THERE CAN BE no deadlines with a project like this—one that began almost 200 years ago in a North Carolina cotton field. So while he looks forward to the day when he and his wife, Debbie, can move in, home builder Dan Spear is prepared to give the project as much time as it requires.

Spear, who owns Spear Builders of Virginia, is reconstructing an 1812 North Carolina plantation house on his 82-acre homestead in Spotsylvania County. This more recent chapter in the house’s history began two years ago, when Spear set out to find an old log cabin to reconstruct on his property.

He didn’t find a log cabin. But he did find Craig Jacobs, who runs Salvagewrights, Ltd., a clearinghouse for “architectural antiquities” located in Orange County. In the fall of 2003, Jacobs had been in touch with the owner of a plantation house at Como, N.C., a few miles south of the Virginia border in northeastern North Carolina. Hurricane Isabel had torn off part of its roof, and the elements were beginning to take a toll.

Then, with perfect timing, Spear called to ask about cabins, and Jacobs wondered if he’d be interested in a 19th-century plantation house instead. Certainly worth a look, Spear figured, and off the men went to Como.

Spear was hooked immediately, despite the fact that disassembling, moving and reconstructing a very large plantation house would be an enormously expensive and time-consuming undertaking. Compared to his original hankering for a log cabin, this would be akin to building a jetliner rather than a balsa-wood plane powered by a rubber band.

The Como house was built to last, with huge posts and beams. The 12-foot ceilings on the two main floors, plus an attic, give the house imposing stature. The place was known as the Hare plantation, named for the family that built it. The plantation next door was owned by Richard J. Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun.

Jacobs put together a crew that for the next several months would take the house apart, piece by piece, and label and catalog each one in order to rebuild it in Spotsylvania exactly as it was in the Como cotton field.