The Read House BEFORE's | Social Circle, Ga.

I would call the timing of this restoration project. . .interesting and needed.

A little backstory: we just had baby. Well, we had a baby six months ago. Our sweet boy has only been home with us for the past three months. The first three months of his life he was a patient of Children‘s Healthcare of Atlanta in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) and then the Cardiac Acute Care Unit (CACU). The past six months have been the most painful months of my life watching our baby endure open heart surgeries, pain and healing and trying to heal myself from birth and the trauma of it all. And then, one month before our baby boy’s second scheduled open heart surgery, this beautiful house that Trey and I have been admiring for almost two decades turns up on the market. Weird timing/good timing.

One day, Trey and I drove passed this house, we live right down the road from it and pass by it regularly, and noticed several cars in the driveway. This home has been abandoned for several years, so it was very unusual to see cars lined up in the driveway. We pulled up, rang the doorbell and asked if the owners were home. hahaha! No owner was there but the nice people putting together the estate sale let us in and allowed us to look around. My goodness. This home. Just so beautiful and honestly better than I imagined!

I grew up in Avondale Estates in DeKalb County in Georgia. Avondale is full of the most gorgeous Tudor style homes. The entire downtown is also inspired by England’s Tudor architecture. Trey and I built our current home to look like a more modern version of a Tudor home. There aren’t very many Tudor’s in my tiny little town of Social Circle, Georgia. So before this house even hit the market we were all over it! We love a Tudor!

With everything we have been through and have yet to overcome, I am so thankful for this project. The timing may not seem ideal but then if we waited for the right time for anything we would always be waiting! And, come to find out, our baby boy’s surgery ended up getting canceled and rescheduled for the new year.

We have been working on the Read house for the past three weeks and it’s already had such a transformation. I will be sharing updates and photographs over on my Instagram @TwoChimneysOnCherokee.

I did my best to document every single detail of this beautiful home before we started the process of adding function back in. We want to keep the character and add even more! I love that Mrs. Read (the last home owner) loved wall paper! We plan on putting paper back on those walls - it’s already picked out. :) We are keeping that gorgeous pedestal sink and cast iron tub - the tub is already in its new location. The beautiful v-groove boards from the kitchen have been saved and we have a plan for adding those back into the design. I will share more soon. Y’all this home will be a stunner!

Two Chimneys on Cherokee - Week One

Today marks owning our new home for eight days! We’ve had so much great progress and learned so much about our 110 year old home. We had to make the decision to gut it. That was so hard for me. We didn’t have any intention of doing that and that most certainly wasn’t in our completion time line or budget either. Once we got to peeling back layers, I was very happy with this decision. The hardest part about this was the trim! Every single window had different trim around it. I loved that! It was similar but not the same. We are trying to decide if we will recreate that aspect of the house.

As you will notice, as you look through the photographs, all of the exposed wood. The house appears to have been built out of old barn wood. The braces that hold up the corners are very unique too. It’s so interesting seeing how they built this place. There are NO headers over any door or window. It’s as if the structure above is so solid there was no need for them because we haven’t found any sagging anywhere. We do plan on having this checked out to confirm before we keep on trucking! After uncovering the walls, you will see they are covered in old boards of every kind. They weren’t picky at all. It’s as if they just used what they could find.

Other fun things we’ve found:
- knob and tube wiring that was still being used
- electrical problems galore! The house should have burned to the ground!
- no insulation in the exterior walls
- rotten windows
- rotten front porch
- news paper articles
- so much wallpaper

The MOST exciting thing about gutting the house, we will now have ELEVEN foot ceilings! Whoa! We were told that back in the day, houses had really high ceilings and they dropped them to 8’ or 9’ foot to cut back on the expense of their heating and air bills. We plan on restoring that feature in every room!

We’ve also found two door ways that were covered up. A fifth fireplace that was covered up and unfortunately partially removed. Also, the front door windows were covered up for some reason. We plan on restoring the front door sidelights! It’s going to bring in so much extra natural light.

We’ve had lots of progress in the yard too! My nephew and father-in-law stopped by to help us pull up the nandinas that had gotten out of control and all the overgrown shrubs are gone too. We can finally see all of the house! We also had an arborist take control of the trees! It was so sad, but one of the trees, a pecan, was growing right up against the house. It was so beautiful but was so unsafe and had to go.

I had to give our sweet new home a name. . .it’s so perfect too!

Two Chimneys on Cherokee

I created an Instagram account to document our progress. You can find it here if you would like to follow along.

Unexpected. . .

This year, Trey and I had plans to build our dream home on beautiful land that we found right here in our favorite town of Social Circle, Georgia. We were less than a week from signing the paperwork for our construction loan to build and then, our loan officer called to let us know that due to Covid-19 and the uncertainty of our economy, he was dropping our loan. Devastation doesn’t even give my feelings justice. Angry doesn’t even begin to describe how bad it hurt. It’s not easy selling a house filled with 14 years worth of memories, three babies, five goat girls, three dogs and two cats. It’s easier when you know you have a “dream come true” waiting at the end of all the hard work. When he dropped our loan, and our dream all seemed to disappear.

BUT, God had other plans for us!

That same week, I received a text from my mother-in-law, Taryn, and Trey, my husband, within a 30 minute time frame. They both texted me a photo of a house that had just come on the market and then Zillow notified me of this same house!! Before I could respond to their text messages, Trey messaged to let me know that we were going the next day, Saturday, to walk through the house with our agent.

The house had only been on the market for less than 48 hours when we looked it over for the first time. We walked outside and we both knew it was for us! The house had several other offers come through that weekend and when we placed our offer, I honestly didn’t think we would get it! But of course, we drew up the plans and got estimates just in case! That Monday, March 16th, they accepted our offer and we were UNDER CONTRACT!

I’ve been praying, pretty specifically, that God would place our family where HE needs us! In a place where we would be suited best for HIS needs. 434 S. Cherokee Road is the place! It caught us both by surprise and was totally unexpected. But, we welcome it and can’t wait to dig in!

You know me! I had a photoshoot planned out the day of our closing! I immediately ordered the cute door mat from Amazon (click here for link), swung by the storage unit and picked up all my lanterns and rocking chairs so that we could decorate for photos! I’ve been going a bit nutty not being able to do photography sessions or weddings for my clients. I’m a “non-essential” over here that’s going bananas! This was so fun, even if I had to take my own photographs! I hope you enjoy the tour of our “before” the restoring begins!!

Here is our 1910 Workingman’s Foursquare Revival!!

What do you think?! Do you see what we see?! I might have an obsession over all the door hardware! It reminds me so much of my Papaw’s house in Avondale Estates. I can’t wait to share the restoration of this home as Trey and I bring it up to code and back to life!!

P.S. Don’t judge my Covid-19 roots, the Covid-19lbs I’ve gained or the fact that it looks like I’m on my cell phone the entire photo shoot!! lol I used my phone as a wireless trigger and well the rest is Covid’s fault!