about the house

The following history is one we've been able to piece together from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others. If we're wrong or are missing some facts, please let us know (nicely!) by e-mailing us at the link at the bottom of the page...

Brickman House began life around 1840 as a small, two story cabin (one room downstairs, either one or two tiny bedrooms upstairs) for farmer Harding Brickman and his wife, Mary, in what was then an extremely remote northwestern part of Delaware known as "The Wedge." The portion of the structure the Brickmans built is highlighted below on the photo, and is in yellow on the floorplan:

(Click on any image on this page for a larger view)

Delaware's "Wedge" has an interesting history of its own. In 1764, Mason and Dixon were hired to survey the western border of Delaware, which was to be a straight vertical line connecting the southern border, a horizontal line, to the northern border, a semicircle. Well, our intrepid surveyors were hitting the sauce pretty hard slogging through the forests of eastern Maryland and western Delaware, and the line they drew ultimately didn't connect with the semicircle. Oops... I hate when that happens. You can see the Wedge highlighted in the pink circle on the map below:

After a protracted period of attempted land grabs by Maryland and Pennsylvania, the 800 acre wedge-shaped piece of land was finally granted to Delaware in 1921. Legend has it though, that during the time that the ownership of the Wedge was in dispute, all manner of scofflaws and outlaws took up residence there, because no law enforcement agency, and more importantly, no state tax collector, had undisputed jurisdiction. We don't know what the Brickmans were involved in, but it's a sure bet Harding and Mary had some interesting neighbors. For more information on the Wedge and its history, visit the Delaware GenWeb Project.

After the Brickmans sold the house and surrounding farmland in 1843, the property went through a couple of owners before being purchased by the Smith family in the 1860's. The Smith family built a second and third floor onto the original cabin, and built the large, three story vernacular Victorian addition that is the front, and main, section of the house today (blue on the floorplan).

At least five generations of Smiths owned the property, and struggled through the years to make the farm a profitable business enterprise. The farm generated just enough to pay the bills and they were able to stay a step ahead of the tax collector for the most part, except for a brief misstep during which the property was sold at Sheriff's sale for want of $2300 in back taxes owed. We're not sure whether it was Pennsyvania, Maryland or Delaware that managed to catch up with them. The Smiths managed to pay off the tax man, though, and successfully reclaimed the property. In the 1930's, another addition was built, this time a family room addition (pink on the floorplan).

By the 1960's, though, as these things tend to go, the Smiths decided the surrounding farmland was worth more in development potential than it ever would be producing soybeans, and began to sell off the property to be subdivided and developed. Fortunately, at that time the property was still remote enough that the subdivided parcels were lightly developed, if at all, and are surrounded by the thousands of state-protected acres known as the White Clay Creek Preserve.

The house remained as it was, the rambling, shabby farmhouse sitting on top of the hill, until the early 1970's, when it was finally sold to the first non-Smith owner in generations. Thus descended upon the house a period of great darkness... the era of (insert snippet of forboding music of your choice)...

Bad Joey the Plumber.

Piecing together this particular part of the house's history started during our title search, when we discovered that the owner who had sold the house in 1972 to the immediate prior owners (who we know had done absolutely nothing to the property) was "Joseph VerylongItalianname" (hey, deserved or not, we occasionally feel we have to protect the guilty, or at least those possessing truly tragic taste). During our purchase process, our septic inspector had some questions about the house, which the owners couldn't answer. They claimed that the owner they purchased the house from was a plumber, and he had done some work on they system, but they had no idea what. Once we moved into the house, and began doing the demolition work for the renovation, it became crystal clear as we peeled back layers that the house hadn't been touched, essentially, until the late 60's/early 70's, when a whole house renovation had been undertaken. During that renovation, many of the original features of the house were lost to plastic paneling, skinny dark stained molding, and shag carpeting.

Putting together the pieces, it was clear that the harbinger of the Great Renovation Apocalypse was none other than Joseph the Italian Plumber. As we tore into more and more of the previous renovation, and saw just how awful it was, our esteemed prior owner once removed became known as "Bad Joey the Plumber."

Anyway, Bad Joey built the final addition onto the house, adding a second story to the family room (in pink on the floor plan) and a one-story attached garage and laundry room (in green on the floorplan):

The apocalyptic remains existed virtually untouched until we purchased the house in March 2002. For detailed photos and explanations of our ongoing efforts to undo the 1970's "remuddling," please visit our gallery and journal on this site. Oh, and by the way, don't feel bad for Bad Joey. After we moved into the house, we learned from the neighbors that our prior owners were mistaken. Bad Joey was not, in fact a plumber, but a fledgling developer, who renovated the farmhouse and built three more houses around it in the space of four years, made a boat load of money from them, and retired to Florida shortly thereafter. We wish Developer Joey the best in his retirement years, but he'll always be affectionately known as a plumber to us.

We're proud to be the most recent stewards of Brickman House, and plan a historically sensitive renovation to preserve the few remaining original features of the house, and blend the new features seamlessly in with the old.

She's a grand old dame, and we're glad to have her.

about us

Quite simply put, we're two fools for old houses that found each other. Brickman House is our third home, and third renovation project, together. Our first was a beautiful little 1920's shotgun-style row house, and our second an incredibly well built, but not updated, vintage 1960's colonial.

We enjoy the creativity of renovation, the thrill of discovering what's under six layers of wallpaper and eight layers of flooring, and most importantly, our projects keep us off the street and out of trouble. Not to mention, our friends will tell you that what we find in the walls makes for great cocktail party stories...

about the website

We decided to start the 2003 New Year with a new project-- a simple website to share the latest photos of the house renovation process with family and friends. Well, as we started to put up one photo, and tell one story, we thought, wait, we must show them this photo and tell this story, and then this photo and this story... and well, the website project just blossomed (or snowballed, really) into the monster you're viewing now. In all seriousness, though, we've had a lot of fun creating it, and hope you have a lot of fun visiting it.

We've tried to make the site as easy to navigate as possible. There's a toolbar at the bottom of each page that will take you to any section of the site:

home / about us / gallery / journal / links / mail

You can also click on any photo on any of the pages to get a larger view of that photo, and keep an eye out for rollover images, where you can roll your mouse over the photo for before and after views-- we'll let you know as they come by.

The site was created with Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX, which writes code far better than we ever could. Even so, because we're the ones putting the images and text into the program, sometimes we mess up. If you find a mistake, broken link, or anything that looks like it's not acting like it should, please email us and let us know so we can fix it.

contact us

You're welcome to contact us via email with any questions, comments or concerns you may have.

To do so, click on the "mail" link you'll find at the bottom of each page.

home / about us / gallery / journal / links / mail