Nancy Poston had never taken on a home renovation when she bought the 124-year-old Wingfield House in Fort Wood in 2008.
She said that while shopping for a home near downtown she read in St. Paul Episcopal Church’s newsletter that the rectory was to be sold.
The rectory at 806 Vine Street is the oldest remaining home in the Fort Wood neighborhood, according to information from Cornerstones Inc. The two-story house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I looked at it on a Friday, brought a structural engineer over Saturday, put a bid in Sunday and bought it on Monday,” she said.
The purchase may have been a whirlwind, but the restoration has been a thoughtful, deliberate process that stretched over one year.
Ms. Poston enlisted Matt Sears of Haskel Sears Design to help her restore the Victorian features of the 3,100-square-foot frame home with Queen Anne styling and gabled roof. Between purchase price and renovation, she invested $500,000 to return the home to its original grandeur.
“I wanted to preserve the integrity of the house,” she said of this labor of love.
She said restrictions of the National Register allowed no changes to the exterior that weren’t original to the house. But she has updated the interior to include all the comforts of 21st-century lifestyle comfortably blended into a setting of century-old architecture.
Here are some of the restoration highlights:
* The house had 13-foot ceilings and baseboards almost a foot deep. Every room in the home was repainted.
* Ms. Poston said she thought the dark wood flooring was “a nice walnut,” only to be surprised when warm red oak was revealed when the floors were stripped. The red oak flooring runs throughout both levels of the home.
* Mr. Sears restored all the woodwork original to the house, down to recarving the pineapple finial on the staircase. He restored all the fireplaces, stairwell, ball-and-stick arches in the dogtrot and the kitchen.
* All doors were taken down, refinished or repainted. All the original brass hardware and hinges were cleaned.
* Ms. Poston said the kitchen renovation was the biggest challenge because of the extent of the work that was needed.
“It had a galley kitchen, but the door wasn’t original; it had been added in the 1950s. There was a stairwell in the kitchen that opened only to the porch from when the home had been cut into apartments. Since it was not original to the house I was allowed to remove it,” she said.
The kitchen had to be gutted “down to the dirt,” she said. Then they ripped out the former bath above it so they were left with a two-story hole.
With the assistance of Martha Elder to plan the kitchen’s U-shaped work flow, Ms. Poston’s 19-foot by 14-foot kitchen is now a sunny gold with beveled-glass-front cabinets at staggered heights. Mr. Sears stained the cabinets to mimic the wood of the front door.
The room has almost 81 feet of Gerbia Beach granite counters from Stone Services, which gleam beneath pendant and recessed lighting. The counters have an antique finish, a process that takes the polish off the top to give them a vintage feel. The company custom-made the granite farmhouse sink beneath a window that was made by enclosing a former doorway.
* Ms. Poston, a health-care consultant, was an art major in college. Her extensive art collection is showcased throughout the rooms. Art ranges from pieces she has collected to sculpture, to framed drawings created by her sons, and her own paintings. Of particular interest is a portrait of her grandmother that she painted that now hangs in the guest bedroom.
* Almost every room of the house has a fireplace with tile hearths beneath lustrous mahogany mantels. All are original to the house with a variety of features such as ornate spindles, handpainted tiles or beveled-glass mirrors. Several mantels still bear signs of cigarette burns, which Ms. Poston left because they add to the authenticity of the vintage pieces.
* The downstairs guest bath features a lemon onyx vanity built by Mr. Sears to hold a freestanding sink basin. The vanity is backlit so the onyx glows at the flip of a switch.
* On the second-floor landing, a linen closet formerly protruded halfway across the hall floor. Ms. Poston removed the closet to uniformly widen the hallway, then turned the remaining space into a guest bath. In keeping with the home’s era, she has placed an antique linen press in the hallway to hold blankets and towels.
* Ms. Poston saved a ball-and-clawfoot tub she found in the home and moved it to the new guest bath. It is backed by what appears to be a brick wall that might have been revealed in the renovation. The brick is actually caramel marble that Ms. Poston found at Stone Source.
* In the master bedroom, Ms. Poston closed a wall that formerly led to the guest bedroom bath and incorporated that space into a master bathroom suite. The suite includes a Roman shower made of winter cloud marble with a pebble border, a walk-in closet and granite-topped drawers and shelving.
* In a small room that formerly contained only a toilet, she made a laundry room that connects to the master bedroom.
* The house was rewired, replumbed and all walls were checked for stability.
* The exterior of the home was repainted and a new roof installed.
