The New Mystery: Ottawa Street

by | Mar 31, 2011 | ottawa

The New Mystery: Ottawa Street

 

Just a few weeks ago I began the first whole-house renovation on the books – my first since opening 4/1, but not my first, I should note – and the building itself is such a mystery that it nearly deserves its own blog.

Located over in the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood, it is part of the expansion to the historic district that my good friend Heather worked on a number of years ago and just down the street from 501 Oakwood.  Like many of the properties in the area, it was cheap, unloved rental housing for some time, and shows it.  Chopped up with little regard to the original form, there are odd hallways and skinny passages everywhere.  The biggest puzzle to me was the front staircase: an enclosed stair that crosses over the front door’s sidelight leads to the upstairs apartment, and there is no evidence of stairs anywhere else.

Then, an odd piece of information: the Sanborn maps show a one-story house in 1913, and a two-story house in 1937.  Usually I’d assume one had been torn down and replaced, but with oddly similar footprints, matching locations, and the weird staircase issue… well, now we’re onto something.

From what I can figure out, this house was built as a one-story, pyramidal roofed, five-room house sometime around 1905 or 1910, probably with a simplified Victorian style. Sometime between then and the 1937 Sanborns were drawn, someone did a major renovation, making it sort of a foursquare colonial number.  Exactly when did it happen?  I’m not quite sure – it’s one of the things I’m digging for right now.  Single residents are listed in the 1915, 1919, and 1923 city directories; the first that lists two (that I have access to without a library trip) is 1938 – and one Mr. Donald Burke, confectioner, was there from ’23 through ’38.

Lots of houses through Durham were modified in that muddy period of the late ’20s and early 30’s, very much fueled by the Depression.  It’s a tricky era to evaluate, as much of the woodwork matched that done ten or fifteen years earlier – they did not really start cutting corners on trim until later.  I have walked through houses that people swore were built as duplexes, because the trim was consistent throughout, even though the whole idea was ridiculous.

Anyway, the brave homeowners are going to be redoing this house into a single-family home again, and one of our big challenges is where to locate the staircase.  A site visit from the State Historic Preservation Office gave me some help, and we have proposed a new staircase in the front room that wraps back and over the front door.  While we wait, I keep mulling over the history, and trying to come up with other ways to discover what happened eighty years ago.  Perhaps when demolition starts, the framing will tell us everything?

Win!

Winning the most ingenious use of fence pickets in all of Durham… the Ottawa House! tada!

Hmm

The front stairwell and sidelight combination, which just doesn’t seem… right.

1913

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1913 (the street was called Forest then)

1937

The house number has changed, but the 1937 Sanborn has the same house, now with rear garages and whatnot, two stories high.

Fireplace

An original, very Victorian, mantle still sits in one main room. Two others have been bricked over, and the third has a simple, original mantle.

Here we go!

It will be great someday. honest.

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley St, Durham, NC, 27705
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

Recent Projects

by | Mar 25, 2011 | cleveland-holloway, design, musings, watts-hillandale

Recent Projects

t’s high time I updated the project list with the new things on the list – especially as I’ve wrapped up a few in the past weeks. During the countdown to tax time I always end up doing a number of Part B applications, and some of the after photos are downright inspiring. The large house over in Cleveland-Holloway turned out beautifully, with happy owners and a fresh coat of paint. I’ve nominated them for a preservation award come spring (shhh, don’t tell) and know they’re thrilled with the house.

The tax credits are wrapped up for the big brick bungalow on Club too, with the most stellar kitchen I’ve seen in years. Originally they were planning on painting the floor bright turquoise, assuming that the wood would be damaged under all the linoleum, but when they peeled back the layers, the heart pine was so lovely they didn’t have the heart to paint it. How to get that bright color into the kitchen now? By painting the upper cabinets’ interior, of course! The saturated color is fantastic, and the spacious kitchen just begs for a party. There are a ton of ideas worth stealing tucked into this space, including the laundry built into the custom cabinets. The high countertop and fold-away doors hide the machines and convert the butler’s pantry into a mudroom space, while looking completely in keeping with the era of the home. Besides that, the marble subway backsplash, dark countertop, and white cupboards are so luscious, I want to wake up to that kitchen some day.

Two projects design in the fall are both under construction, and I just saw a skylight appear on the side of this bungalow today (first on the to-do list way back in October). I am not doing any construction administration on that one, so I get to wait with bated breath until the owner invites me over to see the finished product.

