Wow! Thanks! Well, right now I'm putting in a six foot cedar fence behind the house / between us and the neighbors, and there's a chain link fence there already that has to come out. While most of the posts are set in concrete in dirt (easy) some of them are set into concrete poured into holes jack-hammered out of a concrete pad that is there for some reason, possibly even the foundation for a structure that is no longer there. So, yeah, those posts are going to be difficult to deal with. I may just cut them off slightly below the pad surface and cover them with concrete. Come over any time, there's lots to do. :) I need to take some more pictures of some of the more interesting details of the property. There's a lot of walkways and retaining walls that are just completely buried in ivy and overgrowth. I appreciate the kind comments. I think we were very lucky to escape the banality of much of the more modern structures we looked at. Yes, I have a great deal of work ahead of me, including a radiant heating system install before next winter, but I'm enjoying every bit of it. Ok, tearing out chain link fence with 20 years of overgrowth entwined with and growing through it is a little painful. Satisfying, ultimately, but it hasn't been easy.

Yes the layout of the first two floors is definitely foursquare but the third floor has 6 dormers total which makes it almost a full floor. The hip roof has an extremely steep pitch almost mansard style except the pitch remain the same all the way to the top. Anyway, in terms of style- here is another shot of the interior of the front door. The sidelights were boarded over and we didn't even know they were there until a chat with a neighbor! But now we are trying to decide how to finish it (casing/trim/plinth block?) both inside and out. The casing around the door looks to have been original but had been cut when sidelights were drywalled over to only surround the door. The two vertical pieces are shown in the pic below- I stripped and repainted before finding out about sidelights. The problem is they are 68" tall and the door frame is 98" tall. They were pieced/patched at the bottom but even with a lot of blending it never looked like one piece. But basically my question is, is there a way to reuse these vertical pieces and instead of patching a small piece on to the bottom to extend it, just using an extra large plinth block or similar? I don't even know if I am expressing the problem clearly, sorry if this is super confusing! I would appreciate any suggestions on how to trim the door/sidelights in period-appropriate style! ** And yes, I am in St. Louis! From Stairs From Stairs From Stairs

That's very helpful Casey - thanks. I found some similar styles (T-Plan upright-and-wing/gable-front-and-wing, etc.) online and really wasn't sure. Most pics I found of T-plan farm homes had porches, so I'm led to believe one was removed at one point, and replaced with the front entry and cat-slide. Yep the windows were replaced in 2001, and the house was physically moved from a farm, to its present parcel on a new foundation with new utils., etc. Another interesting feature of the home, is the completely enclosed staircase off of what is now the dining room. It gets bitterly cold here in MN, and my guess is that the enclosed stairwells were to keep heat confined. So the gingerbreads in the gables would be "proper" if the home had a porch?

Thanks Casey. That's my feeling as well with regard to time period house could have or would have built. At first I assumed it was built in 1875 but then I realized that probably was not the case due to its style. In fact the style is similar to several other houses that were built in same neighborhood so my guess is adjoining properties may have been sold as "tracts" all at the same time which would have meant that other families who bought those tracts had their houses built possibly by the same builders who resided in the area. Similar styles, similar materials, etc because that was what available at that time. The original house is "t" shaped and the addition that appears at the back of the house is where the kitchen was last located. The house does not have a hallway, just a very small foyer when you come in the front door with entrance door to a bedroom off to immediate right and a room my grandmother called her parlor off to the immediate left. In order to get to the kitchen from the front door, you had to go through the parlor or through the bedrooms which all circled back to the kitchen area. So I'm wondering if originally the parlor (which has the fireplace on the driveway side you can see in the pic) was the original living/kitchen area. After thinking about that, that might explain why there is no hallway in the entire house. The front door was built by a master craftsman. Even after all these years, it still swings perfectly balanced and effortlessly and is one of the features of the house that I look forward to restoring to its former beauty.