I’d like to introduce you to “the two sisters”.
Aren’t they beautiful?
Here we have two small Virginia homes frozen in time. Each is a log cabin… built in the early 1800’s. This is what home looked like for most Southerner’s during that time.
I’d like to spend a couple days with you looking at the details we find in the photos I took of these two places. There are some treasures and mysteries to be found, and lessons to be learned about home/cabin design and construction.
I was called by the man who owned these homes and asked by him if he should sell these for salvage. I spent the day riding out to take a look at them, and in exploring them, and in getting to know the man who owned them.
The owner did not financially need to sell the structures. He was taking excellent care of them. And, he was fond of looking at them setting proudly at the back of his property.
I encouraged the owner that the best thing he could do for these gems was to keep on doing just what he was doing… taking care of them. I gave him my business card and told him that if the time ever came that they had to go that I was the man for the job, but that I hoped that he would never call. I was thankful that he hadn’t called one of the guys who specializes in making furniture out of old houses… that would have been a crime.
As far as I know these ladies are still sitting in this same pasture.
Originally posted 2015-04-25 12:50:26.
You are a good man Noah…a true lover of old houses and their history. Where I grew up seeing old farmhouses that were the first to ever exist, became to be so-and-so house (the occupiers name) and even if they moved on the name stayed the same. All too often and to my horror they would change something or worse tear them down not caring nor respecting the LABOR it took, the beautiful old growth oaks that died for that farmhouse or barn to be built or the integrity of her original self. I desperately longed for a summer kitchen that belonged to one of those old houses slated for destruction…and before I could get to find out how…she was gone along with everything else that stood there. A house becomes and old friend that you pass by all the time, look and say in your heart “Hey old girl”, that this means home. This modern mentality has destroyed what many a generation called home. Instead of my old place adapting to me…I adapted to her…privy and all. Thank you for mentioning the small humble places that the boastful pride of life cares not for. I spend hours sometimes looking online for original humble places…and they are hard to come by without all the modern adaptations to pay for. If I could start my life over, I would do what you have done except making a business out of it. I’m a woman so my life would have been spent living a simple life. One that I briefly got to enjoy without modern heat, no bathroom, one sink, a long clothes line and a neat old two sided shed. These photographs are precious and I can’t ever imagine scrapping anything…not even a rotten board. 🙂
Thank you Dee for sharing. 🙂
I wish I had your gift for words… you managed to get out in one paragraph what I have struggled to write these past two years.
Noah