Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
This closed-in porch, originally an open balcony, remains a charming perch.It took only three days for Maria and Jim Bruce to sell their longtime family home in the settled Southwest hills of Portland.
That was a few years ago, mind you.
Nonetheless, toying with the idea of downsizing a bit and moving closer to the action of the city went from romantic notion to reality faster than the Chilean-born and -raised Maria tells a story.
To test the waters of this change, the Bruces rented half of an old house on Northwest Overton Street that had been remodeled into a duplex.
“We loved it,” Maria says, her eyes still sparkling over the success of the leap of faith they took almost five years ago.
Jim created a master suite by turning one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom. She loves it even more now that they’ve bought and renovated a classic house in the area, this one just within the border of Northwest Portland’s Alphabet Historic District.
“We didn’t want to live in a huge house nor in a tiny house, because I have four sons and have all this stuff that my kids do not want, of course,” Maria says, waving her hands around her immaculate home filled with Oriental rugs, original paintings and exquisite furnishings gathered over the years.
And since only one son still lives at home — when not studying at Arizona State University — Jim, owner of JB Construction Services, was able to reconfigure the old home’s five bedrooms into space that fits their lifestyle.
One of the five bedrooms was converted into a laundry room with plenty of natural light, storage and room to house toys for the Bruces’ granddaughter; another bedroom was made into a bathroom, creating a master suite.
When Maria came across the four-story house (including basement and attic), it had sat empty for five years, she says.
Empty, however, is a bit of a joke.
The home wasn’t occupied, but it was chock-full of belongings from the two sisters who had lived there for more than 60 years.
The sisters’ uncle built the home in 1901 and lived there for about 40 years before giving it to his nieces, who were identical twins. When the married sister and her husband moved into the house, they brought the other sister with them. The husband died, but the sisters remained in the house.
There were never any children. “That is why the wood is in such good shape,” Maria says.
Gleaming doors, window casings, picture rails and moldings frame and accentuate nearly every room. An immense pocket door divides the living and dining rooms, and a gorgeously turned railing lines the stairway.
Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
The Bruces’ furnishings harmonize beautifully with the stately dining room, positioned in the front of the house looking out at Northwest Lovejoy Street. The kitchen is through the opening on the right.When Maria found the house, a relative of the sisters had spent three years slowly cleaning it out. He told Maria he was not ready to put it on the market, but he was willing to let Jim walk through.
Jim, who has been in construction and remodeling for decades, knows a gem from coal on sight.
“Age,” he says, “is not a problem. But if the casings and woodwork are beat up or painted, then you get into taking them apart, cataloging the pieces and warehousing them while you work.”
That, Jim says, can add as much as 50 percent to the cost of the remodel. And, he says, it never looks the same when put back together.
In this case, it was obvious that the woodwork needed to be stripped, but nothing needed to be torn down.
Jim and Maria also agreed that they loved the old character of the house. They wanted to embrace it, not erase it.
Strips of molding are both decorative and functional: They have kept the corners of the upstairs plaster walls protected from years of bumps and nicks. Preserving while updating
The lath-and-plaster ceilings, however, were in need of more help.
Jim says they decided to hack into the ceilings throughout the entire house, creating trenches there and in the tops of the walls down to the picture rails. This eased installation of new wiring and plumbing. They ended up with new drywall ceilings and walls down to the picture rails, with the lath-and-plaster left intact below. The original lath-and-plaster walls were simply repainted.
The Bruces had the floors (some of which are inlaid with mahogany) redone, and pretty soon the sisters’ house began to look like the gracious lady it was meant to be.
For now, Maria has turned a sunny corner of the kitchen into the dining nook. She has plans to add an island to the kitchen, which was redone in the 1950s. The Bruces reworked some of the cabinetry and put in a new Marmoleum floor. “We wanted to keep the house with the feeling of an old house,” Maria says, sitting in the dining room drenched in daylight from the enormous street-side windows. “I didn’t want to paint the wood. … Jim liked it this way too. Keep it old,” she says, adding that if she had wanted something new, they would have explored the Pearl.
Off one of the bedrooms upstairs is a little closed-in porch. A 1915 picture of the house shows that the porch was originally an open balcony. It remains a delightful perch with windows that open wide.
“Isn’t it sweet?” Maria says, standing two stories above Lovejoy watching the neighborhood go by. “I love that.”
In Maria’s words, their work “turned out pretty good.” They succeeded in salvaging an old gem, embracing its age and character.
“You don’t see very many houses that are this original,” Maria says.
“This house feels old — a good old. I like old things.”