Another tax credit project has popped up in Lakewood-Tuscaloosa – my first in that neighborhood in some time. That area seems to be doing a really good job of keeping their old houses full of character and not gentrifying quickly. Instead, there’s a gradual upswing to the neighborhood, over the course of the past number of years. The new owners on this place don’t know much about historic homes, but loved the location and have a lot of respect for the original features. It was such a treat to walk through it with them and talk about some of the more notable parts, including the stunning colonnade in the front rooms – they had no idea it would have once been open on both sides, and are now planning on restoring it. The light will be lovely!

There’s more coming, and one particularly interesting project that deserves its own entry. We’re waiting to hear what the tax credit folks think about our plans, and then a whole update will be coming shortly.

oakwood

Fully restored and tax credits in hand…

Turquoise

In the corner is the turquoise kitchenaid that inspired the color palette.

Mudroom

Mudroom brilliance

And Again

One more picture for good measure.

Porch Posts

New owners are adding an attic/rear addition – I love those porch posts.

More Porch Posts

I love the porch posts – they are discussing removing the aluminum siding from the front gable and under the porch in the short term.

🙂

Yum. I adore the original dining room light fixture, but have no love lost for that wallpaper.

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley St, Durham, NC, 27705
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

More on the Purple Castle

by | Mar 1, 2011 | histories, watts-hillandale

More on the Purple Castle

Enough people have asked for an update on the purple castle that I took a detour on my morning walk this morning and snapped a few pictures of the progress. The plans received approval from the Historic Preservation Commission in December and from SHPO in January, with only minor changes necessary. Since then, the homeowner (who is also a contractor) has been doing demolition and clean-up on the site while he gets other paying projects off the ground. He told me that he is also preparing for the exterior work, ripping down a load of cedar siding into shakes for spot repairs.

As I walked around the property, now without all those crazy vines, I was struck by what was visible now, and the evidence of the past owners who had loved the house once. It is so easy to forget that a house as old as this one has gone through all sorts of evolutions – instead, we see the past 15 years of deferred maintenance and forget that it was once a loved home. The house only shows the recent history, but hidden back in the landscaping, there’s all sorts of interesting things peeking up into the spring.

The back yard, which extends well into the block, has lots of daffodil bulbs now coming up for air, crocuses that are probably so sun-starved they didn’t put up flowers this year, and what looked like a bank of hyacinths. The far back has a stand of pines that clearly once were a cool, shady spot, hidden from the road and even the house. And the profile of the house from a distance made me think of what it must have looked like from Club Boulevard after it was built – definitely a striking sight!

Also, I had noticed on my first visit to the house a disk set into the front terrace, at the north-west corner. Unfortunately it isn’t dated, but it appears to be a latitude/longitude marker made of concrete, with the cardinal directions called out. I have no idea which of the past residents might have installed it, but someone who was clearly passionate about this specific place.

As work progresses, I have permission from the owner to swing by periodically and check up on things, so will be updating as I can. I am assuming that once they commence things will move pretty quickly, but who knows how long it will be before they really get started. I am really looking forward to seeing how the facade shapes up once the second floor gets a balcony door again – so exciting!

Front Porch

The rotted front porch has been removed entirely – it will be rebuilt to match the original

Funny

The funny, hanging extra bathroom has been removed too, which makes the back corner much less ominous.

View

The view from the way-back-yard.

From what I can make out, it says ‘North Lat 36 West Long 79 … Feet Above Sea’

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley St, Durham, NC, 27705
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

Fitting the Cobbler’s Kid for New Shoes

by | Feb 10, 2011 | home sweet home

Fitting the Cobbler’s Kid for New Shoes

Our little house – courtesy of Googlemaps, as apparently I haven’t taken a photo of it since purchase.

I suspect that many of my clients believe that I live in a beautiful, perfectly restored, historic palace, where every element is carefully planned and selected. Only the ‘historic’ part is true, as in reality I live in a wee little bungalow that has suffered through a number of enthusiastic home-improvement attempts that stalled out before completion. We have a living room with partially-repaired plaster: it’s needed paint and a picture molding put up for approximately three and a half years. Then the kitchen… you get the idea.

