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A life restored

When she took on an 80-year-old house in disrepair, Gail Maguire felt broken herself. A two-year remodeling project has made both of them whole.

By JUDY STARK
Published October 29, 2005

	[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
	When Gail Maguire began her home’s makeover, she used the dining room as a storage area for furniture. She replaced the jalousie windows and ripped out the built-in cupboard at left.
	[Times photo: Jim Damaske]
	The former swinging door to the kitchen is now the dining room table. A pair of sliding glass doors open to the courtyard, where Maguire and her family like to eat in nice weather. Son Mike re-covered the chair seats.
	Maguire in her renovated home.
	[Times photo: Jim Damaske]
	Click for more photos

CLEARWATER - Some people say remodeling an older home just about killed them. For Gail Maguire, renewing an old house brought her back to life. "Every bit I did to the house was a way to help myself get better," she said.

She'd had a tough five years. She developed breast cancer. Her 28-year marriage ended in a bruising divorce. Her mother died.

Then in June 2003 she drove past the 1925 Mediterranean revival house that she and her five children had always referred to as the "white castle" when they walked or biked past it. That day there was a sign outside: For Sale by Owner. Ignoring the gallon of chocolate ice cream melting in the back seat of her car, she knocked on the door.

"I knew I would do whatever it took to make it mine," recalled Maguire, 56. She bought the one-story house, of just more than 1,000 square feet, for $235,000.

The original structure had not been compromised by bad remodelings over the years. (The previous owners, who had been there for 23 years, had maintained it but had not updated it.) The exterior stucco was original; the plaster walls and the oak floors were in perfect shape; and the original wooden kitchen cabinets were worth restoring.

That said, "The house needed everything." Her first step was to replace the aluminum jalousie windows with vinyl-clad tilt-in windows. "Windows were the best investment," she said. They updated the house's look, they were beautiful instead of unsightly, and they were energy-efficient.

But she had no remodeling experience. "I had never done anything like this on my own," Maguire wrote in her notes about the house. "Bids, workmen, construction materials, measurements, decisions! Do I remove the door? Knock out the wall? I made loads of mistakes, had to do and redo, fire and hire." She had to get someone from the utility company to come show her how to light the pilot on her gas heater, which is in the attic.

She admits shamefacedly that she made the cardinal remodeling error: "I paid my first workers in full before the job was completed. Never again!"

In the nearly two years it took her to renew the house, Maguire learned a lot: "Everything on an older house takes longer, is more complicated and is more costly than anticipated."

She went through three plumbers before she found one who could figure out how to replace a fixture on a pedestal sink that had been salvaged from the Belleview Biltmore. (Modern pipe threads don't match older threads.) She replaced small jalousies in the dining room with a double sliding door that turned out to be too short. Solution: Build up the molding underneath it.

She points with pride to the new skills she learned: "Problem-solving. Thinking through all the angles to finish something. Making a decision on my own. Working with workmen. Hiring people. Being assertive." Even so, "I didn't burn any bridges. If I called any of my workmen, they would come back today."

The kitchen and dining room were major focuses of the remodeling work. The old white tile counters were replaced with black granite, but the terra cotta tile floors stayed. She traded a big water heater for a smaller one and used the rest of that utility closet space to house a microwave and a pantry. A cabinet between the kitchen and dining room was removed to open up a big pass-through. The kitchen cabinets got new paint. The sink and appliances are new.

Maguire removed the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room and nearly gave it away, but after repeated attempts to find the perfect dining table failed, she realized one day that the door could easily become a table. Now it rests atop a console table she found at a consignment shop, surrounded by chairs that a friend gave Maguire, she gave to her daughter Aileen, and Aileen returned. Son Mike recently installed new seat covers.

She learned to haunt the consignment shops and yard sales ("Why would anyone buy new?"), to use what she had, to repaint and repurpose. She thought the back door was beyond repair until she priced a new one ($800). Instead, her painter painstakingly restored and repainted it.

Maguire, a resource teacher in reading and math at St. Paul's School in Clearwater, estimates she spent $45,000 on the remodeling. She didn't take out a loan. She had the proceeds from the sale of her former home and otherwise worked on a pay-as-you-go basis. "I could only do so much at a time: Do this now, do that next month."

Her five children watched the remodeling with concern. The house was a symbol, she said, and as the work progressed, "they could see that life was going to be okay for Mom." Son Taulman, 25, lives in her garage apartment. Joseph, 21, is at Auburn University, and Mike, 20, at the University of Florida. Daughter Mary, 27, lives in New York; Aileen, 31, lives in Belleair.

Now, sitting in her quiet, airy, sun-filled space ("from every angle, the light is right"), listening to the birds and watching Beau, her 5-year-old Weimaraner, Maguire is content, pleased with her accomplishments. There are "no do-overs," she said, nothing she's not happy with.

"This house was a sign that everything was going to be okay. God took care of me when I was dead from my divorce," she said.

"For this broken person with a broken life, this little house was a rare gift: a symbol of hope, health and wholeness. I somehow knew that if I could create a new home for myself, I would be able to create a new life for myself as well."

Here, in a house she calls "Cara Domus" - "dear house" - she has. Here, she says, "every little detail in a house comes together to make it a home."

Lessons learned at home

- Remodeling involves a lot of timing and coordinating, especially if you are acting as contractor, as Gail Maguire did. Everything will go slower than you think.

- Things are more complicated and require more steps than you expect.

- Things work that you don't think are going to. The round-top trunk Maguire used as a child to store her dress-up costumes was languishing in the attic. Now it stands beside her fireplace; she plans to use it for her grandchildren's dress-ups.

- Shop consignment stores and garage sales; be patient. You may have to go back again and again for a year before you find just the piece you need.

- Learn what's important and what makes a difference. Maguire bought glass knobs for drawer pulls, then realized they didn't match the remaining original crystal knobs. She took them back and spent the additional money to get the right look.

- Don't live in the house while you're remodeling, Maguire urges, probably because that's what she did. "I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, with my clothes in plastic bags."

[Last modified October 28, 2005, 11:07:05]