She’s an interior designer. He’s an engineer. Add to the mix one of the few “painted ladies” of Washington’s downtown historic district, and the result is the Terrell Award for the Best Residential Rehab of the year.

Keith and Gayle Hudson purchased their Queen Anne Victorian home on West Main Street in the fall of 2018. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of restoration for a property in dire need of some attention.

“They really had to do a significant structural repair and replacement, and without the diligence of really appreciating what they had purchased and wanting to make it good again, the house would have been lost in five to 10 years — maybe not even that long,” said Scott Campbell, a local realtor and historic preservation supporter. “So we get to enjoy, as visitors, all the really beautiful aesthetic things that occurred, but you don’t get to see the significantly important things that occurred that allowed there to be an aesthetic.”

Campbell and City of Washington Historic Preservation Planner Emily Rebert announced the Hudsons’ Terrell Award last week. The awards are named for Rena K. Terrell, one of Washington’s founding historic preservationists. Rebert and Campbell revived the Terrell Awards in 2015 as a way to recognize property owners who make the extra effort to preserve Washington’s history in four categories: Best Residential Rehab, Best Commercial Rehab, the Good Neighbor Award and the Stewardship Award.

The Best Residential Rehab for this circa-1889 Victorian known as the Swindell House started with a random introduction on oldhouse.com. The Hudsons lived in Palm Springs at the time; before that, they resided in the Los Angeles area. When Keith Hudson, an avid boater, and Gayle Hudson, with eight restoration projects behind her, saw the historic home, they started looking at relocation to North Carolina.

“It couldn’t be too hot, and it couldn’t be too cold, and I had to have water,” Keith Hudson said. “We were always by the ocean, and then when we moved to the desert, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s no water!’ … We started looking in North Carolina, probably the most temperate (place) we could find outside of California. We narrowed it down to Edenton, Washington and New Bern, and we just fell in love with Washington — who doesn’t?”

And they fell in love with a certain West Main Street home.

“I saw it and knew that it was my house,” Gayle Hudson said. “I love these old homes. I just have a passion for them. I seriously cry when I see a house that is about to crumble.”

The Swindell home was literally on the verge of crumbling: the Hudsons’ first project was raising the house and building a foundation for it — it had none previously. There were leaks where wood siding had been replaced with hardy plank; balusters missing on the front porch; plumbing problems and termites. The couple went about correcting those issues one meticulous step at a time.

“These are people that didn’t have to go before the Historic Preservation Commission for anything. They did everything correctly,” Rebert said.

Inside, they reworked what was a narrow back porch into the master bath and walk-in closet; then redesigned the kitchen. They found out the home had narrowly missed burning down on several occasions: the wall behind the wood-burning fireplace in the master bedroom was riddled with burn marks of fires started and extinguished on their own, with past homeowners none the wiser. The fireplace is now for show only.

“When a house like this gets saved that helps Washington,” Campbell said.

It’s a project in process, but well worth the investment, according to the Hudsons.

“The next phase will be to rehab the bathroom upstairs. We’d love to find a clawfoot tub,” Gayle Hudson said.

In the meantime, they’ve come across at least one interesting find in the carriage house behind the home: a copy of Motorboating magazine, publication date 1914.

“We’ve been looking for treasure in the walls, but this is all we’ve found so far,” Keith Hudson laughed.