Home of the Week: Colonial once featured on ‘This Old House’ was dismantled, relocated, and rebuilt in Sherborn
In 1983, the house was sitting unoccupied and dilapidated in Blackstone.
148 Farm Road, Sherborn
$1,975,000
Style: Antique, Colonial
Year built: 1780; moved 1983
Square feet: 3,854
Bedrooms: 3
Baths: 4 full
Sewer/water: Private
Taxes: $42,131 (2017)
The tall sea captain believed to have first lived in this center-entrance Colonial would have no problem navigating his home now, nearly 240 years after it was built, but he’d have to go to a different town to find it.
Why? In 1983, the house, which was sitting unoccupied and dilapidated in Blackstone, was taken apart, board by board, and reconstructed on its current site in Sherborn with such meticulous attention to preserving the past that the wide-planked pine floors are uneven, even with a foundation that’s partially poured concrete. The home was featured in a “This Old House’’ episode in 1983, when the relocation project was underway and Bob Vila was the host of the popular public television show.
The commitment to history also means that the living room just to the left of the front entrance has astonishingly beautiful crown molding that looks as if it were made for Gothic cathedral arches. The room’s fireplace is one of eight in the house (all of them work).
To the right of the front entry, the library features a fireplace with a carving that looks like fish, possibly a genuflection to the original owner, mariner Moses Daniels, who was tall for his time and insisted on having unusually high ceilings in his home — 8.6 feet.
Both the library and living room have doors opening into what was an early version of a multipurpose room. A 465-square-foot rectangle dominated by a brick fireplace, the space serves as the dining room, its walls still lined with utility hooks once used to hang baskets as dinner was prepared. There’s one very welcome update here: French doors that access a broad, fenced patio overlooking the bulk of the 4.58-acre lot, which gently slopes down to Farm Pond and 100 feet of sandy private-beach frontage. Farm Pond is a 12-acre kettle lake that hosts the private Sherborn Yacht Club.
The kitchen is the one room inside the home that was wholly updated. It is such a dramatic, visual difference that it feels almost like walking onto a sci-fi movie set. The cabinets are a brilliant white, and gray stone tile covers the perfectly plumb floor. There is a sleek, black electric stovetop, but most of the appliances are stainless. The refrigerator is clad in the same wood used for the cabinet doors. The counters are granite, and the space has a brick fireplace.
A bath with a claw-foot tub and a laundry room complete the first floor.
The stairway in the entry has tall steps that lead to a carpeted sitting room that serves as a family room and the anchor from which the home’s three bedrooms and office radiate.
The master suite, found in the rear of the house, features a spacious bedroom that offers a fireplace and a walk-through closet that connects to a shower-only bath with a single vanity. From there, a door leads to the main bath in which the focal point is a claw-foot tub. The other two bedrooms on this floor also have fireplaces.
From the kitchen, a rear stairwell leads to the lower level. Here, there’s a studio/office with a full bath and a fireplace. The current owner uses a separate workshop area to build wonderfully detailed model ships. The rest of the basement is unfinished. (The proof of the painstaking relocation is on display here: The walls of the poured-concrete foundation are topped by large granite slabs, the classic material used in 18th-century foundations in New England.)
The property also has a detached two-car garage and a circular drive.
The listing agents are Penny Brown and Lyn Comins of Century 21 Commonwealth in Wellesley. The home can be viewed on the website www.commonmoves.com.
Follow John R. Ellement on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Send listings to [email protected]. Please note: We do not feature unfurnished homes and will not respond to submissions we won’t pursue. Subscribe to our newsletter at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp.
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