How the journey began! My husband’s parents both passed away a few years ago & we were left their house, which at the time was only 14 years old. It was a quaint little ranch in a nice rural setting & I knew we could turn it into a darling short term rental for some added income. You see, we are blessed to be located halfway between the new Ark Encounter & the Creation Museum in Northern KY, & I myself work for both properties as the Lead Faux Finisher.

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The building of a Modern Farmhouse

I saw the need for so many families that wanted more than just a hotel room to stay while they visited both properties. So my tiny little thought turned into a wonderful business of a short term rental property. In doing so, we have met so many people, from all over the world!!
So the only logical thing to do in my mind was have another house!! I love being a host. I like to provide a house where people feel welcomed, like it’s a HOME, to have amenities that I personally want when we travel. And I wanted to do that MORE! So after discussing this with my always understanding husband & he saw how successful we were with his parent’s house, we decided to look into finding another house to rent.

Then it dawned on me….we live on our family farm. We ourselves have about 14 acres of said farm. I used to raise alpacas, but now the land & barns are just sitting idle, except for once a year when a friend brings her newly weaned lambs over to graze the pastures. Why not build a house on OUR property?! And so it began, the hunt for the perfect house plan.

I knew I wanted a farmhouse. It would be built right next door to my grandparent’s old house, which is almost 200 years old, so it needed to belong in that setting. Our original rental house has 3 bedrooms & sleeps 6 people, but we constantly were having requests from families if they could bring sleeping bags because there would be 7 or 8 of them. That helped us decide to make this new house sleep 8!!

Deciding on a builder was easy….we had a guy! In fact, I started doing faux work for him back in 2000 when I started my own Faux Finishing company. The next step was house plans. This, my friends is so daunting!! I lost hours upon hours, even days looking online to find exactly what would work, keeping the footprint small for cost reasons yet have the space needed for future guests. We finally landed on the closest plan I could find of how I wanted the outside to look, then our builder took over. I listed everything we wanted in the house & drew out a sketch of what I thought would work & his draftsman drew the perfect house!

Next came the FUN part!! I got to pick what went inside, & yes….I say “I”, as my husband had no desire to add anything to that mix except “keep the cost down!” I am a bargain hunter by nature. I also love to DIY. I scoured the sites of Wayfair & Amazon. I visited Goodwill, IKEA. I spent a couple days going up & down the roads to yard sales!!

Finally the house building process is coming to a close & we are hoping for some decent weather so the outside can be landscaped. Soon, the houses listing will go live on the rental platform & we can start meeting even more people from across the world. This is my journey of having the best time in building a modern farmhouse.