A Restoration Story

by Maggie Noble

part 1: Moving in

Here we are again. A new home and a new major renovation project. We took a slightly bigger bite this time with a three story 125 year old house in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. This is no live-in flip. This is a restoration.

This is the second home that Matt and I have owned. It sits on a one-way street on a half-acre lot right near a small college. We hear church bells and horse hooves racing down the street on the quarter hour. For two people who grew up in the burbs ( Matt is from Orange County, The Burb of all burbs) the charm of town life and cart and horse is not lost on us.

This is Amish Country. I grew up about an hour south of here and had always thought the stoic farm folk lived four hours east in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was surprised to learn that there are thriving Amish communities here in Western, Pa and Eastern Ohio.

Matt found the house on a late night' ‘Zillow pillow’ search. We were almost three years into a live-in flip in Sewickley, Pa. Our three bedroom townhouse was great but the HOA was a bear and we wanted to find a place with a yard and greater autonomy. Our budget was about the same as it was the first time around ( not big) so we knew we would have to look outside of Sewickley to check-off the priorities on our list. It turned out that we needed to get an hour outside of Pittsburgh to find anything with a and have enough money leftover to renovate.

We walked through the big white house in New Wilmington in November of 2019. Our four-year-old daughter galloped around the foyer with a wide wooden staircase and lead cut-glass window behind her and I was sold.

Our new old house was not ready for us upon closing. The electricity was largely knob and tube and we knew we wanted to gut the existing bathrooms and take out a few walls. We sold the townhouse in four days for a small profit and spent Christmas living in my parents’ basement. This was the second time our little family had lived there since moving to Pennsylvania. Thank God for generous parents and a place to stay while we renovate and thank God for finished basements.

COVID came and Matt found himself with the time to get up here and get to work. Walls came down. Dust settled everywhere. New electric lines were sent to every room, one outlet each. Bathrooms were gutted. A new powder room was created over the crawl space in the back of the house. Floors were sanded. New carpet was laid on the kids’ floor at the top of the house; heavy construction zones were plastic-ed off and we moved in! 

We moved up to the country on a Friday Night Movie Night. I will never forget pulling up to the house to see Matt sweeping the front porch. Proud. After all that demo and dust, he was putting something back together, making ready for his little family. We walked up the steps and crossed our first ever front porch, looking through the glass front door to see humble and happy beginnings. 

What had been a serious construction site was now a less serious construction site but with our furniture and an art space for the kids. Matt made a house a home and with each week, we feel more and more settled in. 

We don’t have a shower inside, yet. We don’t have a dishwasher hooked-up, yet. We aren’t sleeping in our master bedroom, yet. We don’t have HVAC to the kids’ rooms, yet but all that will come. And the process will be as much a part of our lives as anything. We’ll laugh, fight and learn our way through it.

First things first…let’s get us a bathroom!