A decade-long $2 million renovation documented on Instagram transformed a historic Wiscasset post office and custom house into an upscale residence.
Jack Nelson, a 55-year-old Florida native, bought the iconic property on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 after it had fallen into disrepair. He gutted the building and remodeled it into a stately 3-bedroom, 5-bathroom home that Nelson hoped would be his own.
Citing personal reasons, he put it on the market for $1.25 million. While his work showed the difficulty of transforming old public buildings, it was successful by one key measure. The home sold to a New York couple last week after being listed for only four days.
“I had a lot of sad people calling me, just devastated,” listing agent Sherri Dunbar, a real estate agent at Tim Dunham Realty, said. “It really is a once-in-a-lifetime home.”
Located right downtown on Middle Street overlooking the Sheepscot River, the building was constructed in 1870 using bricks stolen from Fort Edgecomb. It housed both customs and post office facilities until 1913, when Wiscasset ceased to be a port of entry. Parts of the building were still in use until the 1960s, when the post office was moved elsewhere.
The building was offered to the Lincoln County Historical Association, but it refused because the estimate to replace the slate roof was far more than they could afford. So the building went up for auction. It was bought by a young mother, Charlotte Rust Hodgeman, originally from Lowell, Massachusetts.
Hodgeman’s daughter, Cheryl Rust, said their family lived on the second floor of the property, operating the ground floor as a commercial space that was many things over the years, including a school and a toy store. Cheryl assumed ownership when her mother died in 2009.
The property caught Nelson’s eye while he was visiting in-laws in Wiscasset. Nelson owns a retail construction company in Florida but has always had a love of historic homes and wanted to try his hand at a restoration project. He bought the property from Rust for around $350,000 and quickly found it would be a massive undertaking.
“The roof was in real bad shape, water leaking all over the place,” Nelson said. “On the outside, it was cool. But the inside needed a lot of work.”
To keep the building functional, Band-Aid solutions had been undertaken by Rust and her family, Nelson said. Plaster was crumbling and all the building’s pipes needed replacing.
With the help of a local contractor, Doug Merrill & Sons, the work was pulled off. The roof was replaced twice, the plaster re-done, new heating systems installed, yet the total costs climbed to $1.7 million. There is some relief for Nelson in that this was completed before the pandemic sent costs like that skyrocketing even further.
Nelson will lose money, but he said it was worth it because the details of the home came out “just right.” The house looks classic despite having been completed in the last year. Some of the building’s original columns and crown molding are intact. It has unique design details, like the study’s 18th-century oak panels, which were imported from a European castle.
Nelson might take on another historic home renovation project someday in another city or state, he said, but that would be a long time in the future. For now, he’s heading back to Florida happy to hear the house sold so quickly.
Wiscasset residents have approached him saying they are thrilled to hear the building’s been restored. Some in the past year have even mistaken it for a museum and wandered inside while Nelson was sleeping upstairs to take pictures or poke around.
For Rust, it’s strange to see the property so transformed.
“I was dumbfounded walking through,” she said. “I was trying not to be too emotional.”
That ritzy study was once her mother’s bedroom. It’s where both her mother and beloved stepfather died. But she’s happy to see the building have new life breathed into it.
“Jack’s utter joy with the building was very, very evident,” Rust said.
