen the waters that pour into our dirt-floor cellar around those boulders in the spring when the snow melts. I’ve seen the rotted sills and leaning corner walls.

I know it may only be the grace of God that keeps this old house standing. But a house divided surely cannot stand, and it’s oh-so-important to keep this final warning in mind if indeed you ever find yourself living in an old home.

Remember that you and your spouse can’t let your love for–or hatred towards–the house divide you.

Whenever Bill expresses his aversion to our home and the problem projects contained within its walls I almost take it personally. Maybe it’s similar to how one feels when there is a step-child in a family and one parent feels the other doesn’t love that child in the same deep way they always have. I think of the hard work I put into refinishing our old wide-planked floors.

I look at the treasures we’ve collected around the property and the fun things we’ve repurposed in our home, like an amazing old door and old jars with a story.

I remember how confidently we knew God led our family to this very farm a few short years ago.

And I hear Bill’s anger and frustration toward this old house that sometimes feels like my baby, and I am saddened.

I remind myself that a house divided cannot stand. I remember that the vows I made to my high school sweetheart are inherently more significant than old bark-covered beams or wavy window glass that sheds unfiltered sunlight through these tired walls.

So the day that he feels he can’t go one more month of incessant, unforgiving home problems is the day I will guarantee him that he is my love.

That will be the day we exit our old farmhouse threshold together, resolutely and hand-in-hand, moving on to another life. That is the day we will acknowledge we are richer for the stories we learned from this house and thankful for the time we got to be the stewards of its never-ending projects and fragmented sentences worth of stories.

If that day comes, I am sure I will be able to say goodbye to our old cape cod farmhouse by the lake with no regrets.

But truth be told, even if in a humbug sort of way, Bill loves these old walls and windows as much as I do.

We feel grateful to be the stewards of this old home’s wonderful, simple joys that require hard work.

So for now I will go on clinging to my romantic notions and enjoy every day I get to be a part of the fragmented sentences and difficult projects here in our old cape cod farmhouse that I call “home.”

On days like today, when our school room is chairs pulled up in front of the kitchen cooking fire…

When my office is old chairs in the shade of a sugar maple overlooking our barn…

When my “therapy” is winterizing the garden, wondering if previous tenants grew crops in the same fields were we have placed ours…

When my companion is a calf named Selah, who makes me curious how many calves have been born on these 14 acres over the past few centuries….

When my exercise is a walk with Bixby that ends up in the marsh or neighboring tree farm, both ablaze with color…

Yes, on days like today, no check that, on every day in every season, I will indeed be grateful. I will be grateful that, for all her sags, dips, creaks, and moans, I had the opportunity to call this old cape cod farmhouse “home.”

More articles about farmhouse living:

Why old farmhouse floors are always worth saving.

The bitter truths (and joys) of owning an old farmhouse

Why we moved from suburbia to this old farmhouse.

You won’t believe the fun stories behind these old jars and what I use them for today.

Do you like to repurpose old treasures? Then you’ll wanna snag a free copy of my instructional booklet, Give An Old Door New Life, for free, like right now… in my Resource Library.

Join me for a minute in one of my weekly facebook lives, where I take you into our carriage house to show you a family heirloom.–>

And join me here as I show you a project going on around here.–>

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to maple syrup making.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post 3 secrets old farmhouse owners might never tell you first appeared on Souly Rested.

A lover of history, I adore giving something old a new purpose.

Giving an Old Door New Life

So when Bill started talking about replacing a broken pocket door, I went scouring our barn attic, where I knew a slew of old doors were piled up in one corner. He asked if I’d like him to hang it with barn door hardware, I did an affirmative jig of joy, and the rest was history. If you follow along on facebook, you already know a little about this project that offered my dirty laundry some much-needed privacy.

Our Old Carriage House

You see, even though the door above is my side porch door, it’s the one everyone comes to when they visit. And it opens right into what used to be the old carriage house on our old farmhouse. The carriage house attached the house to the barn, providing a storage area–centuries ago–for carts and buggies. Today, not burdened with the storage need for a horse buggy, I plop my dirty clothes in the carriage house, which now serves as our laundry room.

Giving Something Old New Purpose

Needless to say, I was tickled pink when my hubby helped me come up with a plan to use this beautiful old door I unearthed in my barn attic AND hide my dirty laundry when company stops in.

