The journey began on July 3, 2016. We were living in Washington, DC and knew we would be moving to the Amherst, MA area that August. We had not yet secured housing, so Thomas took a solo trip to Massachusetts and scheduled a few house tours with our realtor.

I remember talking to him the evening after he had seen all the houses, but he only really only talked about one.

“I saw a really cool house today with an amazing barn and a second outbuilding. There are a bunch of mature sugar maple trees on the property and the house backs up to a conservation area. There are stone walls spread around the property.”

So far, so good. Then he got to the part about the inside of the house.

“The house is massive. There are bedrooms everywhere. I’m not sure how many people live here, but the rooms just keep going. Part of the house isn’t even being used at all because the floors are rotting out.”

Not much information to go on, but it didn’t sound like a project I was up for, considering I was starting a new job. Unfortunately he couldn’t take any pictures on his visit because his phone was dead, but overall he thought:

1. The house had a ton of potential.
2. The house had a lot of work to be done
3. The house was really cool.
4. The house and was very overpriced.

I looked up the house on Zillow and saw the following description with a few some very quaint and lovely photos.

Circa 1844 situated on 3+/- acres of cleared land. The dignity, mystery, and excitement of this American Colonial needs to be restored, but it’ll be worth the effort. Exterior of brick and stone, multiple fireplaces with an abundance of wide board floors. Several outbuildings, carriage shed, barn/stable and a second small barn. This home sets nicely back from the road and has a lovely side porch. The grounds are dotted with stone walls and mature sugar maples. There is plenty of space for chickens and a

garden. There is no doubt this would be a labor of love to restore this property to its original grandeur. Are you that skilled artisan … someone with that kind of patience and vision to take on this project? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity with an asking price that reflects and supports your ability to dream.

Sounded nice. Pictures looked pretty good. Of course, when I told Thomas I saw pictures, he mentioned that they must be really old because the house didn’t really look like that anymore.

Over the next several months, he would bring up the farmhouse repeatedly and every new house we saw together was compared to this farmhouse.