KM: I’m really excited to talk to you today about your house. It is so beautiful. Tell me all about it. Did you always want a Victorian? How’d you even find it?
AH: I didn’t really start falling in love with old houses until I was student teaching actually, years ago. I student taught in The fall of 2000 in New Philadelphia, Ohio, which is this very quaint little town in the middle of Ohio. And there, the high school was actually a very old high school, a very historic building, and around it were just all these old buildings. I think that’s where I first started to fall in love. I didn’t grow up in an old house, I didn’t know people who lived in old houses, and I just thought that they were really, really beautiful. So we sort of fell in love. And then my husband and I got married and I taught in that school district for a couple years. We liked our houses and we joke all the time that each house has progressively gotten worse. Like the house that we bought in New Philadelphia was almost in perfect condition. It had a carpet in the kitchen, that’s literally the only thing we changed, cause that was terrible. Then when we moved to Indiana, we looked for an old house and we’ve had three houses since we’ve moved to Indiana. This is our third. And each house has been just a little bit worse as far as what shape it’s in, but each house has also been way more interesting, architecturally interesting. So we’ve certainly settled on the right one.
KM: Yeah that’s kind of the way- I guess you feel like, well, that wasn’t so bad. I can take on a little more, then a little more…
AH: Right. Each house has taught us something about how to renovate and what we want to do and what we like. And so then by the time we got here, we looked at it and it was, you know, the roof had failed and there was massive damage on the inside because of that roof failing. We always say it was raining on the inside when we bought it. And we looked around and we thought, well, we can do this. This is fine. And you know, when we first were looking out at houses, there’s no way. But then we thought, well with everything that we’ve learned at all of the other houses, we know that if we can just make it watertight, then we can fix all the rest of it.
KM: Yeah. That’s so true. Someone recently on the podcast was saying that was the first thing, just stabilize it so the water’s not coming in. Then you have time to do the rest and it’s not as dire as it seems. When it’s raining on the inside, that is a little discouraging. But I’m glad that you found it. So were looking for another house? Did you happen upon it and you decided you had to buy it?
AH: Well, we live in Franklin, Indiana, which is the quaintest of quaint towns, just South of Indianapolis, and we love this community. There’s a lot of Organizations and community building, and it’s a place where people really like to invest in the buildings and the properties and there’s festivals and it’s just a very positive community. When I got my current teaching job, we moved here and we lived in a folk Victorian about three blocks away. And we loved that house. We absolutely loved that house. It wasn’t exactly perfect for us, but we absolutely loved it. So after living there for several years, we got into the conversation of are we going to turn this house into the perfect house? Or are we going to look for the perfect house? Cause we knew we wanted to stay in the city that we’re in. So we were in the middle of really having that conversation and sort of making some lists about what would be the perfect house for us? That list was ridiculous. Like I put, I want a turret and a balcony. Like we literally put the most ridiculous things on the list. And a couple months after that, the house that we’re in, the Victorian came on the market. We’d walked by it before, just in doing walks through the neighborhood. And it was always just a really beautiful, grand house. It came on the market and it was ridiculously cheap and we thought, well, there’s clearly something wrong with it, cause there’s no reason that this house should be this cheap. Doug was hesitant to go look at it. Then it dropped in price even more while we were on vacation, and we were driving home from vacation and I said, I think we need to go look at this house. And so he agreed. So we called the realtor and by the time we were back from vacation, we had made this list of here’s what we have to do to sell our house. So that was sort of the jump into this. So we came to look at it, we saw the staircase and we completely fell in love with it.
KM: I know, that room with that staircase is unbelievable.
AH: Oh, it’s incredible. I am forever grateful to the listing agent when the house was in foreclosure because they hired the worst photographer on the planet because no one took a picture of that staircase. If you looked at the realtor photos, you would never have any idea that there was any woodwork in this house at all. So we got there before the relator did, and I looked in the window and I just gasped and Doug just thought, okay, I guess we’re buying it. The only thing on our list of wishes for a house, the only thing that this didn’t have was a garage or workshop or an outbuilding. We’re the only house on the street that doesn’t have any of that. We’ve put a little shed in the background, but we decided that the basement was big enough for him to do a workshop down there, and the house was good enough that we could deal with shoveling snow and not having a garage.
