Shorts playlist: To understand where this restoration journey began, it is best to view the shorts from oldest to newest. The early videos help show the condition of the property when we first purchased it, including the overgrowth, neglected structures, rough edges, and the long road ahead as we began bringing the Jumanji Farmhouse back to life. : Channel content – YouTube Studio
When we first looked at the Jumanji Farmhouse, there was no pretending it was an easy project. The house was a pile of foreseen problems, hidden problems, and two-hundred-year-old issues waiting for someone patient enough—or stubborn enough—to face them. Old houses do not give up their secrets all at once. They reveal them board by board, stone by stone, and problem by problem.
And yet, one of the brightest and most inspiring discoveries is that so much of the house appears to be untouched. Not untouched in the sense that it was perfect, because it certainly was not. Untouched in the sense that parts of it were left the way they had been for generations. In a world where old homes are often stripped, modernized, covered over, or erased beyond recognition, this farmhouse still carries clues from the people who built it and lived here long before us.
The house may once have been a four-square home with a center hallway, a layout that appears to have been changed or removed perhaps one hundred to one hundred twenty years ago. That kind of alteration tells its own story. A house that has stood for roughly two centuries is not frozen in time; it adapts as families change, needs change, and generations make the place work for their lives. Even when walls move, doorways shift, or hallways disappear, the bones of the original home often continue speaking.
Many of the construction details appear consistent with typical Quaker building traditions: practical, sturdy, modest, and built with purpose rather than show. That matters to us because the early owners were Quakers and abolitionists, and the property sits in a region where Underground Railroad history was very present. We are careful not to claim more than we can prove, but we do believe the architecture and history are worth studying closely and preserving respectfully.
One especially unique feature is the full walk-out basement. It is not simply a cellar tucked under the house. It includes an oversized cooking fireplace, complete with old smoke stains that still mark where fire once worked against the brick and stone. Standing there, it is not hard to imagine the fireplace once serving as more than a place to cook. It may have helped heat the upper floor through radiant heat, warming the house from below during cold seasons.
Those smoke stains are more than discoloration. They are evidence of use, labor, meals, warmth, and survival. They remind us that this was not originally a decorative farmhouse. It was a working home. People cooked there, worked there, endured the weather there, raised families there, and made do with what they had. That kind of history is not something we want to erase with drywall and paint. It is something we want to understand.
Another remarkable remnant is the old well, where signs of a terracotta dome cover still remain. Details like that stop you in your tracks. They turn a project into a conversation with the past. You begin asking questions: Who drew water there? How many families depended on it? What did the property look like when the well was still in daily use? How much of the story is still waiting just beneath the surface?
That is the strange blessing of the Jumanji Farmhouse. Yes, it came with problems—many of them obvious, many of them expensive, and many of them older than anyone alive today. But it also came with authenticity. It came with untouched features, old construction clues, a full walk-out basement, a fireplace still bearing its smoke, traces of an old well, and enough original character to make the work feel less like renovation and more like stewardship.
Paul Fowler Author