While the exterior of the Beardsley-Cartwright House was brought back to its original appearance over a two-year period, the interior underwent various stages of transition and change over many years. Some people rush in to change a property they’ve just acquired, only to regret doing it later. Preservation/restoration experts recommend incremental change in dealing with historic houses–that is, to live in the house for a while and discover by living in it what you want and need in that space.
The Kitchen
The kitchen is the room most often changed by homeowners, and the kitchen of 2648 was no exception. However, rather than gutting it and starting from scratch, the owners felt their way through the changes. It started one evening several months after they moved in. They were sitting at the kitchen table with two friends, discussing what to do with the rusting Homart sink, the worn linoleum, the lowered ceiling with its peeling paint, the old cabinets. It didn’t take long to decide what to attack first: the lowered ceiling. They got a sledgehammer, clawfoot hammers, and a stepladder and went at the sagging sheet rock ceiling, bringing most of it down within an hour.
The next step was to repair the plaster on the ceiling and walls, and seal it with primer. After that, some months later, they decided to work on the cabinets. The Homart was removed and new cabinets built against the exterior wall.
The biggest job was stripping, repairing, and refinishing the original heart pine cabinets and wainscotting; they had been covered with buttermilk paint, which turns into a chewing-gum like goo when hit with stripper. The final task was to paint the walls and install new linoleum. They had hoped to keep the original wood floor, but it was too damaged by wear and water to save.
In the late 1990s, the kitchen underwent another transformation, the installation of fruit wood cabinets that matched the original pine cabinets better than the off-white 1970’s ones. The kitchen also was spruced up with a tile floor and new paint.
The Third Floor
Generally, this area of the house was in worse shape than the rest of the house. No one had lived up there for years. Old wallpaper hung in shreds. Birds had been nesting in south room, leaving a mess on the floor. The windows were in bad shape, and only the closet windows had storms.
The wallpaper was removed, the windows repaired and broken panes replaced, and storm windows were made to fit the four large windows. The rooms were painted and bookcases made to fill the east side of each.