Wanna know the bitter truths (and joys) of owning an old farmhouse? I wrote about those here.

Wanna know where you can unearth some rustic farmhouse treasures of your own? You will LOVE this site I just discovered–Antique Farmhouse.

The original door glass had long ago been replaced by plexiglass. Needing to, of course, hide my piles of laundry, I decided to paint the plexiglass with chalkboard paint.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

The Three Steps to Turning Plexiglass into a Chalkboard

The process was surprisingly easy. Kayla–my baker of all things amazing, from scratch (including 4-layer chocolate cakes and grandma’s strawberry pie–go here for the amazing pie recipe), my hard-working entrepreneur, and my bovine-loving cow owner–decided to help me out and add “chalkboard paint extraordinaire” to her long list of accomplishments.

The three simple steps:

1. Sand the plexiglass lightly.
2. Coat the plexiglass with 2 layers of primer, waiting for each to dry well. We used a foam roller brush to do this.
3. Paint on chalkboard paint in thin layers. We did 2 layers, using paint we bought, but you can certainly make your own as well. Two crafty sisters, Elise and Emma, show you how in this post on A Beautiful Mess.

If you would like more detailed, printable directions, I share a full-color printout instructional booklet in my subscriber library. (Just type in your email at the bottom of this post, and you’ll have immediate access. It’s super easy peasy.)

I decided to keep all the original patina on my old door, leaving the front a red, not unlike the color of our house, and the back side an awesome, worn, gray that I love. I just scrubbed the door clean and let my husband hang it for me. The rest is history. Including my fear of drop-in guests perusing my piles of wet towels and dirty socks.

Now when I step from my laundry room into my front hall, I love wondering what hands fumbled with an old difficult key in that lock and what stories the door could tell me. But I also enjoy seeing how my own family history–displayed in heirloom photographs hanging in the same hall–is now part of the century’s worth of stories held within these old clapboarded walls.

If you’d like to hang an old door like a sliding barn door, this kit right here is really all you need. (affiliate link)

My Resource Library includes a full-color instructional booklet showing the steps for how we painted a chalkboard over the old plexiglass that someone once put in my farmhouse door. 

And how about that–Look who’s craftiness made #9 in this list of upscale DIY projects. Before you know it, everyone is gonna need an old door and some barn door hardware!

Other Excitement Around the Farm

Meanwhile, along with my old/new door excitement and Kayla’s continual baking, I love gardening with my teens, and I’ve been eagerly counting down the weeks until Scout’s calf arrives (my daughter’s Holstein is due to give birth soon). One daughter is running an Artist Trading Card online trade. Oh, and we can’t wait to go wild blueberry picking!

Just in case any friends or family happen to peruse this post and wanna, ya know, snag a gift for me sometime, (Ahem. cough. cough.) I’ll plop this amazing website link here…

Btw, Bill, honey, don’t stress too much over which item to get me for my next birthday over on Antique Farmhouse. Pretty much anything on there would make me happy…

The Escapades of A Barn Kitten

And now for the latest installment of The Life and Times of the Spoiled Barn Cat… (Play dramatic music.) I shared  last week that I wasn’t sure if Teddy understood the job description of a barn cat, since he seemed to have no idea what to do with a field mouse who crossed his path. While he still wasn’t sure what the second step entailed, he did indeed catch a mouse this week. Didn’t keep it for long, but he did catch it. So we’re making on-the-job progress.

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Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschool, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 I will restore… my people, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them; They will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, And make gardens and eat their fruit. “I will also plant them on their land, And they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them,” Says the Lord your God. Amos 9: 13-15

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If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (Psssst, we always include a personalized password reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

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The post I love my new (old) door hung as a barn door first appeared on Souly Rested.

Thankfully, some days she can be a gentle mentor who rewards your labor with white blankets of snow and at least offers serene, soothing skies as a prelude to cold evenings.

Although our family had just been introduced to her, having moved 400 miles up the Atlantic seaboard the previous spring, our first New England winter in our old house taught us a few lessons.

Lessons an Old Farmhouse Teaches in the Winter

While the lessons felt, well, pretty “cold,” we’re still thankful for our little cape that sits up on the hill, at the bend in the road, where the lake’s dam spills into the river. Thankful even on the day that taught us lesson #1… thankful even as I was cleaning sticky frozen soda drops off the ceiling…

Unheated areas may get messy.

