Second Time Around

By Mary Ellen Polson

	Jim and Merry Boone have no intention of leaving  the Queen Anne they and sons Wilson and Gage call home after nearly  a quarter century.

If you live in an old house long enough, the first restoration is history, and a second restoration becomes inevitable. We hadn't painted the outside since 1977, says Merry Boone, so it was long overdue. Merry and husband Jim moved into their magnificent Queen Anne in the Mc-Knight Historic District of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1976. 

This restoration will be different from the one chronicled in Old-House Journal in 1982. In the mid-1970s, the Boones were childless 30-year-olds who didn't mind cooking on a hot plate, or schlepping over to a neighbor's house to take a shower. Jim thought nothing of scrambling over the steep slate roof with handmade storm windows under his free arm, and Merry changed her babies' diapers on the Hoosier's porcelain countertop. 

Like most of us these days, the Boones have slightly more disposible income than time for restoration work. The couple and their two teenage sons are just as likely to be on vacation as on-site when the paperhangers or woodworking contractor arrives. We push the furniture into the center of the room, or move it out, says Merry, a first-grade school teacher. And then leave town.

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The living room, papered with Bradbury  & Bradbury wallpapers, is furnished with family heirlooms.

While some sections were redone in the 1970s along with skirting and decorative work, most of the gutters remained in place. They were dirty, rotting, and growing things, Jim says, but we got 25 years out of them.

In addition to the structural work, the job will entail removing all of the clapboard and fishscale shingle banding and duplicating the pieces exactly. When the work is finished, Jim says, the house will look like it would have originally.

That's an important distinction, because the original exterior restoration was far from ideal. The restoration movement was barely in existence in the 1970s, and there weren't many people around who knew the skills, Jim says. Now there are so many more people who are doing quality restoration work.

Although the Boone's home is furnished with Victorian antiques and family heirlooms, there have been a few concessions--mostly for the boys, whose bedroom walls sport posters of Dr. Evil and Korn between the converted gaslight sconces. Otherwise, the Boones live in their home much as the Victorians would have, reserving the downstairs parlors for more formal entertainments, and adapting the upstairs sitting room as a family room.

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Like any Victorian house worthy of the name,  the Boone's Queen Anne has a formal dining room replete with papered  ceiling.

The Boones still use the 1927 Monitor Top refrigerator and 1926 Clark Jewel every day. Although the oven has no thermostat to regulate the temperature, I have known for years what 350 degrees looks like just by looking at the flame, Merry says.

While the early owners of the house would have had servants, the Boones do their own cooking--in marked contrast to Victorian times. When Mary Evelyn Bosworth Smith, a member of the family who had owned the house for 50 years, came for a visit, the Boones were surprised to learn that she'd never set foot in the kitchen. She always stayed in the parlor whenever she came to the house as a child, Jim says. For all we know her grandmother never went into the kitchen either. 

Even today, some folks have a hard time grasping the idea that an authentic kitchen can also be a working kitchen. On a house tour about a decade ago, one woman was fascinated by the slate sink, lack of kitchen cabinets, and antique appliances. Then she perked right up and asked me, where's your other kitchen? Merry says. She was really blown away when she found out we didn't have one. To her, this was an intriguing house museum kitchen. It was hard for her to fathom that we used it every day.

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The kitchen is so authentic that a visitor once  asked Merry where she really did the cooking. The family uses  the 70-year-old stove and refrigerator every day.

Once their own restoration was complete in the mid-1980s, the Boones began to buy houses nearby and restore them. The first was on a prominent corner, and it drew enough interest to encourage others to buy and restore houses in the neighborhood. Now turnouts at neighborhood parties sometimes reach 200 people. These gatherings--often held at the Boones' capacious house--tend to be inclusive, friendly affairs. If there's a new face in the crowd, Jim says, everyone knows that it's a neighbor they've yet to meet.

At one recent party, the Boones, who are in their mid-50s, found themselves chatting with newcomers who were in their mid-30s. They were talking about how lucky they were to have found this place, Merry says. Everybody feels connected.