Follow along as we try to bring life back to a circa 1900 Victorian house in Richmond, Virginia.

During the summer of 2003, we had the idea that we wanted to find an older, larger house in one of Richmond’s downtown neighborhoods. We didn’t really have the intention of restoring a house at that point — we thought that maybe we’d have to pull out some wood paneling or deal with some questionable ’70’s ‘upgrading’, but it wasn’t until we found and fell in love with this particular house that we realized what we had to do.

We were initially using a realtor to find houses in certain areas in a certain price range. One day, though, R. was driving through Church Hill and saw some developer-looking types conversing in front of an old house that had been stripped for restoration. She stopped to ask them for information about the house, since this was before we knew how to find out anything for ourselves.

It turned out that one of the guys was John from Better Housing Coalition, and that specific house had been bought to be restored and then sold through that organization. In passing, he told R. about a house a little further up that needed some love, but for a few reasons (size, that porch) that they weren’t able to purchase. He did, however, have the name and phone number of the owner. We made contact and a few months later the house was ours.

We didn’t start the process with much in the way of appropriate skills — we’ve certainly never done this kind of thing before. We hope to be able to learn what we need as we go without too many misfires… Yes, this is exciting and scary.

Start at the beginning or check out latest post to see what we’ve done around the place. While you’re here, drop us a line and let us know how you found the site!