Don’t get too zealous about your old farmhouse’s unheated back hallway and see it as a “walk-in refrigerator,” storing all your food back there, unless of course you would enjoy waking to the serenade of coke cans bursting in mini firework-sounding explosions, leaving brown ice crystals on your ceiling.

Giant wood piles diminish quickly.

Don’t expect any amount of wood you have cut and stockpiled will be enough. Five months of long, windy nights in a home that has 100-year-old wavy-glass windows tends to eat through a large stash of wood, no mater how efficient your wood-burning stove is. Drafts of crisp air cut to the bone even deeper on dark February nights when you know that wood piles are running low.

Water in cold pipes isn’t water for long.

Don’t forget that water will turn solid in its frozen state, and in New England in February water tends to, well, prefer being in a frozen state… even in pipes leading to things like, say, washing machines and dish washers.

Once you utilize heat tape to its full advantage; redistribute explodable, freezable food to warmer rooms; and drape heavy blankets over the most offensively drafty windows, you just may start to delight in some things in their frozen state (yeah, lakes, not pipes). in fact, you may wind up relishing all that a New England winter in an old farmhouse on a lake has to offer…

Do you like to repurpose old treasures? Then you’ll wanna snag a free copy of my instructional booklet, Give An Old Door New Life, for free, like right now… in my Resource Library.

You won’t believe the fun stories behind these old jars that I found on our homestead, and you might love the way I use them today.

Breathtaking snow-skimmed mountain views that remind you that you are infinitesimal, yet mountainously loved.

Darkness so deep, pierced by star light so intense, you realize you never truly saw black or stars before.

Mist rising over the river and winding among the snowy branches, convincing you of the reality of Narnia.

And twisting, white journeys that lead to general stores where the owner pulls up a seat for you by the wood stove, inviting you to warm your wet boots on the same hard wood floor that stage coach riders trod on over 200 years ago.

In reality, though, no matter where I live on this beautiful planet and what roads I trod, in any season, God directs me and holds me in his hand. No matter how many pipes burst or frozen difficulties fill a bitter cold day, He is a gentle instructor, guiding and teaching me right there in the midst of that problem. He promises that He causes all things–-and, yes, that includes broken wash machines, or whatever sadness fills anyone’s day… loneliness, debt, sickness–-to work together for good if we are striving to fulfill His purpose in our life. His purpose? To make me more like Christ. If He can seriously accomplish that amazing feat, well, no lesson is too difficult.

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Romans 8:28-29

 

More about our old farmhouse:

Refinishing our old wide-plank pine floors

Bitter truths of owning an old house

Making pie in an old farmhouse kitchen

3 Secrets Old Home Owners Won’t Tell You

 

 

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

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The post 3 Lessons I Learned my First Winter in an Old Farmhouse first appeared on Souly Rested.

It had been six long weeks. Three of research: internet, calls, emails. Three of sharpening and scraping: inch by inch, board by board. Read more–the beginning of the story–here.

She helped me with devoted zeal and did more work than I… the daughter who always stares big jobs in the face, non-perplexed, and works till they’re done. The daughter who always respected history, even though science and math are her passions.

She did the math on this one, and the mechanical engineer convinced me, after three weeks of back-breaking hand scraping, it was time to bring in some help. Some mechanical advantage. (She was thinking we needed an orbital sander, like this one.) After all, there were no hand hewn marks left to preserve on over half of the wide plank floorboards. They had been trod for years, with no protection.

On that half of the room, we would use a hand sander and cut our efforts and time of labor to probably a fourth of the amount.

I Didn’t Want Modern Technology Harming Our Old Wide Plank Floors

She couldn’t convince me to allow her modern technology to take over all the old farmhouse floors.

In this northern land of preserved history, where you often turn many a mountain bend and see a Cape Cod like ours greeting you with its symmetrical simplicity and high pitched roof, there were many people I could talk to about preserving our old floor.

To some, it was too common. Not respected enough.

Many flooring experts with thick, lazy drawn out “r”s were eager to help my “flah-bahds” by bringing out their big drum sanders to perfect and modernize my floor. Quickly scrape away multiple layers of uneven, hand hewn uniqueness to each board, leaving me with a floor like I could probably buy at Home Depot. They didn’t pause to offer any amazement at my floor’s endurance, how she had weathered two centuries of wear and yet was still strong under her scars.

