Restoration breathes new life into historic Sikes farmhouse

At most, Kayla Walker expected a few dozen people to stop by the open house she was throwing at the historic Sikes homestead in Wake Forest during the fall of 2022. She and her husband, Jake, had recently purchased the home, and she wanted to give local residents a chance to take a look inside. The place looked every bit the scary old house that kids use as the setting for campfire ghost stories and dare each other to run up to and touch. Only a couple of years earlier public and civic interest in the boarded-up structure had sunk so low that the city was contemplating selling it to the fire department to use in a live fire drill.

However, the rough outline of something beautiful could be seen beneath the dirt and dust. Kayla saw it, but even she admits that it took some imagination. The century-old Victorian still turned no shortage of heads from curious passerbys. But, come on, she thought, who is going to want to spend a Saturday touring a hollowed out shell of a place that used to be a home?

But cars and people arrived in droves, fueled by neighborhood chatter and a sense of elation at the idea that a local landmark might be reclaimed and polished to a fine shine after years of neglect.

Kayla spoke about the home from the kitchen to a small group of visitors, then, minutes later, to a large group of visitors. Before long the crowd had swelled and people spilled out of the room and into the musty hallway. They flexed their toes into original red-pine hardwoods to get a better look inside.

By the end of the day, almost 1,000 people had toured the home and marveled at her vision for its future.

"It's been a long process, and I've gotten a real crash course in home restoration, " she says.

Kayla, who grew up in Raleigh, was going to school in Utah and scrolling through North Carolina home listings when the dilapidated farmhouse caught her eye. She had driven by it before and was intrigued at the prospect of restoring it. Now was her chance.

Kayla's parents, Mike and Becky Abplanalp, own and operate Oak & Stone Custom Homes. When Kayla presented them her vision for a remodel of the old house, they initially didn't share her high level of enthusiasm.

"We have most of our experience in new builds," Becky said. "And the idea of doing a remodel was outside of what we really do on a day-to-day basis."

However, their tone changed when contractor after contractor inspected the house and came to the same conclusion: despite years of neglect, the most vital internal components were, incredibly, rock solid.

Weather and aging had been merciful to the trim and the woodwork. The floors and the internal framing were sturdy. Even the original mantle was still intact, spared by local high schoolers who allegedly used the house as a covert party spot for the previous couple of decades.

"The engineers all thought everything that was built 100 years ago was still in really good shape," Kayla said.

The family dove deeper into the house's history to get a better sense of what kind of lives were led by those who called it home. What they found was quintessentially North Carolinian, and made the house seem as much an archive of local history as it was a collection of old studs and planks.

The 3,324-square-foot house was built in 1905 for the family of G.T. Sikes and his wife, Maggie. Sikes was a doctor and postmaster. He visited his patients by horse and buggy, and had the distinction of owning the only telephone in the region. Consequently, he did not place many local calls.

In later years, the house came to be owned by Bruce Garner, a notorious bootlegger who allegedly used it to headquarter his moonshine network. Locals remember frequent and unusually large deliveries of sugar arriving to the front doorstep.

The home was passed down from Bruce to his nephew, Roger Garner, who rented the house to the Turner family. The Turners farmed tobacco on the land up until the mid-80s, and the home had sat entirely vacant since 2002.

After learning how vital the home had been to the area's history, and having received sufficient assurances from contractors that it wouldn't blow over with a stiff gust of wind, the family took the leap and made the purchase.

Kayla and Jake took the lead. The permits necessary to begin work were obtained in October of 2022. The process was conducted with supervision from the North Carolina Historic Preservation Foundation. Kayla says the group granted them almost total creative control, and only worked to ensure that the home's history was balanced with the need to renovate.

Retrofitting the century-old home with modern amenities like plumbing, heat and electric proved difficult. Pipes had to be installed at unconventional angles to accommodate long-outdated bracing systems behind the walls, The joists running through the bathroom ran the wrong way. Seventy piers that supported the foundation had to be replaced.

"We blew our budget out of the water," Becky said with a laugh. "It really did turn into a labor of love for us."

Kayla consulted local experts and public message boards to supplement and grow her knowledge. Although she'd grown up in the tradition of home construction, she found that renovation was a different beast; melding old with new posed a different challenge than building new from the start.

Wallpaper was applied to the parlor walls that looked similar to the kind that had hung there decades ago. The farm sink was salvaged and refinished. Even the new refrigerator with its old-school, polished brass hinges and handles looked like the kind that might have sat in the kitchen 50 years before. Slowly, the home took shape.

By October of 2023, just about a year after work began, the last of the contractors finished up their final touches.

The renovation was such a success that Kayla, on a whim, sent a package of photos and a rough proposal to representatives from the Magnolia Network--the broadcasting arm of Fixer Upper's Chip and Joanna Gaines' collection of home design companies. To her surprise, they responded with great interest.

Soon, a film crew from "In With the Old" had moved in to document the process and the finished product. The episode aired right before New Year's, and is available for streaming on MAX (formerly known as HBO Max). It gives an account of the snags that Jake and Kayla confronted as the process wore on, and how they came up with novel ways to address each one.

"She was just such a natural in front of the camera," Becky said about her daughter. "We're hoping she can do more media stuff in the future."

What began with a big idea and more questions than answers turned into something better than even Kayla could have envisioned. In response to the renovation's success, her and Jake started their own company, Southern Victorian LLC, that specializes in home renovations.

"Everything is figure out-able" she said. "It just might take a lot of time and problem solving."