KM: Yeah. And you know, what’s amazing is that I was just talking to someone who had made a list also of the things that she wanted in the house, and then found the house. And I made a list for the stuff that I wanted in my house, and I found the house. I think lists really do it. I mean, I think you’re just putting your intention out there into the universe, and then the universe is like, which one? Oh, this one, this one’s good for you. You know what I mean?
AH: Right. And I’m sure that this house wasn’t exactly perfect because the kitchen wasn’t- but if you have a list of here’s what I want. And you can walk through the house and say, you know, the kitchen isn’t exactly what’s on my list, but it’s got the room to do it. Then you can start to make the plans too. Is there a way that I can make the house exactly what I want? So, the list I think can help you get there, even if the house isn’t perfect.
KM: That’s true. I guess I’m a little woo woo in thinking the list actually helps the house find you.
AH: Oh, I 1000% agree with you, yes.
KM: So how long ago was this?
AH: We bought the house in the fall of 2012.
KM: Okay. So enough time to have done a lot of work.
AH: Yes. There are 22 rooms in the house.
KM: What? It doesn’t seem that big in the photos.
AH: Oh, it’s giant. Because there’s a third floor and I mean the third floor alone, we don’t call it an attic because it’s a walk-up and it’s nine foot ceilings on the third floor. So the third floor alone has six rooms in it. So it is a massive house and right now it feels like it’s not too big for us because we turned half of it into construction zones while we’re working on rooms. We’re very good at what we do, but we’re very, very slow because we’re doing all the work ourselves. So we sort of compartmentalize the house. I think once it’s done, it’s going to feel giant, but we probably won’t be done until we’re like, retirement age. So we probably won’t even walk to the third floor then anyway. I mean, we’ll see what happens. But yeah, we’ve completed eight rooms, I think, out of 22.
KM: So the 22 rooms, I’m imagining that there are some interesting specialty type rooms. Like, do you have a ballroom?
AH: We do not have a ballroom. There’s lots of speculation about the third floor, cause often the ballrooms in Victorians would have been on the third floor. The third floor was renovated sometime in the 1990s to get it to its current configuration.I’m actually on the third floor right now, so I’m looking around the room, trying to will the thought of the third floor over to the podcast. But it really looks like it was renovated in the nineties. It kind of feels like a college dormitory up here. It’s just very separate rooms and drywall and no doors on closets. It’s very strange. So what we don’t know is if at some point in time, this was a big open ballroom space, because that would be common in Victorian times. On the first floor there are two parlors, one of which we’re calling the library. So we have an entrance hall and we have a parlor, and then we have a library which we’re going to use as our TV room. We’re almost done with that room. And then there’s also a study, so there’s just a lot of separate rooms for separate things. Unfortunately we don’t have any blueprints or know exactly what the original functions of those spaces were, we can only guess by looking at blueprints and floor plans from other Victorians.
KM: Right. Well, I know from the photo of your entrance hall, the entrance hall itself is a full room.
AH: Oh, it’s huge, yeah.
KM: Have there been any big moments or surprises that you’ve had during the renovation?
AH: Nothing huge. Well actually now that I said that, I think I’m lying. We knew that the house had been made into apartments during WWII. That was a very common thing around here, and there’s a big army base nearby. So a lot of the larger houses were broken into apartments during the training of soldiers for WWII. So we knew that the house had been apartments. We did not really know what the configuration was or how it was laid out. And then when we were working on a bedroom on the second floor, we were taking down wallpaper. And when we took down the wallpaper, we found a note on the wall that said, there was an archway here, the stairwell had been boarded over to make a room, and this was the arch way to get into that room. So the previous owners from the 1980s who turned it back into a single family, they left some instructions on the wall of here’s what the floor plan used to be like. Eventually after posting about that on my blog, the previous owners found us and said, we have pictures, we can bring them by. So they brought pictures by of the house and you can see where that beautiful staircase in the entrance hall had been basically chainsawed across in order to lay down a floor so that the upper level of the staircase was a room for the second floor apartment. I mean, it was unbelievable that they had done that. But in some of the other houses in our neighborhood, the staircases were taken completely out. I’d rather a chainsawed staircase then no staircase at all. So at least it was able to be reconstructed and built, which they did in the 1980s. So I think that’s probably the biggest surprise that we found.
