"D" Farmhouse

We think that the house on “D” Farm was built around the turn of the 20th century, ie, the late 1800s/ early 1900s.  


The original house consisted of a living room and dining room/kitchen area plus one small bedroom on the ground floor and three bedrooms upstairs.  It was constructed facing north, about 40 feet south of what is informally referred to as the Lane Road, a road traveling east from the small city of Lane to the 59 highway in rural Richmond.*  


It was several years after my grandparents purchased the home in the mid-1940s that they installed indoor plumbing, adding on a bathroom, enlarging the kitchen, and adding a laundry room at the back of the house with access off the back entry porch.


As a child growing up, the best part of the house was, without a doubt, the stairway to the second floor.  It consisted of five rather steep steps up to a 3’ x 3’ landing, where there was a window looking out to the west, followed by a step up to a second landing of the same dimensions where you would make an 180 degree turn to continue up an additional three steps to the second floor.  There was a simple wooden railing at the top with doors to enter each of the three upstairs bedrooms.  


The stairs were a magnificent play area, made somewhat private by the fact that there was what I call a “Snyder Farm door” that closed it off from the ground floor.  Now that I look back, the adults probably appreciated that as much as we kids did.


My Aunt Virginia and Uncle Steve added an additional 1200 square feet to the house in 1983-84. They left most of the home, as it existed at that time, intact, removing only the back porch and laundry room. They built a new kitchen/dining area, living room and master bedroom with 1 ¾ baths in an “L“ shape wrapping it around the original structure to the south and west. 


After Virginia passed away in 1986, Steve moved to Florida and our mother bought the farm.  For many years she would spend as much as six months a year in Kansas.  But as the years passed, her visits became increasingly shorter, her stays reduced to just a few weeks a year.  Sitting empty for such long periods of time took a toll on the house.  


The house also fell into disrepair due to the severe weather conditions (rain, snow, hail, wind and extreme temperatures, not to mention the fact that it is out in the country).  


It broke our hearts but last year Dale and I concluded that we would have to tear down the entire house and start over.  It wasn’t our first, second, or even our third choice as to how to proceed.  We had consulted two architects and a number of builders exploring the possibility of either repairing and remodeling the house in its entirety; tearing off the 1980s addition and restoring the original house; or tearing down the original house and refurbishing the 1980s addition and adding on.  


The experts’ advice was unanimous:  tear it all down and start over.  Both the original house and the addition had fallen into such disrepair that it would be more costly to repair than to start anew.


* Lane Road was a gravel country road for as long as I can remember up until the county paved it in 2005.  It was formally named Cloud Road in 1990.