But I was determined that this one Cape Cod, the one that sprawls out where the lake meets the river, the one that tucks behind the maples at the bend in the road, it would not have a modern floor.

I Was Almost Convinced

Yet there were experts who did respect the age and character of my weary farmhouse’s wide pine floor boards. And they were gently honest with me. These men conversed with me me at the barn dance.

Or we chatted beside the home baked whoopee pies for sale in the country store.

They coached me. These men, local builders or carpenters, had themselves spent countless hours and exerted extreme efforts on their knees over antique pine boards. They tenderheartedly pointed out that my method was still scraping away the original hand hewn marks.

These men, like me, were lovers of history that one can walk barefoot across, lovers of history that one can literally feel in ones toes, and they all kindheartedly told me, over the course of back-breaking, discouraging weeks, that my methods were not truly preserving the history. Adding a little mechanical advantage was not only okay, they assured me, but also might save my sanity.

I listened but wasn’t ready to give up yet. It became a battle of me and these old floorboards against the world.

Then I Gave Up

Then the day came. I collapsed. I flung back and sprawled out across the scraped, dusty pine like a child ready to make an angel imprint in the snow. There, looking up at my low, wood beamed ceiling, I gave up.

I simply had no energy left in me to continue my plight. Looking at the minuscule ground my daughter and I had scraped away at over the course of almost four weeks, looking at the rough (I had to admit) ugly results of my efforts, and looking at the smooth efforts of her hand sander, I realized I had been wrong.

Here in the boards that had been rather easily sanded (on the right) I saw more proof of the hand hewn marks made 214 years ago than I did in my ridiculous efforts.The stain had penetrated darker into the deeper hewn areas and it would always be darker. Always bear testimony to the hard, almost forgotten labor of the pit saw crew . I couldn’t feel the dips any longer, but I could see them. In the boards we had scraped (on the left), we lost both the feel and the sight of those marks. So I gave up, but did so gladly.

The next morning I started investigating vibratory sanders. Beside the General Store’s whoopee pies and over strains of barn dance music, I had been assured by the kindhearted experts that vibratory sanders were much gentler than drum sanders and they would enable me to preserve my floors with tenderness. I was ready to try.

Turned out, I could rent a vibratory sander that measured 12″ x 17.” Perfect for my wide plank patriotic floorboards, rebellious by their very nature.

Their width was, afterall, illegal when New England was subject to the British crown. The king declared all large pines were for British naval masts. But this post explains more.

Why I Used an Orbital Sander on Our Old Wide Plank Flooring

I could sand them individually, without smoothing out their unique, hand-hewn edges. I thought it’d be two days, one for sanding and one for applying top coat, and I’d be done. That was a week and three days ago. Granted, she was right (my engineer), adding mechanical advantage made the job much more manageable, but let’s just admit it right here, right now:

The words “easy” and “antique floor refinishing” can never be uttered in sentences of even close proximity.

Yet, most definitely “rewarding” and “beautiful” and “worth the effort” may all be belted out boldly in the same flooring discussion.

The most amazing fact about my patriotic floorboards? They were officially given new life on the very day that celebrates independence.

A voluminous dose of 24 hours worth of rainstorms canceled our small town’s Independence Day parade and fireworks display but led to a true revival worthy of celebration in the little Cape Cod tucked behind the maples at the bend in the road.

How Our Wide Plank Floors Look Today

They’re still in need of a light sanding, another good cleaning, and multiple more top coats, with an all-natural coating made from–believe it or not–cheese whey. Read more about that here. But boy when they’re done, I’ll be hosting a one-person parade on these patriotic floorboards. Followed by barefoot dancing. (It’ll be a two-person parade and dance if I can convince the engineer to prance and promenade with me.)

For one evening though, I put down my sandpaper and knee pads. I reveled in the rain-date firework display celebrating true American strength, persistence, and endurance. In fact, surely I enjoyed the breathtaking symbols of American steadfast determination even more than I would have before I became a liberator of beautiful patriotic floors.

More Details About our Old New England Farmhouse:

More about antique wide-plank pine floors 

What I learned by refinishing old floors the hard way

Why we moved from suburbia to this old farmhouse.

3 Secrets Old Farmhouse Owners Won’t Tell You

 

Talk to me!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to show me your farmhouse details @souly.rested.

 

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

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To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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The post This old wide plank flooring was worth saving first appeared on Souly Rested.

