We are one year into the renovation of the Mansion estate! Day to day progress seems slow, but when I look back at what we’ve accomplished this year, I’m incredibly excited!

Our biggest progress has been ‘foundational.’ Here are the highlights:

Planning: We finalised the plans for both the Mansion and Carriage House. We got our building permits (yay!), which allowed us to start making changes to the structures!

Foundation: Although the foundations on the property were in good shape (trust me, we made sure before buying!), we believe in making sure these structures will last at least 300+ years. So, we spent some time analysing the expected load (we will be adding bathrooms= a lot more weight) and we poured a little more concrete to the foundations of both the Mansion and Carriage House.

Roof: The roof had been taken off in 2008(ish), and had never been replaced so the only covering was a layer of ice and water shield.

Utilities: This took the most time and effort!

The water/sewer haven’t been turned on since 2007/2008, and unfortunately the water and sewer lines were cracked- when we turned the water on, nothing came out! So, we had to excavate and completely rerun both water and sewer. And, because we were adding bathrooms to the Carriage House, we had to run all new lines over there.

The power to the Mansion was 100 amps, which is much less than the average residential service these days. Because we will be increasing the demand, we needed to increase the electric service as well. So, we worked with our local power co-op to get a new power pole and run new service to the property. We also ran the power lines to each building.

Mechanical Room: One of the logistical hurdles we had was where to put our new utilities (and where we will put a boiler, a/c controls, etc. which will be part of updating the Mansion and weren’t part of the original plans). To overcome this, we built a new mechanical room which will eventually be covered by a porch- you won’t even know it’s there!

Carriage House/ Pavilion: We also put significant work into the Carriage House interior and exterior to make it ready for use as a venue next summer! They are running power/electric as we speak, and plumbing is going in early January. We also prepped and poured the big slab which will carry a pavilion to offer covered (weather protected) venue space.

Mansion Demo: Finally, we’ve started demo-ing the interior of the Mansion where we need to answer final structural questions (how far apart are the studs in this wall? What size are these floor joists? etc.) and prepare for adding and rerunning plumbing and power inside the building!