Our bathroom is particularly bad, however. We successfully replaced the giant pedestal sink with a much more petite vanity, but in the process wreaked havoc with the drywall. In all honesty, the drywall was pretty rough to begin with, as I stripped the wallpaper off of the bathroom when we first moved in and did nothing to smooth out the glue before painting it, six plus years ago. I do my best with some happy-bright-saturated colors, but I know the truth behind the shower curtain.

Honey onyx hex tiles – perfect combo of traditional and textural for my small space, and the eventual bath floor.

But now, hope is on the horizon! We have decided to bite the bullet and fix up the bathroom, taking off the horrible vinyl bath surround, tiling up the walls, replacing the toilet, and generally making things right. The one budget compromise – we’ll leave the existing (miserable) tile on the floor, as it runs into the hallway and opens up another can of worms. I have my fantasy future bath floor in mind, however: the marble or onyx versions of the traditional patterns: hex, dogbone, basket weave, even octagon-and-dot.
After some mad fantasizing about $42-a-piece glass tiles that had me all excited, I readjusted my expectations and headed off to the store, feeling like it should be simple: I know roughly what is available, what prices are reasonable, where to go, what would match with my existing floor, and what is appropriate for my house (both in terms of era and value). But then, confronted with a world of possibilities, my head kind of exploded… and my sympathy for my clients skyrocketed. This selection stuff is way harder when it’s for your own house!

I came home, armed with an array of samples, and came to a conclusion of what would work best with my dream floor, the current floor, and the white subway wainscot that is a definite – and my husband doesn’t like it. He’ll live with it, he says… but who wants to just live with it? That’s what we have been doing since we moved in, after all.

Clearly, it would have been too easy to end up with the first selection out there – so I’ll head back into the thick of it again soon, and keep posting about my project whenever there’s a development. After all, my clients should be right: I should live in a perfectly-restored, adorable historic home, where every element is well considered… better start somewhere.

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley St, Durham, NC, 27705
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702

Subway Tile

by | Jan 19, 2011 | design

Subway Tile

Somewhat mysteriously, one of the most common search terms that leads to this website is some variant on ‘subway tile.’ It’s not entirely surprising, as I have certainly commented about good tile before, but perhaps it’s time to give the people what they want…

Of course white subway tile is a perennial look for a bathroom, particularly one in an older house. The general pattern of a wainscot of tile, capped with some band of deco pieces, is predictable and timeless all at the same time. What makes me love the bath above, however, was that we used the basic 3×6 tiles in three different ways: up the walls, per usual, vertically in a band between the two blue glass strips; and in a herringbone pattern in the center rug area of the floor. Along with some white pennyrounds, white 6×6 outside of the rug and under the toilet, and the blue glass decos, it all becomes clean, textural, and classic.

Another installation of white subway tile and pennyrounds, but in a whole different palette, manages to accomplish the same thing. The tile installer and I quarreled over the grout color on this particular project, as I insisted it needed to be in the same family of brown as the pennyrounds themselves (I think he wanted grey). The pennyrounds run up and around the shower, just out of the frame to the left, with the subway bullnose tile cap around the perimeter. It manages to suit the modern sensibilities of the homeowner (hi, Christie!) and still fit into the 1920s bungalow vibe.

In both of these cases, we went with straight-forward, affordable white tile. We didn’t worry about the fact that modern subway tile, at least the stuff that’s reasonable to purchase, bares only a passing resemblance to the stuff installed in fine homes earlier last century. The holy grail of subway is (for me at least) the perfectly flat, hairline grout, crackled finish of 1910s bathrooms… and as far as I’m concerned, they don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Recently I’ve been playing more with taking the general rectangle of the subway tile and tweaking it, either in scale, direction, or layout. A number of clients have settled on doing a staggered vertical pattern (the classic subway on its side) which I noticed for the first time on the set of House (happens to be in the morgue, full warning). I especially like this with large rectangles, as it can give some great verticality and height to an otherwise cramped space. Photos when installation is complete!

Tile wainscot in the back bathroom of Durham’s beautiful Hill House, one of the few mansions left in town. The corners just kill me.

Still the classic white subway tile (Trinity Design/Build, by permission.)

Another view of the bathroom, with the herringbone ‘rug’ in full effect. (Trinity Design/Build, by permission.)

Subway tile, twentyeleven ways, in one of my favorite bathrooms. (Trinity Design/Build, by permission.)

Book a Consult

hi.there@fouroverone.com   (919) 339-1411
Office Address: 1235 Berkeley St, Durham, NC, 27705
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355, Durham NC, 27702