When the Maxcy Fisher House -- newly relocated from Franklin to the historic district of Hollis, N.H. -- goes on the market next month for about $1.25 million, it won't be just another house on the block.
It will also be the latest product of a burgeoning business.
Sherrill Rosoff and Holly Bradman of Pepperell cofounded The Restored Homestead LLC in 2002 with the goal of dismantling and rebuilding old homes destined for the wrecking ball.
If that sounds complicated, said Bradman, it's really not. ''The best businesses are built on the simplest things," she said.
In their case, said Rosoff, the idea is ''to recycle old houses instead of throwing them away."
The Maxcy Fisher house will be the duo's second project, and they are already looking ahead to creating a ''village" of old homes in Brookline, N.H. The pair seems to have tapped a demand in the $500 billion-a-year residential construction and home improvement market by reviving old homes and allowing their histories to continue.
''They've come up with a niche in the market," said Judy Ilomaki of the ERA Masiello group in Hollis. ''The public seems to be positive to the idea. People like to know the history when buying an older home."
The two women met when Rosoff was buying her own old home in Pepperell, and her real estate agent introduced her to Bradman, who had recently fixed up her house. Both women were ex-real estate brokers. Bradman used to have her own interior design business, and Rosoff ran executive management programs at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania.
At a Christmas party, they hatched the idea of making a business out of restoring old homes.
It took Bradman and Rosoff six months to draw up a workable business plan, and both took out second mortgages on their homes for start-up money.
Then they found the Benjamin Spaulding house in Townsend, listed on eBay for a song, but the new owners would have to move it. They bought it for $6,000, began dismantling it in 2003 -- taking apart the chimney themselves, brick by brick, finding a 1798 penny in the process -- and moved it to Brookline.
The women hired a general contractor to handle most of the work, but also performed some jobs themselves, such as sanding and refurbishing doors.
Last fall they sold the house for $571,000.
''We made money and gained credibility with the banks" in the first project, said Bradman. That success allowed them to begin work on the Fisher house almost immediately.
The Fishers were a prominent family in Franklin when they built their house, sometime between 1720 and 1750, Rosoff estimates. The house was expanded several times in the Colonial era, but eventually fell on hard times. In 1997, a homeowner wanted to demolish the house to make way for something new. Judging from photographs, Rosoff said, the house ''was in pretty bad shape."
Luckily, a local carpenter realized the value of the house, and carefully drew plans and numbered the 300-year-old oak and American chestnut beams before dismantling them. He stored the house in pieces on a trailer before Rosoff and Bradman learned of it and bought it for $25,000 last year.
The 3,800-square-foot house is essentially a modern skin for the old beams, said Rosoff. The historic layout of the house will remain almost the same, with the addition of a kitchen at the back and a different roof slope that allows for livable space on the second floor. Original doors that are too short for the main living spaces will be used for bathrooms and closets.
''We can rebuild these houses but not totally replicate them," she said.
The finished project will include a mix of original details and historically appropriate fittings found in salvage yards, plus such modern amenities as a six-burner stove, central air conditioning, soapstone counters, and whirlpool bathtubs.
And then, there are the fireplaces. The house will have five -- some with separate compartments for bread ovens -- that were re-created from salvaged English ballast brick. Masons Randy Mayou and Stan Archambult carefully re-created historic fireplaces that meet the requirements of modern fire codes. To make sure they had it right, they laid out each fireplace ''dry" -- without mortar -- before cementing the bricks in place.
At the end of last month, they were just finishing. ''I've done more complicated projects," said Mayou, a mason for 33 years, ''but they're not usually this complicated."
Many curious people have come by during construction, say Rosoff and Bradman, some potential buyers among them. They say the $1.25 million price for the home, which sits on a 2-acre lot they purchased for about $200,000, is in line with new luxury houses in the area, and they don't think they'll have trouble selling it. The Spaulding house was listed for only three days before it sold to a couple who ''is so much like us," said Bradman. ''They know what it stands for."
Rosoff meticulously researches the history of the home and assembles the information into a notebook for the new owners.
''Buyers will select themselves," said Bradman.
For Rosoff and Bradman, history trumps the bottom line. ''People don't understand the altruism behind this," said Bradman. Though the two women declined to specify how much they spent on labor and materials, they said that reassembling the Fisher house required so much extra labor that the asking price reflects a conservative profit.
''We could save money by doing some things differently, but that wouldn't be true to the house," she said.
''Anything we would want in our homes, we're putting in this one," Bradman added. ''We're having a good time making it so incredible."
