A Texas couple breathes new life into their 100-year-old home with a savvy approach to all things salvage.
Nancy and John Davis have had 23 addresses in the 36 years they’ve been together. “We were flipping houses before that was even a term,” Nancy says. So when the Texas couple found an early 1900s farmhouse in McKinney, a suburb about 45 minutes from their Dallas home, they saw the potential right away. “A lot of the houses we were seeing were built in the ’70s and ’80s, so when we stumbled on this white farmhouse with outbuildings, barns, and a big airplane hangar, we just knew,” she says. The storage possibilities presented by all those extra buildings were a big part of the draw—Nancy is an antiques dealer and product designer. Still, the couple was realistic about what they were in for when it came to updating the property and main house, which they now refer to as “The Range.” “It was livable, but very dark. It needed a lot of freshening and opening up,” she says. After two years of moving walls, relocating rooms, replacing everything from roof to floors, and repurposing vintage finds in fresh ways, they can kick back and call it quits—for now, anyway. Says Nancy, “I don’t know that a house is ever finished, but we sure got it to a place we really enjoy.”
Living Room
Before: Bad wallpaper and 1970s paneling didn’t help the space, which already felt small and closed off.
This story is from the March 2017 edition of Country Living.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of Country Living.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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