House with a Village Soul

This is a story about one couple's restoration of an 1818 Federal-style house in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, bought in 2021 after sitting neglected for years. An inspection found failing floor joists, charred rafters, deteriorating chimneys, mechanicals that no longer met code, a disconnected gas range, and broken toilets. The house was uninhabitable at purchase.

The couple, one of whom is an architect specializing in historic preservation, spent about a year on repairs, longer than the planned six months because of pandemic-related supply shortages and labor delays. Work included reinforcing old joists with a new engineered beam, repairing barn and dining-room floors, adding three gas fireplaces with antique mantels, updating the electrical and heating and cooling systems, reusing old attic floorboards in a redone kitchen, installing new bathroom fixtures, and rebuilding a barn-to-house connector into livable space with a guest room and sleeping loft. Outside, they removed overgrown trees, repainted the exterior, rebuilt a stone garden wall, and enlarged the deck for a small pool.

For homeowners with an old house, the takeaways are less about specific products than about scope: a neglected historic home can hide serious structural and mechanical problems behind cosmetic issues like mismatched paint or broken window panes, and a full restoration of this kind can easily run longer than planned. The piece is really a personal account of preservation and decorating choices rather than a guide with costs or rebate information.