If you follow us on facebook and instagram, you’ve seen endless posts of our farmhouse rescue project over the past 10 days! It’s been a whirlwind of crawling through dusty spaces, navigating rodents and spiders, and doing back breaking loading and unloading of furniture.
We were incredibly fortunate to have been found by an OC developer who in just a few short weeks will be demolishing a gorgeous, albeit dilapidated farmhouse from 1908.
Earlier this month, I received a phone call asking if I was interested in salvaging materials from a house that was being demoed. Free Stuff? Heck yeah. But, as we drew closer to the date I was having second thoughts. I was thinking it would be mostly old windows and doors. I love old windows and doors. I have about two dozen. I don’t need any more. I’ve been really busy. I need a break. I can do without more stuff.
My youngest sealed the deal the night before I was supposed to meet the developer. She was verging on a cold and I thought for sure she wouldn’t be at school the next day. I e-mailed and regretfully declined the offer. BUT, my daughter went to school, the developer didn’t get my e-mail and bright and early in the morning I received a text that he was there and waiting.
I jumped in the car and was cursing myself for agreeing to take on more than I can handle. I got to the property and was overwhelmed by the haunting grandeur of the house!
With five bedrooms, a grand dining room, kitchen, butlers pantry, parlor, living room, sun-room, basement, cellar, attic, guest house and eight storage sheds, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. This house was so much more than old windows and doors. Antique sideboards, china hutches, dining tables, chest on chest dressers, hope chests…all were left and covered in inches of dust and grime. And, all just 1.5 miles away from knot too shabby. How have I never seen this house?!
I looked at the developer in awe…”ALL of this?” I asked. They were giving us everything. Anything. If we could take it, we could have it…fixtures, furniture and housewares. It was/is important to them that what is left of the house goes back into the community.
I managed to pull together the entire knot too shabby team plus family, friends and facebook followers to help with the salvage project! Eighteen people in all!
#knottooshabbyfarmhouseresuce: Goal: retrieve everything we are physically able to avoid it being turned to rubble and landing in a landfill.
Dad was crawling through the mud and fighting rusty bolts to remove the grand arched wrought iron gates around the perimeter of the property. The guys were busting out windows, doors and shutters as well as moving the heavy pieces of furniture.
As we dug through box after box of articles representing decades of someones’ life, we wonder “who leaves all of this behind?” Why? And, how fortunate are we to be the recipient of a piece of Glendora history!?
Our team of salvage enthusiasts, friends and family who were wondering how they got pulled into moving so much furniture, and even my kids moved over ten truckloads of stuff! We worked until it was too dark to see, leaving behind almost as much as we took with us.
The task of refinishing the furniture we pulled from the house and cleaning all of the houswares that we rescued will go well into the new year! Stay tuned for all of our farmhouse rescue projects! Each piece tells a story of a life long lived in our quiet hometown and will eventually get passed along to a new family.Find our projects by searching #knottooshabbyfarmhouserescue.
It’s been a project complete with blood, sweat and tears…add a few curse words and corresponding bruises…well, anything worth getting involves a little pain. Right?
To see more amazing pictures of the house and our finds, check out what Michelle Black wrote about the experience on her blog. And, view our photo gallery of the books, dishware and furniture pieces that we pulled from the property. Much has already been posted on facebook and we even finished painting our first buffet. Pics on instagram!