KM: The stair has been restored to its original…
AH: Yes.
KM: Wow. And do you know the history of the house? I mean, who originally had it built?
AH: To our knowledge, from what we’ve been able to figure out, it was built by a farmer whose last name was Murray. He was a cattle farmer and then he built this as his summer home. Not summer home, as his city home. So he had a farm, but then they also had this house in the city. When I was looking up information about the Murrays at the local historical society, because they have some documentation, we knew Murray’s name and we knew his wife’s name, her name was Lucy Murray. And so when we were looking up things about Lucy Murray, the ladies at the historical society said, don’t be surprised, you’re probably not going to find a lot of information about her because she was a woman. And, you know, they didn’t keep a lot of records unless you were very prominent. Well her obituary when she died of consumption, which we assume happened inside the house, was on the front page of the local newspapers. So they were apparently fairly influential. And the Murray’s owned the house until about- We think the house was built in 1902, and we think that after her death, it was bought by the Bryant family. And the Bryant family was very influential in the town. Mr. Bryant was an architect and a builder, so there’s a lot of prominent houses and buildings in Indiana that have his stamp on them. He was also a lumber baron, and there’s a building down the street that was his lumber business. So we often wonder if some of the lumber and wood work in the house came after 1902 because of that, or if he was attracted to the house because of that. So he ended up becoming the mayor of Franklin as well and was prominent in the Indiana democratic party. His grandson came and talked to us and told us that they often had parties in the house and the Indiana governor came to visit. So our library was sort of like a political den in the 1930s.
KM: Wow, okay. So that guy was an architect, and a lumber baron, and the mayor of the town.
AH: Yes. It’s very eclectic. The local historical society just gave us a ledger where he and his wife actually started a general store in town. It was like a paint and drug store- because that’s a fun combination. So yeah, they were pretty influential.
KM: That’s amazing. So they were in the 1930s, and they lived there I guess until WWII when they then made it into apartments.
AH: Yes, but that’s where it gets a little fishy and a little bit weird because we know some of the Bryants still lived here until the 1960s, at least. So we know that they at least occupied one of the apartments. The downstairs was one apartment and then the second floor was another two apartments. So we know that at least some of the family was in there for some of that. Then it really fell into disrepair in the 1960s and 70s. Like the porch was taken off the house, and from everything we’ve been told, the street and the house really went into some bad hands. There was a lot of police activity and just lots of things that sometimes happen if areas aren’t taken care of. Then in the eighties, a lot of families came in and sort of started to revitalize, and that’s when our local historical society was founded, which sort of took some of that into it. All of it’s very crazy. I’ve had people show up at our house and say, I broke into this house when I was younger. It’s crazy.
KM: Yeah. I love it when people just come up to the house and tell you their personal history with the house though. I mean, it kind of just puts these layers into the whole experience of the building.
AH: I’m a high school band director, and one of my flute players who graduated last year, her younger brother’s a junior in my band, their grandparents lived in one of the apartments in my house. And it was the first place that when they got married, she said this was the only place that they could afford, so this was where they lived and where they had their first child. She explained to me which apartment it was and what it looked like. She doesn’t have any pictures of it, but it’s really fun to kind of have those connections and to see how much the house means to the people in the town.
KM: Yeah, definitely. Do you have any advice for people who love old houses and think they would like to adopt one for themselves and bring it back to life?
