You can see things growing in the gutters. But that balcony must have been so cool!

Now that we are getting known as people who are interested in fixing up historically significant properties, we are occasionally called in to support other renovators’ projects. That’s what happened last Friday, when a colleague asked our team to come take a look at a former mansion in Cameron that her family purchased not too long ago.

We’re really interested in looking at local properties, to get ideas for the Gillis house, so of course Lee agreed to take a look. We brought along Melanie Reed, from the Chamber of Commerce in her role as a member of the redevelopment committee in Cameron (and she’d also been in the house during its glory years).

The house looks really cool from a distance, like a haunted house (which it actually served as for a few years). It definitely had fallen on hard times with its previous reclusive occupant, who was repeatedly pestered by vandals. Thus, most windows in the house are gone, and there have been people more recently going through searching for copper wiring and generally making a mess.

The current owners have done a lot of work on the property, getting rid of vegetation that was hiding the house, and making the grounds safe. The reason we were brought in to consult was to give the current owners feedback on what can be done with the house itself. They were wondering if the house could be saved or not, and wanted an idea of how much it would cost to renovate.

Oops. That doesn’t look good.

Taking a Look

So, we checked out the exterior, which obviously was once quite grand. There’s a lovely porte cochere at the side of the house, where I could just picture fancy people getting out of their carriages or cars. Both the back and front show signs of once having beautiful tiled patios and gardens, lined with some kind of faux petrified wood.

The wooden window frames that remained were in really bad shape, and those plants growing out of the building were not a good sign. And in the back, a portion of brick wall had recently fallen down.

Under a lot of junk is this great tile with a border.

The inside of the house was similar, though some features remained in good shape, like pretty pink tile in a bathroom and very interesting paneling that resembled wallpaper with scenes of France on it. There was good wood under old carpeting, and really cool doors with rounded tops throughout (at least the ones that hadn’t been stolen). But, a lot of the period details were gone, which was too bad. You could still tell what a wonderful house it used to be, though, and it was easy to understand why the current owners are interested in renovating.

Our Thoughts

Here’s a bit of the paneling that looks like wallpaper.

Lee pointed out that the house is pier and beam construction, which makes certain parts of any renovation easier. He did feel like the house would need to be pretty much rebuilt, though, while salvaging whatever original material was still available.

He guessed that for 500K you could end up with a 600K house (or I may be getting that backwards). Is there a market for that in Cameron? There may be.

The house had many doors like this. What an interesting touch. The entry used to also have a wooden door like this, but it is gone now.

Melanie reminded us that there are grants you can get for restoring properties like this, which would cover a lot of the repair costs. She mentioned two different types from the government. If the current owners got grants and other funding from agencies that support historical restoration, like the ones I talked about in my first post on renovating historical properties, they might not have to make such a big investment of money.

In the end, though, we all wondered if the house is just too far gone to bring back to life or not. It would be a real shame to lose the house, so we’re rooting for it.

This limestone fireplace mantel is still in good shape.