History, hard work, and heart

As dusk neared one evening in the fall of 1989, Jane and Scott Harvey and their two toddlers drove the few miles from their Marlborough home to an old town building that was being demolished, the Alms House. With an eye on their sons, the Harveys loaded bricks from the old house into their trunk, until the car was nearly too low to drive home.

The young family repeated this routine for several weeks, until they had acquired about 2,000 antique bricks.

But this was no clandestine operation: The Harveys had just purchased a dilapidated old home in Holliston and got permission to remove the bricks and use them in the renovation of their entry foyer, kitchen, and outside on the grounds.

"Antique bricks at that time were going for a quarter apiece," recalled Scott Harvey, who back then worked for a high-technology company. Today, he is a grant writer.

The bricks were among hundreds of free or cheap finds they discovered during a decades-long renovation of the rundown 1852 Alfred Bragg home, an antique Colonial farmhouse.

Theirs is a story familiar to many buyers of old, rundown homes: a renovation love story that had its moments of enrapture and obsessions, of tedium and terror, self-doubts and second thoughts, but which they ultimately accomplished with pride.

"You'd walk up the rickety stairs to the second floor and say your Hail Marys," said Jane Harvey. "But we were young and had energy and it's all we could afford."

The end result of nearly two decades of work is a 2,581-square-foot four-bedroom home with three stylish bathrooms, a large designer kitchen, a third-floor playroom, and two offices.

The one-acre grounds include stone walls, walkways, and a patio made of those Alm House bricks, perennial and organic vegetable gardens, composting sheds, and a small greenhouse. Where the stone foundation of an old boot barn once stood is now a fruit-tree orchard.

They purchased the home for $165,000 and then sunk $250,000 more - and countless hours - into it. Having brought the property to this stage, the Harveys are selling it and plan to live by the ocean on Cape Cod, where they have vacationed for years. Asking price is $539,000.

When they first saw the Holliston house, the Harveys rejected it.

The first floor was barely usable, there was only one bathroom, tired plumbing, balky windows and doors, and 6-foot weeds outside. Yet they wanted to live in Holliston for the schools, and on subsequent visits, Scott Harvey, now 50, imagined a beautiful house on lovely grounds.

"It was not livable," his wife recalled. But she trusted her husband, who since adolescence had tackled formidable home renovations at his parents' three-story antique home in Rhode Island.

"I like to work with my hands," he said.

Hearing her husband's concepts, Jane Harvey simply imagined a "big country kitchen one day," but since has admitted that she had no idea of the massive amount of work that lay ahead.

It wasn't an easy place to raise two boys. "It was a junkyard in the back of the house, all trash and dirt. You couldn't play there because it was dangerous," said Christopher, at 18 the younger of the sons and a Providence College freshman.

Both sons helped out through the years. Christopher planted the large lawn. Ryan, now a Bucknell University sophomore, learned to shingle the house at the same age his father did his parent's home.

In the first two years of work, the family lived in just two renovated rooms and an adjacent combined bathroom and kitchen on the second floor.

One day, Jane broke down crying. They needed help restoring the hardwood floors, which had been covered with linoleum and still had sticky black glue coating the wood. The first flooring person they called walked out, saying, "I'm not touching this house." So they covered many of the floors with carpeting.

"Sometimes it was a decision of finances - throw a rug in there for $200 or pay $2,000 for hardwood," she said.

Eventually, they found John Derry in Franklin, who restored the floors, now a beautiful wide knotty pine and narrower dark wood.

In 1992, Scott Harvey took a graduate design class at Harvard University to learn how to rebuild the kitchen he had gutted. He knocked down a porch wall, creating an open seating area. With help from an engineer, he added steel beams to support an interior brick wall, constructed from the Alms House bricks.

The finishing touch was a piece of an old bowling alley lane he found at a yard sale. He paid $100 for it and used it to build a kitchen island.

"As we tried to put this house back together," said Jane Harvey, now 51, "we'd go shopping at old barns and antiquing in Rowley and Vermont mostly."

And on it went: All the walls, ceilings, and electrical and plumbing systems were replaced. They put in new windows, doors, a roof, and gutters. Two years ago, they knocked out a wall and installed French doors leading to a patio.

Jane Harvey took on the outside.

"I didn't even know how to plant a flower back then," she said. She learned to garden organically at Natick Community Organic Farm and is now employed there as an administrator.

She began planting vegetables from seeds, started a perennial garden, learned to divide and transplant mature plants, and with her mother's help, started an orchard with six 3-foot trees that have since grown to 20 feet each and are prolific. At one point, she raised bees and chickens.

"I started growing our own food, making this land useful," she said. "We eat off the land."

Across the street, neighbor Sheila Wolfson observed the work over 16 years. "Jane's always out there gardening, and Scott's always working around the house," she said. "They had a vision and worked hard to achieve it."

The Wolfsons often visit to pick apples, pears, and peaches from the Harvey's orchards. Now empty nesters, the Harveys find that the Holliston house is too big for them. So it's time to move on, time for another family to raise children in the house.

Besides, they've found another one that needs fixing up.

The Harveys are holding an open house today at 284 South St. from 2 to 4 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 21, from 1 to 4 p.m. The property can be viewed at hollistonantique.com.