AH: Yeah, I have so much advice. I think that number one, it’s okay to be overwhelmed, but always believe that you can get through it. The old house community is incredible. Everyone is so supportive of each other and everyone has seen some seriously crazy stuff. So pretty much anything that you get into someone else has seen at some point in time. Especially today, when there’s Facebook groups, and there’s Instagram groups, there are so many places where you can go and say, I don’t know what this is, can someone help me? And people can identify furniture and woodwork and holes in walls and things like that. Also talking to your local historical society is, really, really great, because not only will they sometimes be able to fill in some of the gaps as to what you might be missing in your house as far as why is this here or how did this come to be? But they also are the people that know the craftsmen in town. Like if you want to get windows restored and you want to make sure that someone is respectful of old houses and knows how to do those things right, they’re going to have names of people that can really help you do that. Oftentimes those historical societies do workshops and things to help you with learning how to do plaster repair, learning how to do electrical, or learning how to use some things that are outside your wheelhouse, but there’s something that you could tackle as a DIYer. Then also just knowing when you need to hire somebody. We do almost all the work ourselves, but we’re also smart enough to know this project might be outside what we can do, so we’re going to make sure we get somebody in to help us. So being able to bring people in on your team. Don’t try to go it alone. There are people out there that can help you and that can help walk you through it, and that are excited to do it because they love old houses too.
KM: Yeah. I think the people who love old houses really love old houses, and they do want to help people, so I have found that. Also with the whole Instagram community that you’ve kind of created, 52 weeks of home, I love that because it’s on the theme so I can see like- The week that you had woodwork, for example. It was just great just to be able to look at one photo after another of this beautiful woodwork. I don’t know, I just love woodwork.
AH: There are certainly weeks on that. I get really excited about woodwork week, I get excited about hardware week, I get excited about bathroom week.
KM: Well it’s all exciting is the thing.
AH: Right, it’s all exciting. I love seeing different houses in different parts of the country, and we do have some people outside of the United States as well. It’s so great to see different styles. The only thing that gets me a little bit cranky is sometimes people we’ll post things and say, well, I feel like I shouldn’t post this because it’s not as nice as other people’s. And those are some of the houses that I get the most excited about. I like seeing some of the simpler rooms or people that are in the middle of construction and their whole house is kind of destroyed, like that progress of here’s the dream, here’s what I want it to be, but I’m not there yet, it’s so exciting to me. And sometimes people aren’t quite ready to share that part of it, but I love when they do because it just makes it so much more authentic, and we all just kinda join around those things.
KM: Yeah. Well we can all relate to that, our houses not being where we want them to be. Honestly, they’re never finished. I feel like maybe once- well, I wouldn’t know because I’ve never actually finished a house and then lived in it. This is only my second house actually, but it’s not finished yet. And I’ve been here 12 years and I’ll finish it right before I sell it, because that’s the way that’s gonna go. And then I’ll go find another house to rescue. I just feel like these houses have a life of their own, really, especially ones like yours that were these beautiful, ornate grand houses. They’re beautiful, all this great stuff is happening in them, and then something happens and they’re kind of in their dark period, where they might have a bunch of apartments in them, or it’s a crime ridden house or whatever. And then eventually it’s just water coming in the roof. And maybe the house has just lost any hope of getting back to its former glory, and then someone comes and fixes it. I love that.
AH: Right, and I do think that there are some great reuses of houses. Like one thing in the old house community is sometimes people get- there are definitely people who are purists and they want the house to look exactly the way that it’s looked since it began. I’m not a total purist, I don’t want it to feel like a museum. I want it to feel like it’s sort of a modern take on that Victorian. I try to be very respectful of all of the things that were there, but I also understand that sometimes these giant houses are not sustainable for people. So I would rather have a house made into apartments that are maybe historically sympathetic if that means that the house can continue and not fall into total despair because someone can’t live there. I think that it’s just like everything else in life, it’s not black and white. I think that there are lots of areas of gray with old houses that sometimes you have to make choices in order to keep the building in existence. And that just happens.
KM: Right. I mean there are obviously a lot of building technologies that we have now that are more energy efficient. We have insulation where there didn’t used to be any insulation, there’s window issues, people just deciding to tear out their windows and replace them with new windows really gets me. Window restoration is apparently an easy thing to do by yourself is what I have heard. And actually I interviewed somebody about window restoration and the way she started her whole company was that she wanted to restore the windows in her old house, so she learned how to do it, and now she does that for a living. But those old, the kind of wavy glass in the windows, there’s just really nothing like that. And also the old growth wood and they’re all, you know, solid, good quality wood windows. The windows are the eyes of the house, as they always say. And seeing those just with vinyl in them kind of makes me sad.
