Hi, we’re the Hendons and we just bought a really old house.
In the early summer of 2021, we became aware that the housing market in Spartanburg was going bonkers. After a little research, we realized we could turn quite a profit on our current home with very little effort on our part. Selling our updated ranch style house in a cozy neighborhood on Spartanburg’s bustling West Side was going to be easy. Buying a new house? That was the hard part.
The last time we bought a house, we searched for over six months and had several “sure things” fall through. At the time, we were living in my parents’ basement* so you can imagine our eagerness to move (*it should be noted that their basement was totally finished and huge and we and Ellie each had our own rooms and our surroundings were incredibly comfortable and my parents are SAINTS for taking us in at a moment’s notice…but we were still guests in someone else’s home and not in our own space). We learned our lesson the hard way: don’t sell your house until you have somewhere to go.
So, we started looking for somewhere to go…just to see.
When Trey stumbled on the listing for the Victorian farmhouse in Pauline, he jokingly told me, “I found your house.” I have always been a sucker for an old home – the architecture, the history, the CORNICES! But as we looked through the photos on Realtor.com, I think we both knew we were kidding. It was probably full of mold and termite damage, it probably smelled awful, and let’s just say the lighting in the pics made the place look straight up haunted. But still, we wanted to go see it just for fun. I mean, how often do you get to go wander around a 120-year-old house?
Our realtor and good friend Marshall Jordan (if you’re in the market in Spartanburg, call him, he’s the best – no really, the absolute best), is a genuinely awesome human and agreed to take us out to see the house, probably assuming we were wasting his time, or that we’d lost our minds. The first strike against the house was that it was set rather forward on the lot – on a state highway with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. Not great for a family with a young kiddo. Then there was the peeling paint all over the exterior. The roof was lumpy. All the floors were slanted (foundation issues anyone?). There was carpet everywhere…even in the hall bathroom. There was a giant sheet of plastic stapled to the walls at the top of the steps to block off the murder room…er, I mean, attic. But then again, there were cornices, and bargeboards, and nine-foot ceilings, and hardwood floors, and beadboard in the attic, and the original banister on the stairs, and a gazebo…
And we absolutely fell in love.
The front of the house has a spacious porch, big enough for a swing, and a cute little stained-glass window in the front door. Upon entering the house, there is a large foyer/front hall that gives access to every other room in the house, which is basically divided into quadrants. The first quadrant to the right is the living room with a beautifully ornate fireplace and several windows. Next to that, in quadrant two, is the master suite. Directly across from the front door are the stairs leading to the attic space and the (carpeted) hall bathroom. On the left, quadrant three, is a den-type space that connects to the small kitchen. And finally, circling back toward the front door is quadrant four, the second bedroom.
The house sits on a full acre, give or take, with a detached two car garage (that is also large enough for work space), a well house (though the well isn’t deep enough to supply all the water for the house, just a nice supplement), and an outbuilding that once operated as a salon. The outbuilding is perfect for us because Trey works from home and it would give him a detached space to work distraction free, as well as an office he could actually leave at the end of the day.
We knew it needed a lot of work. We knew we’d have to do most of it ourselves. We knew we’d have to live in the house while we did the necessary (and some unnecessary) repairs and renovations. But we also knew that it felt like an adventure we were supposed to take.
So, we sold our updated ranch style house for a tidy profit and bought an old Victorian farmhouse built in 1900. We plan to do our best to restore it to its former glory while giving it a bit of a glow up.
The house may be old, but we’ve got some new tricks.