A Family of Five Spent 16 Years Renovating a 300-Year-Old Home

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It's, we hope, the most important place in our lives. And there's just something special about the American home and what it means to all of us. Up next to tell her story is Ruth McKinney, author of Hungry for Home. He's lived in over 30 different houses herself.

Here's Ruth with her story. Well, I was an assistant D.A. in the state of Virginia for several years, and then I became an assistant attorney general. And up to that point, I think I'd moved about 23 times. So moving and home and a sense of stability were really important to me. I got married when I was right about 30 and my husband announced to me we're going to be moving up to the Philadelphia area. I get pregnant right after we move. And that first year, Bob and I lived in nine different homes. And I'll tell you what, for somebody who had been practicing law for several years and then starting to stay home and moving around nine different times. That was my first real identity crisis. And I think a lot of women who have done that can probably say the same thing. You go from feeling a sense of accomplishment and purpose to what am I doing all day?

I'm cleaning up something that keeps getting messed up. And I'm all of a sudden out of my lane when I had felt very in my lane before the end of that first year. Bob and I contacted a realtor who took us and sat us down and said, how much can you afford? And we told her she burst out laughing.

And for any realtor out there, I would advise that's the last thing you should ever do. She called us two weeks later and said, are you afraid of hard work? We didn't know what that meant. She took us to a home about 150 years old, sliding off the foundation. And my husband looked at me and said, we can do it. So we go to Home Depot and that's where our house flipping story really begins. We had one toilet. I mean, the house was literally sliding off the foundation. It had a Martha Washington staircase up it. So you couldn't get I mean, we couldn't understand why are there only twin beds on the second floor? Well, you couldn't get bigger beds or bigger furniture up the stairs. So Bob and I ended up having to build an entire two story addition on the back just to get our furniture upstairs. And because it was the only bathroom we had and we had no kitchen, whoever took a shower had to wash the dishes that were in the bathtub first. But we were approached by that same realtor 18 months later.

And she said, you know, you can sell this for more than double. Well, right then we knew we were good at something. My family going back generations. My grandfather was an evangelist.

They traveled all over Asia, Sumatra. My dad grew up with his five siblings overseas. And there were constantly people in and through my grandparents and my parents home.

And I knew I had a heart for blessing people in and through our house. We began to flip homes every 18 to 24 months. We found that we had a real knack for it. So it was a lot of moving and doing all of the work ourselves. Bob was literally coming home from work and working. I mean, he would say good night to our daughter and start working around seven, finish around one.

Leave for work again at five in the morning. We did that day in and day out. So that was the second thing we had to work on, not just the home, but how to navigate things as a couple.

And I'll never forget, we went and sat down in Barnes and Noble because we had no money to go on a date. But we could get the magazines on the shelf, sit down for free with a cup of coffee and put the magazines back. But he and I would each take a yellow legal pad of paper while we go through magazines. And we would write down what was most important to each one of us so that we could compromise on the other things.

And then we would talk about it. And I would say what this did was give us a very healthy marriage. We have learned how to navigate hard things and compromise. We've learned how to laugh at our mistakes. There have been a lot of mistakes on the homes. And if we didn't get a sense of humor or give each other grace, it would have been really, really hard.

I mean, imagine it. We're moving literally every 18 to 24 months, not to mention we had five kids in five different homes. I'll never forget in one of the houses, Bob was laying tile on a new kitchen floor for me. And it was a sub floor, which means it's a wooden floor. And he had applied concrete on the whole thing and started to tile. And I came home and said, oh, let's go out to dinner. He said, great.

So we went out to dinner. We come home only to realize that all that concrete had hardened onto the plywood and you cannot get it off. So Bob had to take a chisel and a hammer and chisel the whole floor. But all of these things, I think that's one of the reasons I love and appreciate my husband so much. He just isn't afraid to make mistakes and he's just going to try again.

And not many people can do that. I mean, when I first met Bob, my dad said, I don't want to hear Bob's name one more time because all your mom said is, well, let's get Bob. Let's call Bob. And so that kind of became a running joke. Bob the builder is who I was married to. You know, we were trial by fire. I mean, in one house, I'll never forget standing on the stairs. And Bob fell through the ceiling of the second floor, down through my floor, down into the basement.

He had stepped on the wrong beam. So it's given us a real just a love and appreciation for each other's skill set. You know, somebody asked me once, they said, well, I don't have a family culture. And I said, oh, yes, you do. You have a family culture, whether you're intentional about creating it or not.

So you better be intentional about it. You know, we could easily have just pushed through and worked only, but we had kids in the process. And to me, what makes and creates home is those family traditions and connections. So that's where I feel like my passion, skill set, whatever you want to say, comes through is how do you create family traditions that make your kids keep wanting to come back?

I have no interest in having a perfect life. What I've wanted to do is to create a safe place for my kids to not be perfect. And for people to come in and feel loved and appreciated, relaxed, not feel like they could never measure up.

And just wanting them to feel like they're home when they're here. When we first bought the house, there was a photographer. Our home was being put in a book called Stone Houses. And the photographer came from New York who had done a number of estates, museums. I mean, he was a very accomplished photographer and he came into our house.

He was staying here for about 10 days photographing. And he walked through the whole house completely silent. And I was scared to death because I knew most of the things in our home Bob and I have collected from, you know, antique sales and garage sales. And I thought, what is he going to say? And he walks into my kitchen and I said, is everything OK? And he said, I only have one thing to say. And I said, what?

He said, I'm home. And I thought you couldn't give me a bigger compliment than for someone to feel that way in my house. So it's been really exciting. And I just sit there and go, Lord, you have taken this to a place I never could have.

It's just been an amazing time to say I can't receive any of the accolades. It's only God. In the words of C.S. Lewis, the fact that our heart yearns for something Earth cannot supply is proof that heaven must be our home. And all of us homemakers can accomplish only so much through our efforts to fill a void that only heaven can truly fill.

These efforts, however, are important, and the ability to make others feel loved, welcome and cared for during their journeys through life is one of the greatest gifts you can give. Restoration is always possible. Great things can grow out of ruins. Families can thrive in places that were once unfit for life.

Take it from me. You will never regret the effort it takes to make your house a home. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Madison Derricotte and a special thanks to Ruth McKinney for sharing her story and her husband's. And so many Americans who have the same passion and that is creating a beautiful home for their families and a culture and a story of family. And her book is called Hungry for Home.

And you can get it at Amazon or the usual suspects. And my goodness, she spent so much time flipping houses, rebuilding houses, moving and moving again. And finally, how this story ends is she's finally created a home. And so many of us, that's what we want more than anything else is a home, a family and a place we can call our own. Ruth McKinney's story.

Hungry for Home here on Our American Stories. It is the season of making the perfect wish list and the perfect playlist with Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds and headphones. Breakthrough immersive audio uses specialized sound to bring your fave holiday classics to life. And world class noise cancellation ensures a not so typical silent night and an epic holiday party of warmth. It's everything music should make you feel taken to new holiday highs.

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