West Second Street home a tribute to the past

In 1897, the lot on West Second Street sold for $375. In 1904, a home had been added to the property. In 1912, the lot and home combined sold for a whopping $2,050. One hundred and eleven years later, it’s the much-loved home of Karen and Wayne Melton.

It sits on a perfectly manicured lawn. Yellow pansies crowd the front flowerbeds; out back, the lawn stretches deep into the block. It’s not huge — at a modest 1,900 square feet, Karen Melton said it’s still more house than she wanted. It has its quirks: according to Wayne Melton, many of the upgrades they’ve made have involved custom-built woodwork — plantation shutters and crown moulding — because there’s no longer a single right angle in the house.

But none of that really matters when it comes to old houses. As old house lovers know, that’s just the way it is.

“We love our old house,” Karen Melton laughed. “You have to love them — or you end up hating them.”

There’s a lot to love, and much of it is in the original details. Wide heart of pine floors gleam throughout the house. A single chimney that originally provided heat to four separate rooms is still a focal point in two of those rooms: in the study, the painted brick and dentilled mantel anchor the room; in the living room behind it, the fireplace is still operating, but now modernized to gas.

A wide central hall boasts a cozy window seat and a sweeping set of stairs with a half bath carved out beneath them. On the other side of the hall, doorways open onto the study and living room.

The house clearly has history: Wayne Melton said a previous resident, one who grew up in the house in the 1930s, told him that wide hallway was once a playroom for the children. What is now the kitchen was a bedroom with bunkbeds — the original kitchen, like many homes of that era, was located in a completely separate structure behind the house. The Meltons learned that at one point, their house actually was home to two separate families, one on each floor.

They’ve made many improvements over the years: J.W. Woolard redid the floors to a gleam; Chris Mason created some woodwork magic, according to Karen Melton, especially in the master bedroom, where layered crown moulding punctuates the joint of wall and ceiling. Where crown moulding was impossible to install, mural painter Tabitha Ferrell stepped in to create the illusion. Because of the way the HVAC was installed in the attic, woodwork wasn’t possible at the juncture of the stairway wall and the second floor ceiling. Ferrell created a trompe l’oeil moulding masterpiece that is indiscernible from the real thing.

Ferrell’s creative touch is woven throughout the house: a kitchen door painted to reflect the outdoor view of Karen Melton’s “barn,” a garage that looks suspiciously like a tiny replica of the main house; a wall at the top of the long flight of stairs portrays a cat on a windowsill looking out over neighborhood houses; the guest bedroom has a tasseled swag that drapes the tops of all four walls, with handpainted sprays of flowers.

To Karen Melton, restoring an older home as all about knowing the experts.

“The key is finding someone that knows what they’re doing — then they can enrich your old house,” Karen Melton said. “It makes the biggest difference in the world.”

What also makes a difference is how the home is shown off to its fullest potential. There, Karen Melton relied on Greg Purser, who owned the downtown antique store Purser’s Chest when the Meltons were decorating their home. That antique connection turned into a lasting friendship and spawned Karen Melton’s love of antiques.

“When I moved into this house, it hit me. I was thinking, ‘What would have been in the house during that period?’ I want that,” Karen Melton said. “Nothing else looks right.”

That dedication to detail makes walking into the Meltons’ home an adventure: it’s both timeless and like stepping back in time. From the arrangement of a silver brush set on an upstairs vanity to the Tuscan-style kitchen cabinets evoking an old-world feel, it’s apparent that much care is given to this home on a daily basis — it’s a sentiment with which Karen Melton would agree.

“It’s just a little house, but we love it.”