EDITED TO ADD: This is just the first of many articles about our old farmhouse floors and our 220-year-old New England farmhouse. Go here for the rest of the story.  ********

The morning sunlight, infused by the old wavy panes of glass, loped around the dark-stained, wide floor planks. Boxes were still unpacked. Walls were in need of paint. The barn and storage units were overflowing with our furniture. But those worn, neglected boards called for attention.

Our Old Farmhouse Floors

Did the men who crafted them more than 200 years ago know the results of their labor would be installed in the cape cod being built at the intersection of the lake and river in that rural NH area?

Our town was only 40 years old, settlement having been delayed more than 3 decades thanks to the French Wars. In such a young, rural town, did these craftsmen have an inkling that the fruit of their efforts would still be trod by bare feet racing to dinner, and used as a bed by a family mutt staying cool on a summer’s day, 214 years later?

Those old boards, worn down and barren of protection in most areas, needed to be refinished, or their beauty would be lost forever.

The Craftsmanship of the Wide-Plank Floorboards

Those saw marks. I was worried that refinishing would erase them. Erase the fingerprints of craftsmen whose trade is almost forgotten.

Maintaining those marks would keep the character alive of not only the beautiful patriotic floors but also, in a small way, the hardworking men who sweated and strained to make them so beautiful.

If you love history or old floors you’re gotta read this post. I thought it was the coolest thing EVER about our house.

Most likely, the men who crafted the floorboards in the late 1700s worked together in a team of 4-6. This “pit crew” was aptly named, because they needed a deep pit to do their job.

Two men would work together at a time, one down in the pit and one at ground level, each controlling different ends of the long, dual-handled saw.

Across the pit balanced a huge log. It had been squared with hand tools and marked with chalk lines, recording the direction it was to be cut with a vertical sawing motion. After 30 minutes of back-straining labor, usually resulting in two rough-sawn wide planks, the craftsmen would hand the saw over to two others on the crew.

By tag teaming this grueling effort, the pit crew could use all the daylight available to them—crafting wide pine planks that would then be hand planed and used for flooring, furniture, or home siding—from sun up to sun down.

Their craftsmanship had been preserved in my home through all these generations.

The only problem with my plan? I had no idea how to execute it. (Okay, in reality, maybe there were many problems.)

So I did what any perplexed old-home owner in New England would do. I sent an email to Norm Abrams and Tom Silva. (Okay, I posted a question to This Old House website.) Realizing that Norm and Tom may take a few days to get back to me, I also took the advice of a friend of a friend. The only person who didn’t suggest wall-to-wall carpet or a large drum sander. He himself had spent months crawling around on his knees over 4,000 square feet of antique floors in a courthouse on the mid-atlantic seaboard that dated even older than our home. He wound up with an authentically restored wide-plank floor using no power tools.

So while I waited for Norm’s response, I got down on my knees and started scraping my own marks of labor beside the ones made in the 1700s. What’s left I’m hoping will show some of their labor and lots of my own and hopefully our combined effort, that spans two centuries, will last and be enjoyed for another century or two.

Read more about my floor refinishing progress in this post.

I’ll post details of my slow-moving exercise of love, and more that I learn about the history of these amazing wide boards, over the weeks to come. For now, I’m thankful for a break from my labor to enjoy a luxurious sunset over the lake tonight.

What I’ve learned so far about refinishing an old floor?

•  Citristrip sounds great but, for my purposes, it didn’t cut it. It just couldn’t penetrate as deep as the dark, oil-based stain.
• The alternative to an all-natural, safer stripping gel can be pretty potent stuff. Definitely only use it if you can ventilate your work area well and if you’re wearing jeans and have chemical-resistant gloves. That being said, the smell is fine as long as I have all the windows open, it is easy to work with, and it works quickly (more like 5 minutes instead of the 15 the manufacturer recommends). Of course “quickly” is relative when one is working on a one-foot-square area for 20 minutes at a time and one has a 20×20-foot area to complete.
• One needs a good scraper and file. I file my blade with  every  new board or it is ineffective.
• It’s hard.
• It’s unbelievably time consuming.
• It hurts ones knees and back.
• Did I mention it’s really hard?

UPDATE: A few weeks later, I changed my approach and found a totally different product to help. Read all about our newly refinished old floors here.

My Story

While I revel in the changing colors over the still water, I consider how thankful I am that my beautiful old floor boards have a story that has now become part of my own.

