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Homes

'Blue house' regains 1930s glory

In just one year, this Tudor goes from bland

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published April 1, 2005

to grand. This weekend it will be open for viewing.

SEMINOLE HEIGHTS - Everyone in the neighborhood called it the "blue house." The color resembled a bad '70s wedding tuxedo.

Eric Krause and Chad Daughtrey hated the hue, but fell in love with the house: a handsome-but-neglected 1939 Tudor right on Central Avenue in one of Tampa's largest historic neighborhoods.

Indeed, the colors were icky, the rooms sterile.

Krause remained undaunted. Right away, in his head, he started tearing down walls and arranging furniture.

"My goal was to make it feel as warm as possible the minute you walked in," Krause explains. "The kind of place where you could sit around, kick back and take your shoes off without worrying about smashing the pillows."

Krause, 31, who works for Gage-Martin Interior Design, and Daughtrey, 36, a computer programmer, were both adept at fixing old Florida homes. They had each owned much smaller fixer-uppers in Seminole Heights. And both knew what would be involved in taking on a more sizable restoration, particularly for a serious preservationist like Krause, who always opts for original rather than reproduction:

"All the way down to the doorknobs," Daughtrey says.

One year after buying the 2,400-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bath house, the couple will open their doors Sunday for the annual Old Seminole Heights House Tour.

The neighborhood's sprawling boundaries, which measure roughly north to the Hillsborough River, south to Hillsborough Avenue, west to the river and east to 22nd Street, take in some of the most unusual old homes in the city. The area offers such a wide swath of architectural styles that tour organizers rarely feature a repeat house unless it has been significantly remodeled.

This year's tour, heavy on historic Tudor and bungalow styles, features 12 houses, two of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Expect to join about 1,200 people at the event, which takes place 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and costs $7.

Several new homes, built to look as if they sprouted at the turn of the century, also made the 2005 tour. That goes to show, tour chairman Christie Hess says, "that you can still build in an old style with all the modern amenities and not have cookie-cutter construction."

Krause and Daughtrey paid $210,000 for the house in March 2004 and estimate they've already put $70,000 more into it.

"That may not be a realistic goal for everybody," Krause says. "We've actually saved a lot of money because we're both very handy."

In a year, they managed to coax the exterior and interior into pristine, house-tour shape. They say they are still hard at work on the restoration but feel the house is ready to greet the usual throng of curious visitors.

"They did a great job in a very short period of time," Hess says. "I joked with them a year ago about whether they'd have their house ready in time for the tour - never dreaming they'd actually do it."

Inside, Krause has decorated with an eclectic blend of antiques, original abstract artwork, Oriental rugs, traditional furnishings and a few, choice-but- meaningful possessions.

"It's a clean design look but dates back to the period and authenticity of the house," he explains. "I also use a lot of antiques. It's definitely not contemporary."

For example, he converted an old brass carving platter once used in the dining room of a 1950s cruise ship (he found it in a salvage yard near the Port of Tampa) into a cocktail table by setting it on a wooden scissor stand base.

He restored a $25 Goodwill mahogany sideboard and topped it with an old French Onyx clock that weighs 80 pounds and that he purchased when he was broke.

"I didn't eat for a week," he recalls, laughing. "That's how much I wanted it."

The "Irish wake" dining room table is a new piece made from recycled barn wood held together with square-peg dowels.

The two joke it was one of the few pieces in the house they could agree on, though Daughtrey bought Krause as a birthday gift a quirky antique corner cabinet he once admired at the Missing Piece.

An old English secretary chest was a gift from one of his design clients who was moving out of town.

Around the fireplace, the couple chose to install a warm-toned granite that matched the original copper Mercury tile. All the doorknobs and related fixtures are duplicates of the 1930s originals in the house (all antiques and all rustled up by Krause, who loves to raid eBay for original architectural fittings).

Though the house was blue on the outside, the entire interior was painted the same shade of yellow.

Krause warmed the spaces with a sophisticated, masculine paint palette: a shade of brown latte by Ralph Lauren in the living room; a crimson red by Benjamin Moore in the dining room.

He also made liberal use of table lamps, including candlestick varieties and, by the front door, an old Chinese vase he converted into a lamp.

"Lamps cast a really warm light into any space," he says. "I like incandescent light combined with natural light. It warms up wood tones and warms up the way you feel. It makes you feel good."

The only truly new room in the house, Krause says, is the kitchen. He chose to gut and redo the room - notice the French Provincial cabinets - because he loves to cook and wanted a fresh space for food preparation and entertaining.

Upstairs, Daughtrey converted a second kitchen into a sleek bar and added a small, smoked glass-front beverage refrigerator he snagged for $100 at Home Depot. The cabinets are made of Jamestown cherry wood, the granite counter, a color he calls "absolute black."

They made good use of the two extra bedrooms by converting one to an office and the second to an attractive guest room where they've gutted and refurbished the closet using beadboard, their standard treatment for all closets in the house.

They've enjoyed the restoration so much that they recently bought the 1926 Craftsman-style cottage next door. Between them, they now own three houses in Seminole Heights.

A warm taupe turned it from the color of a wedding tuxedo to a tasteful kind of place that invites a visitor to hang out on the front porch a while.

"Even the chimney was blue," Krause recalls. "It took the workers four days to sandblast blue off the brick."

The seventh annual Old Seminole Heights Home Tour takes place 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $7 per person, sold the day of the event. Admission includes a tour-guide booklet with a map, detailed home descriptions and history. Transportation by HARTline.

Buy tickets and start the tour at the Seminole Heights Garden Center, 5800 Central Ave.

[Last modified March 31, 2005, 08:54:10]