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KENTUCKY HOMECOMING: A New Home Rises from the Ashes of an 1800s Family Homestead.

By Leslie Southard

Reprinted with permission of Country's Best Log Homes, March 2004

The Phrase "coming Home" inspires in most people thoughts of comfort, warmth, and family, but for Jay and Joann Threet of Monterey, Ky., these words take on a much deeper significance. After building and moving into what they had considered their retirement home in Louisville, they found themselves longing for wide open spaces and a country setting that was reminiscent of both their childhood homes. After looking around for a piece of land, they were inevitably drawn back to their roots at Joann's old family homestead in tiny Monterey.

"My grandparents purchased the 176 acres in the late 1800s and built a little one-room log cabin," says Joann. "This was back when Native Americans and buffalo roamed the country, so the property comes with quite a bit of history attached to it." Although the old log cabin was still standing, its condition was too poor for the Threets to make it habitable. "We had hoped to preserve some of the original logs to use for building our new cabin," says Joann, "but in the end the logs were not salvageable. We invited the local fire department to come out and burn what was left as a practice exercise."

When the Threets began thinking about rebuilding a new log cabin on the same spot as the original, their plans were relatively modest. "We started by planning just a small camp cabin for getaways," says Joann. But the more she and Jay planned, the larger the project became both in terms of size and importance. "Jay and I are both country people, and we wanted to go back to where our roots are," says Joann. "So, we made the decision to move back to the homestead full time."

Jay and Joann had been researching log home producers for some time at this point. One they were looking at was Northeastern Log Homes, which had a regional office in Louisville where they met sales consultant Dan Golemboski. "Joann had definite ideas about what they wanted in a log home from the very beginning," says Dan. "She and Jay had old photos of the original house, and they wanted the new home to look old and rustic as if it had been there for years."

After numerous discussions with the Threets, Dan would relay their design goals to Northeastern Log Homes' draftsmen at their headquarters in Maine. After taking some design elements from a couple of Northeastern's stock plans, adding custom touches, and going through four or five design versions, the Threets settled on a plan that was uniquely their own.

The logs and other building materials were shipped from Maine, and construction began in the spring of 2001 by builder Roy Lyons of Lyons Construction in Smithfield, Ky. He had been referred to the Threets by Golemboski. "This was a wonderful project to work on," says Roy. "Jay and Joann already had their plans finalized when we met, and they made my job easy because they knew exactly what they wanted from the very beginning."

The two-story, 2,100-square-foot log home was completed nine months later and now sits within the wooded and pastured land on the exact spot where the original cabin had been. Constructed of eastern white pine and sporting a standing seam metal roof, the home features a flowing, open architecture with soaring ceilings and rustic surface materials. "The hardwood flooring on the main floor is made of poplar, and upstairs is 2-by-6 tongue-and-groove pine flooring," says Roy. "All of the walls and ceilings are also tongue-and-groove. There's no sheetrock in the house."

Adding to the rustic appearance is the abundance of stone. "We did a great deal of masonry work in the home," says Roy. "There are two large stacked stone fireplaces as well as a stone foundation, stone steps, a patio out back, and even rock sidewalks."

The main floor features a living room, family room, two bedrooms, a full batch, a large country kitchen, and a recently added sunroom at the back of the house. Although certainly larger in scale, the Threets' home is reminiscent of Joann's grandparents' one-room cabin in its open design. "I wanted the house to have an open floorplan so that from the kitchen you can look into the living room, and when you walk in the front door, you can see straight through to the family room," says Joann.

The kitchen is Joann's pride and joy with hickory cabinets that feature doors she designed herself. "I wanted them to look like a barn door," she says. A hutch with glass doors and mounted cabinets lowered from the ceiling provide abundant display space for her collections of Western-themed lunchboxes and other memorabilia. A large kitchen island and a small dinette table by the kitchen window provide ample seating for dining because Joann did not want a formal dining room. The blue-tinged Indian slate makes a nice countertop for the cabinetry. "I like the combination of wood and rock," says Joann. Adding more country appeal to the space is a charming reproduction stove. "There were two things I had to have in this home," says Joann, "an old-time stove and a claw-foot tub."

Throughout the living spaces of the home, the rustic wood walls and stone accents provide a natural backdrop of the Threets' impressive collection of antique Victorian furnishings. The living room features red velvet Victorian parlor furniture, but the centerpiece of the room is the soaring wood-burning rock fireplace with an antique mantel Joann brought from her former home. "I had looked all over for the perfect mantel when I found this one in perfect condition," says Joann. Dating back to the 1800s, the ornately carved oak mantel rises up the stone hearth in typical Victorian fashion with a curved mirror and display shelves. Two other fireplaces--one a wood-burning stove in the family room and the other a gas-burning, ceramic-log fireplace in the sunroom--provide warmth and create a cozy atmosphere.

In the master bedroom on the main level sits a regal Lincoln bed covered by a bedspread that Joann crocheted herself, as well as a quilt she made in the Tennessee Waltz pattern. "I made the quilt for my husband since he is from Tennessee," says Joann. The full bath downstairs houses an antique cast-iron claw-foot tub that required four people just to carry it into the house.

Upstairs is Jay and Joann's bedroom or as Joann calls it, "her quilt room," another bath, and loft area where Joann created another Victorian bedroom.

The house features an electric heating and cooling system as well as a septic tank and access to city water. An alarm system connected to all windows and doors provides security.

Outside, a deep wraparound porch offers a shady spot for relaxing and looking out over the land, cows, and numerous chickens. "We like to hear the roosters crow in the morning," says Joann. "We started with just a few chickens, but now we have about 40, one named Dolly Parton and a rooster named Conway Twitty because he likes to crow so much!"

The Threets enjoy working outside and did all the landscaping themselves, planting a number of foster hollies and hemlock. "There are no large trees around the house, which we like because none can block our view," says Joann. They also had a detached three-car garage built with a matching metal roof.

Joann's flower garden behind the house gets old time appeal from old wagon wheels as well as logs from the home where Jay was born. "We went back to Tennessee and found the house and actually brought back some of the logs," says Joann.

The Threets' log home is not only a pastoral setting for their retirement years, it's also an important connection to the past. "This place has so much meaning for me," says Joann. "There is nothing I love more than sitting upstairs in my room quilting and looking out at the land and cattle." Knowing she's doing so in the exact location where her grandmother most likely did the same makes it not only an enjoyable experience, but an emotion-filled one as well.