House Tour: We Bought This Abandoned 1897 Victorian at Auction

[Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] welcome back to beautiful monticello arkansas and what is probably our favorite project to date we're so excited to bring you here again and give you another peek at this beautiful home we showed it to you a few weeks ago in a little bit of a sneak peek but we were still working out all the details and so we didn't want to give too much away but welcome to miss melanie the most recent addition to the r restoration nation family of restoration projects this one we are so excited about because it lets us take our ethos as a couple sort of to the next level we believe very much in coming into communities that need economic support and hiring local contractors and putting our money back into those communities well with this property we have a very special opportunity we were able to purchase this beautiful 1897 queen anne victorian along with the 1937 bungalow next door and almost three acres of land and we'll be turning this beautiful area into an organic urban farm to address food insecurities in this city and in our state arkansas ranks second only to mississippi in food and security issues so we're hoping that this little corner of our restoration nation can help put a dent in some of the food insecurities in our state but come inside and take a look and see some of the things that make this house so spectacular we are so excited about this home and one of the reasons is that it is practically untouched from its 1897 build date this home has been technically abandoned for 80 years now i know that you're looking around and you're seeing national geographics from the 80s and law books from the 90s and saying it can't have been abandoned well we consider abandoned unoccupied what we know is that this home was built in 1897 by the cayson family and they lived here until the 1940s then from what we can tell though we still have some research to do judge bond and his wife bought this home and the parcel next door in 1937 and built their little bungalow there and kept this property as a storage building so when judge bond retired from his law practice in the 1960s he just took everything from his office and put it in this house so it is full of one man's trash and our restoration nation's treasure we're so excited we're going through it piece by piece but anything that wouldn't fit in the little house they brought over here and stored in this house but what that means is we have an almost untouched property with all of its original details intact and we're going to show you some of those really special details that make this home so worth saving one of the things that we probably got the most questions about when we showed the sneak peek video was why is there fabric hanging from the walls what's the deal with the fabric it's everywhere it's in every room it's so creepy or are the ceilings falling down are the walls melting what's happening well this is a very very common application in homes of this age victorian homes either have lav and plaster or they have cladding and wallpaper now this is not always true but frequently when a home was built very near a railroad track live and plaster was not utilized and that's because the builders knew that the railroad would cause a lot of vibration which would cause that lav and plaster to release and you'd lose your walls so instead they went with cladding burlap and wallpaper and that's what we see here if you look up you'll see the cladding underneath now a lot of people are going to look at this and they're going to immediately say oh you have shiplap everywhere fun for you well just because you see cladding doesn't automatically make it shiplap there are three basic types of cladding there's tongue and groove bead board there's simple tongue and groove then there's shiplap and even when we see shiplap which this does appear to be we haven't looked yet it's not automatically shiplab shiplap is a board that has a little bit of a lip that the secondary board laps over so it would stack in a key almost a locking position often these walls are just eight inch or 12 inch boards stacked on top of each other so just because you have board walls doesn't mean you have ship flop walls but you cannot hang wallpaper directly over these clad walls if you do as the house moves and settles and as that wood expands and contracts with humidity with heat and cold your wallpaper is going to rip and tear so what they would do is they would take cheesecloth dampen it stretch it super tight and nail it onto that cladding once it's nailed onto the cladding it will float over the wood and the wallpaper can be applied and your wallpaper won't split so what we have here is 120 year old cheesecloth that after years of being in a non-climate controlled environment is starting to fail so it looks like the walls are caving in but they're not i can't wait to show them to you once we get all this stripped down let's look at one of the things that sold me on this house the most these huge eight foot pocket doors every door in this house has faux bois finishes every door faux bois that's a french term f-a-u-x-b-o-i-s meaning fake wood so these are probably pine doors heart pine doors that were faux finished to appear to be a different species of wood and it's on every single door in this home now the thing i love about them is they're all very naively done you can tell they were not done by a master painter so it's not impossible that the lady of the house actually did this faux blah herself another thing that is so unique in here all the corner blocks in each room are significantly different from one another usually at home of this period your corner block