Follow a husband and wife team as they try to remodel a historic farmhouse

Rehabilitiating a historic home is quite the undertaking. Pipes burst. Bricks crumble. Budgets go through the roof. Add a young family with a one-year-old daughter trying to weather a corporate layoff and things can get a bit tense.

Between naptime and diaper changes, Sal and Ashley Guttuso are attempting to take their Amelia County farmhouse from a paint-peeled fixer-upper to a modern dream house. They plan to transform the 3,000-square-foot former tobacco plantation and surrounding outbuildings into an auction house, events venue, and bed and breakfast before their moneyruns out and Sal is forced back into the field of pharmaceutical sales.

Follow their rehab on their blog, chumneyhouse.com, where they're chronicling the journey from foreclosure auction to functional farmhouse. It's a little bit DIY, a little bit history class, and a whole lot of cute (baby Nora).

Ashley is a freelance writer who has been staying at home with Nora. She previously worked in Richmond as a copywriter for circuitcity.com and an editor at Richmond Magazine. Her work has appeared in various local publications and nationally in Parents Magazine. She spent her early childhood in a Victorian home her parents fixed up. They sent her a copy of The Money Pit when she and Sal bought their 1820s Colonial.

Sal is a former pharmaceutical sales manager and is currently acquiring his auctioneer's license. He also grew up in a Victorian and spent his youth hauling and refinishing antique furniture for his brother's shop.