American Evolution

"I remember the book arriving at my grandparents' house in Richmond and seeing old black-and-white photos of Enon Hall. I was 7 years old and I said, 'I want that place.' "

In retrospect, buying the house -- and a subsequent $90,000, two-plus-acre buffer property -- was the easy part.

"It was disgusting inside. It stank. That first year we did a lot of demolition, tearing off a lot of nasty, stinky stuff, hauling it away," says Gay of those working weekends.

"The dining room was my tool room, with a table saw in it," Bill adds. "For the first year, we all slept out on the screened porch because it was so awful inside. And the land was like a dense forest. You could stand outside 20 feet from the creek and not be able to see it."

Little William, then 5, went to work alongside his parents. He helped with brush clearing, demolition and priming. "We lowered him over a kitchen counter behind the refrigerator, which doesn't pull out. It was a good place for him to start painting," Chapman says.

The couple wisely set no deadlines: Things get done when they get done. In 2002, just hours before 14 people sat down for that most colonial of celebrations, Thanksgiving dinner, Bill finally hung the dining room chandelier. This July 4, they'll host a picnic.

From the outset, they decided to share the adventure with family, friends and strangers on www.enonhall.com, a candid cyber journal and photo album that now gets about 2,5000 visitors a month from as far away as Australia. "We felt we had to be honest, no matter how really, really, really, really humiliating it was," says Bill.

They did make a few mistakes.

Gay -- who owned power tools long before she met her husband and whose Web site nickname is "the toilet queen" owing to her plumbing prowess -- will not soon forget how a fellow do-it-yourselfer caught her botched insulation installation in a picture. "I put it on an exterior wall with the paper side facing out, as you do indoors. Some guy called and said, 'I hate to tell you, but it's backward,' " she recalls laughingly.

Bill, on the other hand, knew exactly how he'd blown one particular job. "My brother and I put new tongue-and-groove flooring on the porch, but the boards were way too close together. Then it poured rain and the boards buckled four to six inches. It was a mess. I had to cut some of it out. And they won't hold paint. One of my biggest lessons is how to deal with lumber that is going to be out in the rain."

Seeking clues about the house, he relentlessly sought old snapshots from family members and non-Hathaway owners, which is how they learned that one of the foundation cracks has been visible since at least 1900.

Fortunately, the Chapmans came to Enon Hall with some renovating experience. Their first house was a 1920s brick Victorian in Richmond that needed cosmetic work. "Back then I was in bed looking at a crack in the ceiling and freaking out. Now a wall is pulling entirely away from the house," he says, shrugging. To make sure it isn't getting worse, he's drawn horizontal pencil marks on each wall. When they no longer line up, he'll start to worry.

Gay says it is not yet time to think seriously about replacing the unpretentious furniture they have inherited or found at local shops. "We have a lot of Victorian pieces" in Richmond, she says "but they now look new. We will probably have to use reproductions because, of course, we can't afford the stuff that's as old as the house."

There are few modern intrusions here. Enon Hall has no television and no air conditioning -- though the house's one-room-deep layout brings in a cross-breeze. The nearest movie theater is 25 miles away, and the only sounds coming from the CD player are strains of 18th-century classical music.

That's just fine by young William, who seems endlessly fascinated by the natural, architectural, archaeological and ancestral wonders that abound. "There are 200 years of Hathaways here. I look at all the hearths and walls. How many people have touched these walls?" he asks rhetorically.

"I do the same thing," says his father. "You start thinking about how many births, deaths and marriages took place here. That's the whole reason we are here. Whatever problem seems to be facing you at the moment becomes trivial after a few minutes. We don't intend to ever let it go out of the family again."

That sense of continuity allows the couple to renovate as slowly as they like. And what they don't get around to, he says, "will be William's problem one day."