treatments will all be the same in this house they are all unique for each and every room let's take a look at the picture mold the picture mold is really unique in here and i do have some questions about it it retains its original stained and gilt finish but it's a very art nouveau style which is a little bit early in 1897 so i wonder if this is the original picture rail or if when we got to the art nouveau period the owners decided that they needed some art nouveau sassiness in this house come take a look at my favorite corner blocks in this entire house sometimes one tiny detail can make me feel like i absolutely have to have a house and in this house it was the corner blocks that are in this room this room has corner blocks that are swallows i've never seen them before in another home of this era i don't know that i'll ever see them again so i had to have this house i don't know if you've noticed i wear the same pair of earrings every single day they're little swallows they're my favorite bird in the world so when we saw these beautiful corner blocks i had to have the house this room and the room next to it have the swallow corner blocks the living room has a beautiful scrolled corner block and then on the opposite side of the house we have a pyramid and a bullseye it's like the original owners of this house threw every detail that they could get out of the catalog into this property let's take a look at the other side of the house i love this original front door with its art glass panels which you can't see beautifully tonight but i guarantee we have some video of it that we can put in here so you can see the stunning beauty of the art glass that is original uncracked unbroken and the amazing east lake inspired spoon carved front door all this really needs is a good clean a couple coats of stain and some shellac and it's good to go again for another 127 years we love the slight elegant curve to this handrail and banister the corner blocks that you see at the top of the landing and the window that's perfectly positioned to give evening light going up the stairs let's take a look at the ladies parlor that will become the master bedroom this time retains all of its original windows and in the front two rooms we have box head walk out windows which are if you know anything about us and you saw any of our videos with our louise we love box head walkout windows and in this home they all still function they have their original glass they have their original rope and weight system and once we take the nails out we should be able to raise them with no more than the pressure of a finger this room has suffered a little bit of tragedy in that its mantle has been stripped away but won't i have fun shopping for the perfect mantle to go in this space in here you see those beautiful bullseye corner blocks with the pyramid inspired terminus all of the rooms also have their working transoms with the original transom hardware which should with a little bit of wd-40 and elbow grease make all these transoms work once again this is going to become the master bedroom and so the room behind it will become the master bathroom because on the opposite side of the house we have a living room a second living room a dining room and then a kitchen this room features one of two original vinyl floor claws now these were very very very popular from about the 1910s to the 1940s and from the pattern we see here i'm going to say this is probably early 1930s i absolutely love it yes it has some dings and dents there's a little bit of wear and tear but with some sandpaper mineral spirits and linseed oil i can make it look pretty close to new and the fact that it has a little damage to me just adds a little bit of extra character now in the dining room what will become the dining room we have this same pattern but underneath that pattern we have an even earlier pattern that i think is probably from around 1910 and it is my favorite pattern i've ever seen it's in one of my favorite colors bright kelly green and because it's been covered for so long it retains a lot of its beautiful original color now again it has some losses but i can in paint those and nobody will ever know they're there absolutely treasures worth working hard to save this room makes me almost giddy this is the original kitchen for the house and it has bead board walls and ceiling and they are in splendid condition i can do a little bit of scraping to remove any flaking lead paint we can put a good lead paint sealer on it and then go over the top with a bright crisp fresh color and this room is going to look brand new but in a good way brand new old i'm so excited and it even has this incredible pantry that's almost it's half of a hexagon shape pantry it's huge it's absolutely amazing i can't wait to get this old all these layers of linoleum off the floor this nasty refrigerator out of here and really take a fresh look at this amazing space here we are in the one original bathroom to the house here we retain an original cast iron with porcelain cover sink and its original 1890s brackets wall brackets this sink alone would retail for about 700 so we think this is an absolute treasure once we clean it up again a little bit of elbow grease a little bit of a shine this is going to be ready to use in the bathroom once again so really what could be better than a second story balcony that enters off the landing when you come upstairs maybe a second-story balcony that overlooks your gazebo roof on your porch and has another incredible spoon carve eastlake door with art glass panels that's the first amazing feature of this second story come on in we absolutely love this landing space it's another large beautiful living area again we see these incredible newel