“We found it on Zillow, just like everyone did during the pandemic,” musician Vanessa Carlton says of her charming Federal post-and-beam house. She and her husband, fellow musician John McCauley, even purchased the Rhode Island home—which was built during the first few years of the 1800s—without ever seeing it in person. “We did a FaceTime walk-through,” Carlton says. “I know, it’s crazy.” And yet the house, which the couple share with their seven-year-old daughter, Sidney, has led to their “next life” in the Ocean State.
The blind commitment to a centuries-old abode is a bit more understandable considering that Carlton and McCauley, whose renovation projects have grown larger over the years, are enamored with aged dwellings. “People associate so many headaches with historic homes,” Carlton says, “but we want those enormous wide wood plank floors you can’t find anymore, the artisan work that went into these mantles, and the true divided light windows with the old glass that bends [sunrays] just so.”[Read more]
