The First Look

We were in Galveston in February during Mardi Gras. We had been invited to stay with our friend Sandy, whose timeshare was available. The weekend was mostly cold and drizzly.

We had previously made an appointment to see The Thomas Thompson House, which is so called because most of the houses in the East End Historical District are named for their earliest inhabitants.

The Front View.
The windows on the right side addition contain stained glass on the narrow panes. The downstairs windows are described in the history of the house as "cranberry", the upstairs are "cobalt". The iron fence is original to the house.

The rear view. Nifty banana plant.

We knew from the listing that the house had long ago been broken into apartments, with four in the main house and one above the garage. The listing on the internet had photos that looked like an old house that needed work, but had potential.  The jury is still out on that.

The house was built in at least two stages. The main part was build in 1873, with a large addition in 1879. We'll get to the history in a later post.

Nelson, Sandy and I going to the upstairs apartment.

When we arrived, Kay Schwartz, our realtor, and Nelson Smelker, the contractor were there. Kay said she had arranged the showing with the tenants that were in residence, so we would begin with the occupied upstairs apartment. The tenant was there, and seemed to be preparing to move out. Boxes and stuff were everywhere.  Susan wanted pictures of the rooms as we went through, so she took them all from an eye level perspective. She thought she should not be recording all of the tenants stuff. The next few pictures are of the upstairs apartment on the right side of the house.

The upstairs apartment kitchen. The water heater is in the tall cabinet. All gas appliances in the house were improperly vented.

The back bedroom on the right side of the house. Kay is standing in the doorway to the upstairs apartment "kitchen".
The chimney was used for coal stove venting on this level and the room below. See the stove pipe hole near the top.

The back bedroom on the right side of the house

What will be the guest bath. It'll be different, I promise!

What will become the guest bath. We will gut it and enlarge it.

Front bedroom on the right side of the house with Kay.

The front bedroom on the right side of the house with Sandy and Nelson.

Then we went downstairs to "Joe's Place".  The house is originally a double-parlor style, which means it had two identical living rooms. One in the front and one in the rear.  The parlors had been divided years ago to create the tenant apartments. Joe lives in the rear with his door on the back deck. The porch roof, which is 5 1/2 feet deep became the roof of his add-on kitchen. To call this an apartment is a stretch.

Joe's fireplace.
This would have been the fireplace in the second parlor.

Joe's kitchen. This kitchen was built on the porch. We'll make this a laundry room.

Joe's entrance from the back deck. Notice the gap between the add-on kitchen roof and the porch roof above. Quality work!

Joe's kitchen from the outside. Hey, he had satellite!

Joe's room with Kay and I. The wall on the right divides the front and rear parlors. 

Joe's bathroom.
The overflow on the tub is rusted through. We'll remove the tub and reduce the size of the bathroom to a powder room.   I'd show the floor, but maybe you've just eaten.

Joe's vestibule.

The next part we visited was the owner's apartment. He lived in the front parlor to the left of the front door.  His bathroom and "kitchen" are in a little 9'X12' bump out room on the left.

The owner's bath/kitchen room. Wow!

The former owner's "suite".
The wall at the head of the bed divides the front and rear parlors.  It will be removed. The crown molding is original plaster but was butchered by earlier "renovations". The door on the left leads to the bumpout bath/kitchen.


The right side addition to the house appears to have had a dining room in front. The house has no real kitchen. The room is slightly L shaped with the cranberry stained glass windows in front.

The dining room? Notice the stained glass. More about that later.

Behind the kitchen is a small lateral hallway and a half bath. Behind that is a room we call the scullery. Maybe it once was the real kitchen.

The scullery. Notice the double drain board cast iron sink, and, oh, the 2X4 leg.

The other room on this side is a coral-colored room that may be an enclosed porch. We call it the sunroom. It's very narrow at 9'X21' and has lots of windows.

The sunroom.

The last real rooms are the two large bedrooms that are laid out upstairs just as the two parlors were originally laid out directly below them.  They're both 17'X17' and were combined into an apartment with a "kitchen and bath" built on the porch roof directly over Joe's kitchen.

The back bedroom with doors to the front bedroom. Notice the floor to ceiling windows that, when open, you can walk through.

The front bedroom has floor to ceiling windows to the front balcony.

The "bathroom" that "serves" the master bath over the porch.

The "kitchen" over the porch used by the tenant in the larger upstairs apartment.

The main hallway, both up and down goes the depth of the house and is 34'X7'. It has the original staircase with 22 steps.

The main hallway.

So that's what we found. We agonized over it for weeks. We negotiated for it for more weeks yet. And we finally bought it.

Now the work begins. Hope you would like to follow along.

David