When Carla Minosh, a nurse, and Tom Belles, a company lawyer, searched for a restoration project, her hearts were set in a Victorian house. “I love the exaggerated food of Victorian architecture,” says Carla. “It is stimulating.” “It was an interesting time in American history,” added her husband. “The time after the civil war was a time of growth and optimism, and the houses reflect this.”
A perfect fit
When she was looking for her former home in North Virginia, they found the house that they wanted to use a real estate display in the Preservation Magazine of the National Trust. It is in Danville on the southern border of Virginia. The Soflett -Miller House, built in the 1870s with a Foursquare plan, was expanded to include a Victorian Gothic house with 8,000 square feet inside in the 1880s.
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The house represents the optimistic, exaggerated character that the couple loves. Its vertical alignment is expressed with verands, towers and towers, curved windows, a steep roof with multi-colored slate tiles, metal crowns on main and harassment roofs and lace work. The interior has 20 rooms (no bathrooms) with 12 feet high ceilings, fireplaces from the 19th century and an abundance of stone glass in gears and windows.
Another attraction was the price. “Here the houses cost a fraction of those in North Virginia,” says Tom. In addition, the house was always occupied and structurally solid. “We have 184 windows,” says Tom, “All heart jaws and most of them were solid.”
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Victorian visitedWhen Carla Minosh and Tom go on vacation, they include tours through house museums. This, they say, have particularly influenced and inspired them: 
– Patricia Poore |
Include color
The couple had high Victorian house museums on tour for years and learned and inspired. They wanted to re -create a historic manor house. Your restoration would take years: the entire house inside and outside was painted white! A former homeowner wanted a white house as a backdrop for her flower gardens.
However, the owners considered whether they painted the white painting, but found that the quotes for a first -class paint job came to the costs of roaming the brick nearby. They used a stripper from the masonry recommended by the National Park Service. In sections, two workers worked on it and kept it moist with bowls overnight and then stopped the color the next day. It took a whole summer: no strength wash, no hard chemicals, no tools that would harm the brick.
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System -upgrades
Next, they improved the sanitary and electrical systems, flat floors, removed unpleasant cupboards, restored plaster walls and added three-part wall treatments and restored a lack of fences and iron combs. “When we bought the house, we didn't know what we got involved in,” says Carla. “It was good that we had cabling, sanitary and plastering before we could even think about decorating. It gave us time to learn.”
The front salon was walled by the rear salon when a previous owner used it as a doctor's office. Carla and Tom restored the original double parlors. They removed a tiny bathroom that was caught under the stairs and at the end of the hall half a bathroom as a Moorish imagination with bold geometric tiles and an oge-arched mirror. In many rooms, they used three suitable, shaped materials in the field area above the Dado: anaglyypta, linoleum-like lincrusta walton and pressed metal.
In the music room, the only room on the ground floor without a three -part wall treatment, a William Morris -designed fabric walls. “Fabric reduced the echo,” says Carlo. “Morris colors determined wood coloring.” She and Tom have developed the revival kitchen in homage to the Philadelphia architect Frank Furness (1839–1912), which is known for its high Victorian Gothic buildings. “The custom walnut cabinets are modeled according to his cupboards,” they explain. Two refrigerators hide in a free -standing walnut cabinet that may have been in a salon of the 1870s.
– written by Regina Cole. Produced by Patricia Poore. Photos by Gridley + Graves.
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