Renovating old homes a passion for couple

Pictou Landing - A Colombian couple have made Pictou County their summer home after spending the past several years renovating one of the area's oldest dwellings.
Myrna Hagarty-Londono and her husband, Enrique Londono-Guttierrez, met after the Ontario native was sent to Colombia as part of her work with the Agricultural College in Truro during the 1980s.
Hagarty-Londono fell in love with the province while working in Truro and when the duo retired in 2005, they began an extensive search for a summer home, criss-crossing the province as they looked for the perfect home.
One of the things the couple has in common is a love for the old. Londono comes from an old Colombian family who have a strong appreciation for history and founded the mountain city of Manizales, Colombia and still reside in a hacienda built in the 1400s, while Hagarty-Londono remembered the old, character-filled homes she saw during her time working in this province.
"We knew there were old, old houses there that we couldn't find in Ontario," she explained. "He's a closet architect and I'm a closet designer, and we really wanted to find a house we could return to its natural state."
But nothing they found was quite right. They were ready to throw in the towel and buy some land just outside of New Glasgow when they got lost. That's when they found it - a house perched rather "majestically" on a hill in Pictou Landing, Hagarty-Londono said.
"I turned to my husband and said, 'now, that's exactly the type of place I'm looking for'," she said, never realizing that it was for sale. Minutes later, they'd called their agent and were sitting in the yard, staring at a house that had clearly seen better days but they believed was a hidden gem.
"Our agent had been driving us all over hell's half acre, looking for a home," she recalled. "We were so excited and she thought we were nuts. We got inside and she wouldn't go past the living room, convinced this house was going to come toppling down all around her."
The house was built around 1775 by Captain William MacPherson, who was given a parcel of land in return for his naval duties. Descendants of the original owner still reside in the area.
Everywhere they looked, they saw potential. A sold sign quickly went up and the real work began that October. Aside from the roofing, well-drilling and a few heavier tasks, they tackled the majority of the work themselves, thanking their lucky stars that Londono had a strong background in electrical, plumbing and carpentry.
They pried old carpet off the floors, peeled away layers of papers from bedroom walls and rejoiced when they discovered the reason that some of the inner walls sagged was because they covered three massive fireplaces built from stones brought across from Scotland to act as ballast in boats.
At one point, they discovered an enscribed plaque hidden behind one of the walls announced the birth and death of a James MacPherson in the 1800s. A search of the local graveyard didn't turn up a headstone for the man, leaving the couple to wonder if perhaps he was buried somewhere on the property.
For the last five years, the couple has appeared in late spring to begin two months of work on their house.
"We did not want to alter the general layout of the house," Hagarty-Londono explained. "We just wanted to strip away the piecemeal attempts at modernization and take it back to its true self."
Now, work on the house is nearly complete and the couple has purchased a second property in the River John area they plan to tackle next.
"It's a hobby for us, a real passion," she said.
The Londonos say they're amazed that more people don't snap up the old homes that seem so readily placed on the market in Pictou County.
"We feel kind of bad these homes are left to deteriorate and no one seems to value them," she said, adding that homes of this age are rarely placed on the market in Ontario or Colombia, where the couple splits the remainder of the year.
The couple hopes people will get inspiration from the work they've done to restore their home and consider taking on a similar challenge with some of the other old homes in the region.
"There are older house with all this historical value that are just crumbling," she said. "There are really good, solid older homes around here, and I can't help but think, wouldn't it bee nice for young people to buy these older homes and work on them - or else they will end up bulldozed down."