What better place to start our grand tour than the front of the home?! Here’s a picture of her as the original builder intended:

This beautiful, old home has had her share of stories and problems. None bigger than the “weather that hit her somewhere between 1900-1950. We’re not sure what happened (we hear it was a tornado), but we’re sure that the look of the home took a drastic change after the event. The front porch and turret were blown off the home, and the owners at that time decided – sadly – that it would be better to rebuild the porch as a closed porch instead of the original open design. We do think that the brick foundation is original – it still is that way, only with aluminum storm windows on it instead of the beautiful wood fretwork that once was there. They also decided (sadly) not to rebuild the 2nd story porch off of what was at that time a sitting room. They instead turned that area into another bathroom and put some ugly aluminum windows in the place of two beautiful doors that opened up facing the lake. You can see the new windows above the (now) closed porch. If you look close, you can see where they bricked in the area below the windows. We’ve demoed the wall behind this, so you can see what it looks like on the inside. I think it’s going to look a lot nicer with those doors in place again, don’t you think?!

Here’s what it looks like currently, after these alterations:

As good stewards, we’re hoping to bring the home back more toward the original design – with a few of our own twists on it.

We’re going to leave the porch as is to start with, but we’re brining back the 2nd story porch and doors from what will be the master bathroom. But we’re doing it one better – we’re going to expand the porch up another level to the attic – with the gable coming out of the roof line for a walkout from the room we’re creating up there (more to come in a following post).

The architect took his inspiration from the window on the opposite side of the home. Notice the fretwork on the existing window is the inspiration for the railing on the new window. We’re also going to be adding the scrolled fascia, as pictured below:

So what do you think? Is it going to look as good as the original? Better? We know we’re going to love the view from the porch on the attic… facing the lake! I only hope there’s enough money in the budget to make it happen. Darn money… always seem to need more of it than I have! If we manage to get it built, I’ll try to remember to update this post with pictures of the progress on the structure as it goes up.

Next stop on the tour – the inside entry