the family Farmhouse

An antiques dealer and lighting designer gently and pragmatically fixes up the house he inherited.

timothy northup knows for sure that the house was added to in 1876. “That date comes up in city records,” he says; “the original part of the house was most likely built around 1820 or a little later—though that’s speculation. He adds that the original house is post-and-beam construction, while the Victorian addition is balloon framed. | Northup may not know much about the house’s early days, but he knows it intimately, because this was his grandparents’ home. The 2,863-square-foot farmhouse is in the historic district in Oneonta, New York.

“My family bought it in 1942 . . . at the time, my grandmother wrote to a family member, ‘We bought a 100-year-old house.’ They were dairy farmers,” Northup says. “At the time, the homestead measured 80 acres, and they had a herd of 48 to 50 dairy cattle. I spent all my weekends in this house when I was growing up. It was always full of cousins, aunts and uncles; for me, it was the center of the universe.”

Northup’s grandparents farmed the land until the 1980s, and his grandfather lived here until he died in 2010 at age 99. He inherited the house and the land, which now measures 40 acres. Northup is an antiques dealer who also represents furniture and lighting companies. He also designs and manufactures lighting, calling his style “Steampunk Country Rustic,” and always uses reproduction Edison bulbs. When the house became his, he launched an investigation that led to peeling back layer upon layer of accretions, including plywood flooring, dropped ceilings, and modern wall paneling.

“There were five layers over everything,” he says. “Fortunately, the old floors and beams were intact underneath.”

Northup upgraded the electrical system, insulated the roof, and removed the wall between the 1876 kitchen and the adjoining dining room. He installed a breakfast bar and a new kitchen, moving the kitchen sink to the breakfast bar. A former woodshed became a sunny breakfast room, two cramped bedrooms in the original part of the house were opened to each other to become a great room—and the dairy barn became Timothy’s office and showroom.

For guidance during his year-and-a-half renovation, he went to the Farmer’s Museum in nearby Cooperstown: “There’s a house there similar to mine; they show its construction and explain its history,” Northup says. He got design advice from his girlfriend, Sallie Dunham– Davis, a clinical social-worker psychotherapist

The old house in Oneonta, New York, was built ca, 1820 and added to in 1876. At one time a duplex, it has been returned to single-family use.

The kitchen is frankly new with white cabinets and dark green granite counters. A wall was removed to open the kitchen to the adjoining dining room, and a new breakfast bar acts as a room divider. The two pendants over the bar were designed by the...