posts coming up the stairway off of the landing and a beautiful handrail and banister that needs nothing more than some linseed soap and a little elbow grease what i love about this upstairs it has bead board ceilings in every single room they're all painted a different fantastic color so we're just gonna put a lead paint sealer on these ceilings and leave each room its distinct color in this hallway we have a beautiful avocado green amazing color for an amazing space come on in here so here we have the first of three bedrooms in the upstairs space this one has beadboard ceilings that are robin's ed blue my favorite color in the entire world all of the bedrooms have closets which i find really fascinating for a home of this age we think with this room we're actually going to go out through this closet over the kitchen and put a bathroom in but let me show you my very favorite part of this whole bedroom look it's a balcony wanna come out with me looks like a pretty good place to watch the sunset if you ask me we love this space it overlooks the bungalow from 1937 and is a beautiful place to enjoy the breezes i mean how much fun would this be a balcony right off your bedroom that you have to crawl out the window to access perfection so here we are in the second bedroom that opens into the first bedroom with these beautiful solid wood double doors in an upstairs bedroom how fantastic is this retaining its original eastlake pull chain lock i love it and in this room we have bright candy coral colored ceilings so once i get all this mess taken down and conceal those ceilings they're going to be a focal point let's take a look at the last bedroom the third bedroom this one has a beautiful cotton candy colored ceiling and once again a mantel that's been stripped from the home but really knowing this home has been abandoned for this long and then that the last owner passed away seven years ago and it's set completely unoccupied and unsupervised for that number of years we're so fortunate that all we're missing are two mantels this room also has a huge closet that will turn into a bathroom so when we're done we hope to have a four bedroom three bath beautiful home that will host people who are coming here to learn about organic farming people who are coming here to work and us when we're here enjoying organic farm life so we've had several of you ask this is a restoration channel it's named restoration why don't we see you doing any restoration because a lot of restoration is really unglamorous a lot of it is not exciting at all and not something most people want to see but coming up we're going gonna let you follow along as we begin the beginning stages of the restoration of miss melanie here so come along as we get to work watch us sweat hey friends so here we are in the middle of a day of hard go go go restoration we've been cleaning and emptying out this beautiful victorian home and right now i'm about to give this beautiful woodwork some much-needed love and attention the wood is in excellent condition it's never been refinished it's never been painted but it is filthy so how do you clean woodwork you don't want to put water on woodwork right i have the perfect solution for you that i'm going to show you today so what do you do when you need to clean your woodwork you want to use linseed oil soap so let's talk about what you do to clean your wood with linseed oil soap how it works and what you can expect when the process is finished here are literally all the supplies you need to recondition and clean your historic woodwork first you need your linseed oil soap this is my preferred brand but there are several on the market when you read the directions for linseed oil soap you'll see that they're actually created to clean paint brushes when using oil paints but you'll see their secondary use is to clean and recondition woodwork a bucket a scrub brush and some rags so let's get started first step put your linseed oil soap in your bucket very easy look at that beautiful color looks like honey step two is super simple take your bucket take your brush dip your brush in and get to scrubbing [Music] [Music] so now we've given her a good scrub and we're going to let this linseed oil soak on here for about 15 minutes and the key is you don't wash it off you wipe it off so after we've given the linseed oil a chance to soak in and really recondition the wood i'll wipe it off and you can see what a miraculous change this can make in your antique wood [Music] [Music] there you go with a little bit of time quite a bit of elbow grease um your historic wood is going to be rich and reconditioned and ready for whatever application you want to apply to it i think we're going to be simply cleaning this possibly giving it a little more shellac and leaving it alone because we love the time worn look of this beautiful wood and it's gorgeous rich varied finish that comes from nothing more than 124 years of use but we want it to look its best while still looking time worn and beautiful don't forget linseed oil soap is a linseed oil product so you do not want to leave your rags in a heap on the floor because they could possibly combust make sure that you take your rags preferably use them that are washable that you can throw in the washing machine clean them out if not make sure you take them out put them in some water and safely dispose of them but there's a little lesson for you on an easy way to get your antique hardwoods looking rich and lush and lustrous again [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Our Restoration Nation

Views: 130,422

Rating: 4.9659977 out of 5

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Id: BkutjbD0uZk

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021