Susan R. Pollack / The Detroit News
When Tom and Cheryl Hall were house-hunting 16 years ago, they knew they wanted an old house in the country, somewhere near Ann Arbor.
Three weeks into their search, they found what they were looking for in a stately Italianate house on the Huron River in Dexter, a sleepy village 10 minutes from the college town.
As they tromped around the expansive yard and down the riverbank, he looked up at the orange brick home once owned by a prominent Dexter industrialist and, as Cheryl Hall recalls, “Tom said, ‘If I were an 8-year-old kid, this is where I would want to grow up.’”
Not surprisingly, the aging house needed work. It dates to 1869 and, for a time during the Depression, served as a nursing home — the Huron River House for the Elderly and Invalid, according to a yellowed business card found in the attic.
“It had great bones, but we’ve probably fixed every single thing except the plaster walls and hardwood floors,” Hall says of the plumbing and other remodeling projects that, over the years, have made the home more livable for her young family.
This weekend, the historic house will take a star turn on the eighth annual NARI Tour of Remodeled Homes, sponsored by the southeast Michigan chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. Of the 14 homes featured, nine are in the Ann Arbor-Dexter area and five are in Oakland County, from Royal Oak to Bloomfield Hills.
Like many couples, the Halls didn’t always agree on how to update their home, which retains such vintage touches as cranberry glass on a doorway transom and sidelights and rope-work trim throughout.
She, for example, wanted an attached garage for wintertime convenience while he envisioned a garage separate from the house. They also wanted to fix a collapsing side porch, reconfigure the entryway, add storage, capitalize on river views and carve out space to accommodate guests. And, as a children’s photographer, Cheryl needed to move her makeshift studio from the master bedroom to a more convenient space.
In 2002, the Halls turned to architect Michael Klement of Architectural Resource in Ann Arbor for professional help. Together, they came up with a long-term plan to solve the garage issue and other design challenges while preserving the historical integrity of the house.
“Tom looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want to be known as the guy who screwed up this beautiful old home,’” Klement says.
Tackling immediate needs first, they converted the crumbling side porch into a conservatory-sunroom adjacent to the kitchen with the help of builder Don Huff of Home Renewal Inc. in Manchester.
The light and airy addition, with views to the river, has won several regional and national design awards, Klement says.
Next up: building a garage to replace the obsolete porte corchere on the opposite side of the house. It was added during a 1920s home redo, presumably to shelter one of the town’s first Ford Model A’s, Cheryl Hall says. The carport was too narrow for most modern vehicles and also obscured the entrance of the house to visitors.
“Guests were pretty confused because it was creepy and dark,” she says. “No one wanted to go under there.”
The solution to the overall design dilemma was an entry breezeway — Klement calls it a “hyphen” — that connects the house to a two-car garage with an in-law suite above it, complete with a Cinderella balcony.
That project, in turn, landed the house a spot among 26 case studies in a new book, “In-laws, Outlaws and Granny Flats: Your Guide to Turning One House into Two Homes,” by Michael Litchfield (Taunton Press, $24.95).
The book explores what Litchfield, who was a founding editor of Fine Homebuilding magazine, describes as a growing real estate trend toward second units — transforming a single-family house into a property with an independent living space for elderly parents, in-laws or adult children still at home.
For the Hall family, however, it’s the pretty, light-filled breezeway that’s the real bonus in the remodeling equation. “I exercise in there and my husband likes to read,” says Cheryl Hall of the large entry foyer/mudroom. “The dog’s bed is there and the kids like to play in there. They do a lot of plays and we sit on the stairs.”
Those mini-stairs, which lead to the main house, are bookended by a pair of closets housing kids’ games on one side and a home office on the other. There are two big closets in the foyer, too.
“Otherwise, everything would end up on the dining room table or kitchen counter,” she says. “We used to have shoes in our living room, everywhere.”
Klement, nodding with approval, observes: “We refer to the entry foyer of a house as the ‘dump zone,’ the place to de-stage from the outside world. Here, it’s working as planned.”
Beyond that, the Halls gained additional storage in the master bedroom, which they reconfigured to better use the space. “It was two bedrooms when we bought the house but we made it into one — bigger seemed better, but it wasn’t,” she says. “It was a bowling alley bedroom, really long and narrow.”
Now one-third of the bedroom is a walk-in closet with a dressing area. “It’s like having a pantry, in a sense, for your bedroom,” she notes.
And, needless to say, she’s thrilled to have a huge, contemporary photo studio in what was once a ramshackle, junk-filled barn. “Michael helped us get it structurally sound,” she says.
Throughout the nearly decade-long remodeling projects, the Halls’ kept sight of their goal to be good stewards and preserve the architectural integrity of their home.
“It was important to us to match as closely as we could,” she says, noting that the addition’s tumbled brick exterior came from a brickyard in Detroit. “We wanted to take good care of the house and really hope that whoever ends up here in the future carries on the tradition.”
To that end, the family has maintained a mini-museum, started by the home’s previous owner, in a built-in window on the main stairway.
Behind the glass window case, interspersed with a shriveled snakeskin and a moth, is a motley collection of vintage items including a pocket watch, inkwell, nails, light bulbs, faucet, Pewabic tile and a piece of the original intercom system from the nursing home era.
“It’s like a little archeology exhibit,” Hall says, adding that her family has hidden a note and photos of themselves in the walls for future homeowners to find.
spollack@detnews.com
(313) 222-2665
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Article source: http://detnews.com/article/20110513/LIFESTYLE01/105130306/1038/rss31
