I was super excited to go see the farm. I was in love with the giant black maple tree and its two tire swings. There was a stone wall in front of the house and from the road it was picture perfect. In all fairness to my husband, I have always been the one who can see the potential, while my husband is the one who can see the work. And work is what the house needed. The house was semi-vacant for a long time. Built in 1820, the house had amazing bones. It also had some issues. There was a very large addition on the back of the house that included an enormous stone fireplace. And I mean enormous! It was the length of the house and about 6 feet tall. The problem was that it was not properly supported underneath. The beams were split from years of holding that monstrous weight. Because that weight was on the far side of the house, it actually pulled the addition off the original structure. Meaning, that entire part of the house would need to be removed, then rebuilt.
The original foundation was built with dry laid stones. There was no denying that it was built well, just not well enough to keep the snakes out. Without actual cement, snakes were able to burrow between the stones to get into the warm house. I believe I mentioned being born and raised in the City of Kingston. We don’t have snakes in our basements in Kingston, and I had no intention of living amongst the snakes on the farm. More about the snakes later… The basement also had a broken pipe with water trickling from it. This must have been going on for a while as there was a good 2 inches of water on the basement floor.
As we headed up the stairs toward the bedroom we were told to not open the one back bedroom door. There was a dog in there who had just given birth that morning and they didn’t want the puppies or the mama to be disturbed. No problem, we figured if we were interested in buying we would come back and see the room then.
Upstairs had a few unusual things going on, but nothing Egidio couldn’t take care of. For example, to get to that back bedroom with the puppies, you had to walk through another bedroom. That would never work for us, we would need to make some changes.
We then headed up the driveway to see the barns and walk the property. The property had been a dairy farm for over 100 years. It had a decent size barn that housed some equipment on the ground floor, and dozens of bales of hay on the top floor. We immediately named that barn the Hay Loft. Next stop, the big barn… and I couldn’t wait!!
We walked into the big barn and Egidio’s eyes lit up… Finally a smile! A BIG HUGE SMILE!! We both immediately LOVED what we saw.. This barn is 40X80 with a 16 foot ceiling. It had two stalls in one corner, the rest was wide open. The doors alone were 16X20. A perfect big old barn! I looked at Egidio’s big smile and said “Are you thinking what I am thinking”? He gazed around the building and said “I think I am thinking what you are thinking”. We both answered at the same time, just two very different answers. I said “A wedding venue” at the same time he said “My equipment shop”. We both stopped dead in our tracks, looked at eachother and yelled “WHAT?!?!”