AH: Right. As a teacher, I am so big on education. I think that there’s a lot of people just not understanding. Like, I cannot understand why someone would say this is old, therefore it’s broken, so I need to put something new in there, and that’s how you fix it. But then the idea of old house people explaining that wood windows are actually way more efficient if you restore them properly, they’re way more efficient than vinyl windows. And so being able to get that message out that you’re actually in the long run going to save money, save the character of the house, save the value of the house and be warmer if you just restored what was already there. And I think that message is starting to get out a little bit more. But yeah, I think a lot of it is just education and getting people to understand that, because people who don’t know anything about old houses, they don’t grasp that.
KM: Yeah, no, that’s true. Any other tidbits of advice before we wrap it up?
AH: Do what makes you happy and brings you joy. Our laundry room has wallpaper and a chandelier and our laundry room is just as special as the rest of the house. If you have a color that you love, then do it. If you have wallpaper that you love then do it. Make the choices in your home that make you happy and that celebrate the house, and understand that especially in old houses, so much of the architecture was built around making the house be efficient. The idea of knocking down walls to have open floor plans in old houses, that’s one of the things that makes me crazy because these houses were built in ways that, you know, the sun would hit rooms at certain times to allow everything to work. And nowadays you don’t have to do that because you have central air and central heat, and you can do anything with any room whatsoever. But I think if you live in the house for a little bit and understand how it works, you’ll realize that most of them have been designed really, really well to function great. So just live with it and let it speak to you before you make any massive changes.
KM: Right, I agree. I spend a lot of my time complaining about- or, not complaining about but maybe warning people about open plan. The answer is not just to remove walls a lot of the time.
AH: Right, totally agree.
KM: Yeah. Especially in a house like yours, it has so many rooms that it would seem like they place, let’s say a breakfast area in a location for a reason, because it got the morning sun or whatever it may be. So I agree with that, allowing yourself to experience the house for a while before you start removing walls. Also, I won’t get into it again, but just the whole open plan thing is not a great way to live with the other people in the house.
AH: Oh, totally. I like being able to close things off by having different rooms for different things. I am very much in that aesthetic. I like being able to, just, this is where we go to watch TV and this is where we go to eat. Before COVID happened, we often had dinner parties and just the idea that you would eat in one room and then go visit in another room.
KM: Exactly, I love that. You can go into the formal dining room and there’s a certain mood that you’ve established in there and that’s for a certain period of the evening, and then there’s a before and after. It’s totally great to be able to move around and experience the evening like that in different environments. So I love that too.
AH: Yeah. And just even selfishly, from a decorative point of view. If everything was just one big, giant room, then you’re stuck sort of with one style and one color. I mean, I know that there’s ways that you can be creative with that, but I love the idea that each space is just special unto itself.
KM: Yeah, definitely. It’s not as easy to decorate in different colors and styles in an open plan. I mean sure, there are tricks… or you could just keep the walls, which I always mention. Well, that’s really great, Amy. I love your house and thank you for sharing your story and advice and leading this community over on Instagram.
AH: Well, we have fun with it, it’s been really great and a lot of people have really found other people that can help them with problems. There’s just a lot of inspiration and it just helps you feel like you’re not alone, cause sometimes when you’re working on a room and you’re in the middle and you found the latest crack in the ceiling, or something is rotted through, it just helps to know that there are other people doing the crazy things that you’re doing and that everyone’s going to get through it. It’s just really enlightening for me.
KM: Yeah. It’s great to feel like you’re part of a larger community and just to lie there on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, looking at pictures of beautiful houses. That’s one of my favorite things to do. I find that very relaxing, like wow, look at this house, this is beautiful. It just speaks to me. So yeah, I love it. Well, thank you very much.
AH: Thank you.