Two years ago, in the pouring rain, the historic 1925 Godard House escaped demolition after Claire Saxton and Andrew Stivers purchased it from Oregon State University for $21 and paid to have it moved onto their lot in downtown Corvallis.
The house, built in the Prairie style, was sinking into a badly damaged basement, and was scheduled to be burned down as a firefighting training exercise. Its site would become a parking lot on A Street, near the OSU Pride Center.
But Stivers fell in love with the house’s Prairie windows, which are separated into rectangles of glass framed with thin strips of wood. The couple decided to move the house onto the back of their double lot, less than a mile from its original location.
The house was completely restored, from sanding and varnishing the original fir flooring, to installing new electrical, plumbing and forced-air heating. From its sunny yellow exterior with bright red trim, to the gleaming white kitchen cabinets custom made by Ikea, the home looks little like the world-weary house that was plopped onto a new foundation on Southwest Sixth Street in February 2007.
Stivers replaced broken window glass and restored function to casement windows, enabling cooling east-west crosswinds to pass through the house. Although the brick chimney ended up being too badly damaged in the move to save, its old bricks were used to form a walkway around the house. A new fireplace in the front living room is ready for the installation of an insert.
The home originally was intended as either a rental unit or a mother-in-law cottage to complement the property’s main home, but Saxton said that as the restoration progressed, the cottage revealed its own charm.
“It’s been really nice watching the sunsets here,” she said, indicating the multi-paned, west-facing windows.
One of the biggest changes they made to the house was gutting and restoring the kitchen. Originally, an enclosed breakfast nook and a doorway into the basement left no room for a refrigerator, let alone any other appliances.
Stivers took down the wall forming the nook and opened up the space. He moved the kitchen entrance to the left, and created a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room with a cutout that mirrored the squared-off shape of the living room archway.
Using an online design site offered by Ikea, Stivers created a new kitchen. It had ample room for a dishwasher, stove and refrigerator and included corner cabinets with easy access and frosted glass-front cabinets.
Because the house no longer has a basement, the entrance to the former basement was replaced with a storage closet that includes washer and dryer hookups and a tankless water heater, which is energy efficient and has a virtually endless supply of hot water.
Saxton said that whenever possible, the couple used green materials on their project. That includes hiring My Green House to restore the wood floors and installing a 95 percent efficient heating system.
They used marmoleum, made from natural products, on the bathroom floor rather than vinyl. Even the fireplace screen is recycled; it was purchased from the Habitat for Humanity resale store in town.
Although the $100,000-plus restoration project was extensive, the couple went into it with a lot of experience working on older homes. Their property’s original home is a 1907 house that’s on the National Historic Registry, and it’s painted the same bright yellow and red as the second house. It was the first home in Corvallis to be built with molded concrete block, called “Miracle Hollow Block,” which can be seen elsewhere on home foundations and on businesses, including Michael’s Landing.
The home’s rooms are large and airy, and it includes a dual entry feature, with doors on two sides facing east toward Fifth Street. It’s an example of transitional architecture in the Queen Anne Victorian style of the 1880s and ’90s, with a main entrance into the parlor for formal guests, and a second entrance for everyday visitors and family. The home’s main front door includes two locks — one for the maid and one for the homeowner.
Old lighting fixtures still hang in some of the rooms, and Saxton said it was clear from climbing into the attic that originally there had been gas fixtures. She and Stivers stripped the window moldings of their lead paint and stained some of them. Others were painted white to make the space light and airy.
The kitchen already was remodeled when they moved in, and was made into one big space. Originally there were three small rooms, one for a large stove, one for dish washing and storage, and another for seating. The utility room, which was originally detached, was connected to the rest of the house at some point, but the house’s original exterior cement wall is still featured in the kitchen.
Shortly after completing their work on the two homes, Stivers and Saxton had to leave them behind. Stivers was hired last fall to work in Washington, D.C., so they had to uproot the family, including son Luke, 3, and move back east. They hoped to find a family interested in the historic aspects of both houses to live in one and rent out the second, which is part of the requirement of their deed.
As Saxton looked around back in September, she admitted that if she and Stivers were staying, she’s not sure which home they would have chosen to settle in. And although they planned rent when they first move to D.C., they’d still consider rescuing another old house.
“But not as big as this,” Saxton said.
