Two years ago Laurene Swaney walked through the house at the Meserve Farm and emerged overwhelmed.

“I was a little depressed, but I was always hopeful,” said the president of the Scarborough Land Conservation Trust.

Her hope was to renovate the home that had been touched up in the 1960s for the first time since the 1800s. Everything had to go. From old plumbing and electrical systems to vinyl siding and rotten wood.

All told, the final price tag on the house and attached carriage barn will be about $200,000, said Swaney. After a long summer of construction, the house is nearly ready for its new tenants, John Bliss and Stacey Brenner. By Friday, she expects construction to be complete.

The day the land trust bought the farm on Broadturn Road, Swaney received two skeleton keys on a ring and started to explore. She found many problems with the old building, but was determined to see the Scarborough landmark become a working farm once again.

Ken Cyr, the Scarborough contractor in charge of renovating the house, hopes to have the certificate of occupancy needed to allow the new farmers to move in. By Columbus Day weekend, he said, Bliss and Brenner of Turkey Hill Farm in Cape Elizabeth should be settled in their new home.

Bliss and Brenner will be the tenants of the Meserve Farm, soon to be renamed Broadturn Farm. For years, said Swaney, the farm was used solely for hay and then for nothing at all. Already Bliss and Brenner have prepared fields, and other farmers started growing this season.

Eventually, the house was gutted and rebuilt from the inside out, but everyone worked hard to keep the old farmhouse feel. Cyr collected all of the hardware from the doors. The house has maintained a few of its touches from when it was first built, such as the claw foot bathtubs and its original banister. The wooden floors were sanded down and all the rooms are painted in warm colors.

“To see the Meserve Farm come together like this is just unbelievable to me,” said Paul Austin, one of the six land trust board members.

When Swaney first told him of her plans to turn Meserve into a working farm, he was a little skeptical. “I thought, ‘in your dreams this will be a working farm,'” said Austin.

Things were so bad and uneven at first, said Cyr, he couldn’t even use a level to start fixing the house.

“That one threw me for a loop,” said Cyr, who has built bridges for the different trails the land trust oversees.

“The whole cellar was full of junk, you couldn’t even walk in there,” said Cyr. Before the plumbers and electricians could begin he had to spend two days clearing it out.

Cyr enjoys working on Land Trust projects because they always present him with a challenge, though until this summer nothing as immense as the Meserve Farm.

“I don’t get discouraged,” said Cyr. “A challenge is a challenge. You do it until it’s through. I liked it a lot, it wasn’t your typical carpentry.”

Cyr could one day be back for more unique carpentry.

Though the house and the carriage barn are renovated for use, the hay barn, English barn and square barn all need to be stabilized and then renovated, said Swaney. The land trust is a nonprofit organization, and everything will come from donations.

“There’s always another thing you can do,” said Swaney.

Construction to renovate the house at the Meserve Farm on Broadturn Road in Scarborough will be completed by the end of the week. The house, on the far right, is the only building without the vinyl siding that was added in the 1960s. Eventually, the Scarborough Land Trust hopes to renovate all of the surrounding barns. The corner cabinet is one of the original pieces that helps keep the farmhouse feel. All of the wooden floors were sanded as well to add to the house’s character. Still, all modern appliances will mix in with the older touches.