Luke Ramsey learned to clean brick and de-nail old lumber as a kid. His dad would move the family into an old house that needed to be brought back to life, and they’d work on it for four or five years before moving on to the next one. “Every house I’ve ever lived in was an old house being restored,” Ramsey says. He loved it.
When his dad passed away about 15 years ago, Ramsey took over the family business: Lewis Ramsey Construction Company became Ramsey Restoration.
The Lovingston-based company does the kind of restorations too technical and time-consuming for most builders. It’s become best known for work on 19th-century log cabins—rebuilding them in place or even dismantling them and moving them somewhere new. But the team also works on towering plantation houses, idyllic barns, and grandiose mansions. “A lot of times they’ll be falling down, in terrible shape, and they’ll have a few people looking at them saying they can’t be saved,” Ramsey says. “Then they’ll hear about us.” They might have to jack up the entire structure to level it out again or rebuild a roof. It can get dangerous. But they get it done.
“So many people want to modernize the old buildings,” Ramsey says, “but I really try to make them the way they originally were.”
He’s a kind of architectural archivist, having inherited a deep love for old architecture and the craftsmanship of earlier eras from his dad. He talks excitedly about turn-of-the-century plasterwork and parquet wood floors, about old staircases and even older tobacco barns. From the places that can’t be saved, Ramsey has built up a warehouse of old parts and materials that he can use in future restorations.
His most recent projects have been in Danville, Virginia, on a strip called Millionaires Row, which has posed a new set of challenges. “All architect-built Victorian homes, each completely different from the other,” Ramsey says. “I didn’t have a lot of experience with the Victorian houses before coming to Danville—I usually work on Federal style, early 1800s stuff—but it’s really starting to grow on me.”
He even bought one of the old places to fix up himself: a 6,000-foot brick house he picked up for $10,000. He’s been working on it for a year, and he imagines he’s got another year to put in it.
Clearly, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.