November 11, 2009

One of the Goings’ next projects is to renovate the cow barn into a barn for horses. "It’s kind of a perfect imperfect," Nancy Going says of the farmstead. "Nothing is ever done. This will keep us busy and occupied for a long, long time." The Goings moved to Wisconsin from Florida but had lived in Connecticut and Illinois prior to that. "I absolutely love the seasons," Nancy Going says. "Winter is a little long here, but you just have to make the best of it."

The 1890s farmhouse had fallen into disrepair due to age, a succession of renters and scavengers who stripped the house of anything of value during the two years it stood empty while Dave and Kim Weiss negotiated the purchase of the property.

"It was a dump," says Dave Weiss, who owns Renovation Classics, a build/remodel firm in Cedarburg. "Usually that’s what attracts me."

Shortly after Thanksgiving 2006, Weiss began work on the house himself, after-hours and on weekends. He peeled off layers of siding down to the original clapboard, found reclaimed Cream City brick for the chimney parts of the foundation and reused some of the old doors that were still intact. "In each one of the rooms I wanted to keep something from the original house," Weiss says.

While working on the project, an elderly woman paid him a visit. She said her grandfather had built the house and she and her husband had taken over the farm, even though her husband wasn’t a farmer. Her daughter, with whom she now lived in Grafton, was born and raised there. "They were so happy it was being renovated instead of being torn down," Weiss says.

Nancy Going rotates her collection of antiques throughout the house, including a number of antique toys.

The Weisses had planned to expand the main house and convert the chicken coup into a mother-in-law suite for Dave’s mother, but zoning restrictions (that have since been changed) prevented them from doing so. Work on the house was nearing completion the following November when the Weisses realized it would not meet their needs and reluctantly decided to put it up for sale.

That turned out to be the happiest of Thanksgivings for Mike and Nancy Going, who had spotted the property poking around Cedarburg while house-hunting a couple of months earlier. "We fell in love with Cedarburg," says Nancy Going. The Goings were living in Florida when Mike had been offered a job in Milwaukee. Driving along Pleasant Valley Road that September day Going thought, "If we could ever live in a house like that it would be amazing."

Once they got word it was for sale, they flew up to take a look at the house just before a blizzard hit; both fell in love with the house even though it was still under construction. The couple and their two teenage children moved in that March.

"My whole life I wanted to live on a farm," Going says. But there aren’t many fixer-uppers or 100-year-old farmhouses in south Florida, she says.

There isn’t much about her new home that she doesn’t like. "I just love the way the house looks. I think it’s beautiful. (Dave) was able to capture the history of the house and not lose the history in bringing it up to speed. It just makes for a very warm and comfortable home.

"I love the barn — I pinch myself because I can’t believe we have a barn. I love my little milk house. I just think it’s the cutest thing I ever saw," Going says.

She has transformed the milk house into a garden shed and both she and Mike have thrown themselves into landscaping. "Some people garden very meticulously and with a pattern. I like it to look more like its been there for a long time as opposed to perfection," Going says. "I love that we have all this nature all around us. It’s so peaceful."

Mike Going promised the Weisses they would continue the work they started. "Mike wrote them a letter telling them how privileged we feel to live here; that we would honor its memory and move it forward also," Going says.

Dave Weiss knows the home’s legacy is in good hands. "They are in love with it as much as we were to begin with," he says of the Goings. "It wasn’t just another project." 

The original 1890s farmhouse ended at the kitchen. Dave Weiss of Renovation Classics added a dining area, great room and second story during a 2007 renovation.
	"I probably enjoy the gardening as much as I enjoy anything else," says homeowner Nancy Going. She and husband Mike took an essentially blank canvas, save for some 100-year-old trees, and have built up the areas around the house with native flowers and plantings.