While I am working to redeem their prior glory, I am most significantly thankful that God didn’t leave me in my depraved state, worn down by the scars of my sin. While he’s restoring me day by day and writing a beautiful story with my life, I have assurance that one day I will be better than ever. Oh, glorious day! One when neither morning rays streaming across my old floors nor the day’s end colors infused across the lake will even begin to match the beauty of “the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.” (Revelation 22:1)

More info about our old farmhouse:

The rest of our refinishing story

The history story no one every told you about wide-plank floors

3 Secrets Old-Home Owners Won’t Tell You

My favorite things in my old farmhouse kitchen

“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.” Psalm 107:2

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The post Redeeming Prior Glory first appeared on Souly Rested.

No, my old farmhouse floors aren’t red, white, and blue. In fact, in some places the centuries-old planks are horribly worn, with no stain at  all. But their age and width tell me they’re patriotic. Our New Hampshire farmhouse was built right after the Revolutionary War.

The American History Story You Haven’t Heard

It turns out that one of the little riots—virtually in my backyard—that started that giant war isn’t talked about much today.

Maybe because it was in a backwoods NH town…

Maybe because the story of the Boston Tea Party, filled with masquerade and delicious-smelling bay water, is, well, more eventful to write about in textbooks…

I don’t know why this story about the Revolutionary War and old farmhouse floors isn’t well known, but it should be.

Old Farmhouse Floors & the King of England

It’s the story of a common, determined mill owner who said “no” to the King.

The British crown wanted more tall, strong masts for their navy, so England asserted that the colonists only use the puny pine trees. The grand ones—12 inches or greater in width—were off limits.

Ebenezer Mudgett, and others who stood with him, said “no.” They said Mudgett had every right to provide the best products for his customers, hand hewn from the finest lumber that North-American-made had to offer. He refused to pay exorbitant fines for lumber in his own backyard, while the king gave him nothing in return. Nothing but forced taxation without representation.

So in typical New England-head-strong fashion, most NH homes suddenly had 12-inch-wide pine plank floors.

Our home has 12-inch-wide pine boards throughout the first floor. Well, except the mere 9-inch-wide boards (yes, that was tongue-in-cheek) in what used to be the carriage house portion of our house.

Not sure what an old New England carriage house area is in the old farm houses? Yeah, I didn’t know either. I explain what a carriage house is right here. Or join me for a live tour, via fb, right here.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

See more of my floorboards, and find out the 3 Secrets Old-Home Owners never told you here.

Find out the best way EVER to clean a braided wool rug–the best options ever on old wood floors, no?–in this post.

Wanna know where you can find all kinds of beautiful, rustic treasures to make any home feel farmhouse-ish? You will LOVE this site. But be forewarned, you may get lost there for a few minutes. I know I always do.

This post contains affiliate links.

Patriotism was Fashionable

I love it that patriotism was fashionable; as it should be today. We live in the most wonderful nation on earth, guys, started by a bunch of folks (including some head-strong mill owners) who were determined to do the best humanly possible with an experiment in democracy.

For the average home owner in New England, at the turn of the 18th century, their patriotism showed under their feet, and wide pine floors were the rage. With every step on their wide-plank pine boards, the colonists were asserting their voices for freedom.

Not surprising coming from the first colony to declare its independence. The pine tree went on to become a well-known symbol of Colonial ire. With prideful obstinance, they even depicted the pine tree on the flags flown on colonial warships.

Throughout the colonies, people knew of the common mill owner in a small New England town who took a stand, inspiring many others to do the same.

So when I traverse my patriotic floors, every now and then I will think about all the head-strong men and women who take a stand every day for our freedoms in this great nation.

I’m going to remind my daughters of how thankful I am for so many who have gone before me, bravely taking steps against oppression. And I’m thankful for my floors, worn and scratched as they are, that remind me of something very important. There comes a time that everyone—simple mill workers, tired moms, everyone—needs to take a stand.

Other Articles About our Old Farmhouse:

Some of the old doors & how we converted one to a room divider

How we refinished our old farmhouse floors

Some fun old bottles and other relics we’ve found on our homestead

The 3 Secrets Old Home Owners Won’t Tell You

“Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind… remember the former things of old.” Isaiah 46: 8-9.

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

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The post Warning: You’ll never look at old floors the same way again. first appeared on Souly Rested.