When Abby Brothers first saw the Page Mansion listed for sale online, she knew she had found a forever home.
But the 6,000-square-foot house in Aberdeen, North Carolina, wasn’t livable yet. The six-bedroom mansion – which had been vacant for roughly 40 years – had shattered windows and collapsing floors. Not ones to shy away from a project, Abby, 31, and her husband Trey Brothers, 33, paid $155,000 for the property in 2018, charmed by the home’s structural integrity, grand staircases and vintage furniture.
“When we came to see the house for the first time, we didn’t need a key, we didn’t need a realtor – you could just crawl through the busted-out windows or just open up the front door because there was no lock,” Abby tells CNBC Make It. “It had been taken over by the elements [and] it was very, very dilapidated.”
The house – which was originally built by a local wealthy family in 1913 – ended up needing roughly $268,000 worth of renovations. But the costliest portion of the couple’s budget didn’t go toward tearing down walls or rebuilding modern amenities. Instead, they spent most of their funds on preserving the home’s original elements, like its 109-year-old wooden floors.
Abby and Trey Brothers found the listing for the 109-year-old Page Mansion on Zillow before the couple moved in 2018. It had been vacant for roughly 40 years.
“It was important to keep the original details of the home because it’s history,” Abby says. “Homes aren’t built like they were in 1913. The details aren’t the same there. And if you do want those sorts of details in a home now, they’re very expensive.”
Indeed, the renovated house’s most recent valuation was $900,000 – but the duo, along with their 1-year-old son and family pets, have no plans to move. Here’s how they found and developed a vision to transform the vacant house into their DIY dream home. A leap of real estate faith
When the couple first saw the listing online, they were living in Baltimore, Maryland. Abby was working as a registered nurse and Trey was considering leaving the military, and they wanted to move back to North Carolina where they both grew up.
They had “no intentions” of buying a mansion, let alone one that was over a century old, says Abby. But she was attracted to the “near condemned” house because of its history: The Page Family were wealthy industrialists who founded several towns in North Carolina and helped bring railroads into the state.
The home was originally built for one of the Page daughters. During the Great Depression, various members of the family moved in and out of the mansion before it was purchased by another family.
