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FeedBungalow Soul
By sandra hoyt
Our Spanish revival bungalow was built in 1926 on land that was once an orchard, in a neighborhood with a pretty stone bridge spanning Minnehaha Creek. It was designed by J. W. Lindstrom, an architect who had hotels and parkway palaces in his portfolio, who wrote books about bungalows, and who died before I was born.But none of that mattered that day in 1998 when my husband and I stood at the curb for the first time, staring at the house’s off-center front door, its butter-colored stucco façade, and its sloping red tile roof. We were smitten.
Then we went inside.
Like so many period properties, the bungalow had been “updated” over the years; remodeled by a series of weekend do-it-yourselfers who had stripped the place of its soul. There were sprayed textured ceilings, shiny brass light fixtures, mauve pleated shades, and fake rattan ceiling fans. There was flesh-colored linoleum, baby blue plush carpeting, and, in the kitchen, the please! de resistance: a hot pink vinyl booth. This Mediterranean masterpiece had been Menarded. Home Depoted. Handymanhandled.
The debate began in earnest. Could we stand the interior as is? Could we afford to restore it over time? For an entire weekend, we rattled off pros and cons. Then our real estate agent simply said, “In more than 20 years in the business, I’ve never seen another house like it.”
Our life of un-doing—and re-doing—began just a few months later.
For eight weeks after the closing, my husband, son, and I slept at our first old house, a 1935 story-and-a-half just 10 blocks away. But we spent every spare minute at the bungalow, tearing out carpeting, ruffled curtains, and louvered folding doors; installing commercial-grade checkerboard linoleum in the kitchen; and cleaning up after the parade of contractors we had hired for immediate needs.
And finally, with time and money running out, the movers arrived. We had done as much as we could up front, and we were eager to actually live in the new house.
Once we settled in, we turned our attention to the details. We became regulars at the area’s architectural salvage shops, digging through boxes and poking through rooms filled with plumbing parts, house numbers, church pews, and stacks of old doors.
We found an art deco medicine cabinet with a black glass knob for the main floor bathroom. We replaced every 1980s light fixture with a 1920s fitter and globe, either graduated or striped. We bought glass towel bars, razor-bladed off the paint, and polished the nickel hardware. We installed pedestal sinks, cross-handle faucets, and authentic bent-wire closet hooks. We took door and cabinet hinges and hardware in for re-plating. And on eBay, we bought eight grooved nickel drawer pulls with black Bakelite insets, still in their original onionskin wrapping and yellowed box, dated 1928. The linen closet got an extreme makeover when those arrived.
As the finishing work continued, my husband began digging for background on our bungalow. He uncovered photos of the house, taken both inside and out in 1929, and documents, showing original building costs. The foundation was $500. The plumbing, $590. The electrical, $335. Overall value: $7,000.
Then came the ultimate find for pottery collectors like us: photographic confirmation that the geometric dogwood tiles set into the fireplace were the work of renowned Arts and Crafts tile maker Ernest Batchelder, who taught in Minneapolis for a short time during the early 1900s. With this discovery, we were beyond smitten. We were in love.
It’s been eight years since our bungalow restoration began. We’ve put copper and mica light fixtures on the outside of the house, rebuilt limestone retaining walls, and added a copper-topped screen porch that most visitors think was constructed 80 years ago. We’ve planted yews, peonies, coneflowers, and black-eyed Susans. But most of our work has been on the interior.
The goal, after all, is soul.
I’m happy to say we’re feeling that on the inside of the house now, from attic to laundry room, from bedrooms to baths. That’s soul I feel with every turn of a solid glass doorknob. That’s soul I feel when I skate across the polished oak floors in my stocking feet.
Freelance writer and editor Sandra Hoyt shares her Minneapolis bungalow with her husband, teenage son, and two golden dogs.
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