Buried Treasure
An antiques-loving Pennsylvania couple restore a diamond-in-the-rough 1770 Colonial to its original glory.
A pair of Pennsylvania antiques dealers bring a centuries-old Colonial back from near-ruin to its former glory with careful restoration work and lovingly curated collections.
Long before the term “house flipping” became part of the American vernacular, Andrea and Stan Hollenbaugh had a plan. “When we got married,” Andrea explains, “we had a goal in mind to own our own house free and clear. We owned three houses in seven years. We’d buy and restore them, then sell and move on.”
However, when they first found the East Berlin, Pennsylvania, home they’ve loved and lived in for the last 44 years—their “free and clear” house—it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. “It was in deplorable condition,” Andrea recalls. “I think my husband was very surprised when I said I could see us living here. But we could see underneath all the junk what the house was. We were happy [that other] people hadn’t ‘fixed it up’ because so often they make mistakes with a home like this. It was almost in original condition.”
The couple hired three craftsmen to help bring the 18th-century home back to life. They quickly set about replacing damaged plaster on the walls and repairing the floors. The dining room floors couldn’t be saved, so they swapped them for the original wide-board floors from the attic. Andrea notes that the original living room floors, which are still in place, feature narrower boards. “Although everyone loves wide-board floors now, back then they were considered secondary and were used upstairs,” she explains.
When the Hollenbaughs pulled up the dining room floors in preparation for installing the “new” floorboards, they discovered evidence of an unusual corner fireplace that had been removed. They immediately set about installing a replacement fireplace that looks like it has always been in the space.
Three months after moving in, Andrea painted and painstakingly stenciled the kitchen, using a Colonial pinwheel pattern on the walls and a swag pattern as a border near the ceiling. She sponged the ceiling to add even more visual interest. Stenciling the space instead of installing wallpaper gives it an authentic country Colonial aesthetic.
Stan took up his own painting project in the living room, applying various shades of yellow to the beautiful original trim and walls. “There are four or five shades of yellow in this room,” Andrea notes. “The walls are a pale, pale yellow, and it makes the dark furniture pop.”
In addition to his painting skills, Stan is an accomplished gunsmith who creates and sells reproduction rifles. “He makes beautiful Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles of the golden age,” Andrea says proudly. “He engraves and carves beautifully. He casts and makes the hammers and sights and flintlocks for the guns. He’s been doing it since he was 13.” In fact, Andrea observes, she sometimes has to look twice to see if a gun is an antique or a Stan original.
With their home faithfully restored and filled with their lovely antique collections, life is good for the Hollenbaughs— although they are faced with a delightful puzzle at times: Andrea relates, “We’re at the point now, when something new comes into the house, it takes 45 minutes of moving things around to figure out where it will look best!”