Our Victorian Home

In 2000, Craig and Yvonne Schaible, like many young couples, began looking for their first starter home. A year later they found it along a tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood in Fanwood, N.J. (pop. 7,174).

"It was the house I had dreamed of as a young girl," recalls Yvonne, 35, of the 1891 three-story, 15-room Victorian home that they happened upon during a house-hunting venture.

"The whole house was literally collapsing and should have been condemned," adds Craig, 39, a computer engineer in nearby Bridgewater. Despite the $70,000 to $80,000 spent on repairs by the previous owner, the home "had been neglected beyond words," he says.

Once inside, the couple looked around at what a half-century of neglect had done to the once-beautiful home, and they made their decision. "He looked at me, I looked at him, and we knew this was for us," Yvonne recalls.

In that moment, the Schaibles joined the growing ranks of Americans who fall in love with an architectural treasure and assume the daunting task of restoring it to its former greatness. The couple bought the rundown home, moved into an upstairs bedroom and didn’t invite anyone into their dilapidated parlor for almost six months.

Authentic restoration

In early 2002, Craig and Yvonne started a complete overhaul of the 114-year-old house that had been unoccupied for much of the prior 30 years. The porch was collapsing, ceilings were sagging, and wood was rotting. Fireplaces were blocked and unusable, and 100 years of paint and wall coverings needed to be peeled away. Armed with nothing more than what he had learned during a high school wood shop course, Craig began putting together a step-by-step plan to restore the home to its original grandeur.

"You have to have the ability to break the big problems down into little problems, and then attack the little problems," Craig says. "It’s simply good project management."

The first project Craig tackled was the parlor, the first room any visitor would see and by far in the worst condition of any room in the home. Craig and a crew of friends ripped out the interior walls to reveal how the house was built, and then Craig spent countless hours rebuilding the walls and haunting the aisles of Home Depot, looking for lumber, paint and hardware that would help him to maintain the historic integrity of the home while providing it with 21st-century amenities.

"I would look for things that did this, and after a while, I would look at a problem and see a solution," Craig says.

The parlor took nearly a year to complete, and the couple lived in the home the entire time amid the clouds of plaster dust and tons of construction debris. Fortunately, a prior owner had refurbished the kitchen years earlier, so Yvonne, a hairdresser, was able to prepare meals while restoration proceeded. "I’d come home at 9 o’clock at night and cook dinner," she says.

Yet, despite filtering air through portable systems and sealing work areas off with plastic sheeting, the dust "was so bad that we had to wash our toothbrushes before using them," Craig says.

The porch was next, and that ongoing project should be finished next fall. To make it safe and usable, Craig had to right the house itself, straightening visibly curved posts and beams, and restructure the most visible part of the house, which was added on in the 1920s.

Up to the challenge

The single most challenging job Craig faced was the living room ceiling, which sloped 4 inches from one side to the other.

First, Craig and his buddies removed sheetrock that a prior owner had used to cover the cracked and sagging ceiling. Then, he rebuilt and recovered it with 2-foot-square tin ceiling tiles, for which he designed a pattern with a 1890s motif. "Putting something square in a room that is not square and making it look right is a challenge beyond words," says Craig of installing the 40 tin ceiling tiles.

Craig obsessed with the project, centering not only the tiles, but also the ceiling lights to make the room look balanced. "He even slept with the plans under his pillow," Yvonne recalls.

While Craig worked on the living room, his pregnant wife restored old furniture that they found in the attic for the baby’s room. "I am the wood stripper, refinisher, cook, cheerleader and mom," says Yvonne, who gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Kyler, last December.

Throughout the restoration, Craig has chronicled every detail on a website—www.ourvictorianhouse.com—which he created to help others contemplating such a task.

"I make no bones about the fact that I’m not a professional," he says, explaining that he reveals his mistakes as well as his triumphs on the website. Craig estimates that the couple has spent about $50,000 restoring the home so far—15 times what the original owners paid for the house in 1891.

What remains to be done lurks only in Craig’s head, but it involves refurbishing the entire upstairs and at least seven more years of work on evenings, weekends and vacations. "After what I’ve been through," Craig says, reflecting on the trials and tribulations of restoring the parlor and living room, "it will be a breeze."

The Allure of Victorian Houses

The Victorian era, named for Queen Victoria who ruled Great Britain from 1837 and 1901, heralded the greatest influence and change in morals, mores, dress, manners and architecture in England . . . and beyond.

In the United States, the latter part of that age coincided with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. After the Civil War, industrial growth and prosperity that had begun earlier in the 19th century went into overdrive as people moved west and the country grew both geographically and economically.

As businessmen and entrepreneurs built their dream homes from New Jersey to San Francisco, the Victorian home came to symbolize their success and station in life.

The appeal of Victorian homes lay in their ornate—often elaborate—styles and attention to detail. The more elaborate the better, and no two were alike. "It was a sin to have two houses looking the same," Craig says. "They took styles and mixed and matched."

In recent years, thousands of these architectural gems have been restored, and others are undergoing restoration across the country.

Steven Ortado, who restores historic and Victorian-style homes in Washington, D.C., admits that it takes a certain kind of personality to take on the painstaking work, but he says the reward is worth it.

"These homes that have been around for more than a hundred years will, when properly restored, last for another two hundred; they were that well built," he says.

Visit www.ourvictorianhouse.com for more information.

Warren Jorgensen is a freelance writer in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Related Stories

If you enjoyed reading this story, Our Victorian Home, then you might enjoy these other stories.

• A View With A Room
• The One-Room Schoolhouse
• Home on the Ranch
• Home for Good
• Restoring Stoves - and a Town

Share This Story With Others:


 

Discuss this Article

  related categories

• DIY
• New Jersey
• Washington, D.C.

  related articles

• A View With A Room
• The One-Room Schoolhouse
• Home on the Ranch
• Home for Good
• Restoring Stoves - and a Town

  additional links

• Current Happenings
• State Trivia & Tidbits
• Where to read American Profile
• Buy Our Cookbooks