About the house

The house we chose to renovate is in one of the largest areas to be designated as a National Historic District. It's called the "East End Historic District" of Galveston Island, TX. The house itself is not on the Historic Register - yet. We need to do more research and much paperwork to make that happen. But it is historic because of its age. It was built in 1873 with an addition in 1879. But it's also historic because it survived the Great Storm of 1900 that devastated Galveston Island. Now we can add the fact that it's a 2008 storm survivor too, as it won the battle with Hurricane Ike too.

We think the house was originally a simple, two-story, side-hall style house with several additions made over the years. Its style is called Italianate, a sub-genre of Victorian architecture, which is characterized by a low-pitched roof, tall windows with decorative pediments at the top, and lots of brackets along the roof line. This particular Italianate-style house has a couple of features that really make it stand out - the original black wrought-iron fence and red and blue stained glass windows. The house is on several local home tours so, for now anyway, it's fun to see tour groups stop in front of the house to ogle.

As beautiful as the house is from the outside, it it equally ugly on the inside. Sometime in the 1940's, we think, the house was broken up into four apartments. It was common during the war that widows and women waiting for their men to return home would take in boarders to help pay the expenses. And Galveston, being a major port and immigration center, needed to house many people involved in the shipping industry.

When we first looked at the house in February, 2011, there were two tenants and the owner living in the main house, and a tenant living in the garage apartment. We could see that what would have been a back porch on both the upper and lower levels, had been enclosed to create kitchens and bathrooms for the tenants. It was in such bad condition, I'm surprised it was still standing. But despite the thick layer of dust and outdated wiring and plumbing, you could see this house had potential. We looked at each other and decided "it would be fun" to turn this house with four apartments back into a grand single-family home.

It's our intention, during this renovation, to bring this home up-to-date with good wiring and plumbing. Although we'll attempt to keep the flavor of the old house, we want it to have the amenities to which we've become accustomed - a great kitchen, a shower and a laundry room.

A lot has been done to the house already, so we're going to attempt to document our renovation experience from this date forward, with frequent "flashbacks" to things that have happened in the past. We hope you enjoy the ride as much as we do!