by John Griffin
ust like the
last Hot Property, this house is solidly built but short on the decorative
touches that allow you to easily imagine your furniture in place of the
current residents'. Sometimes it's harder to overcome this small liability
than when a house is completely trashed. At least when it's a total wreck
you expect to employ a lot of imagination and overlook the evident defects.
But when a house is close to right, sometimes it's hard to visualize the
little changes that will make a big difference.
At
some point this house was turned into a triplex, but it's been converted
back to a single family without too many traces left. There are, however,
still two front doors, but it's rather evident that the original is the
single door on the right in line with the front steps and under the beckoning
gabled side of the porch. This door leads into the hall where the staircase
is placed. The pair of doors with transom on the left -- which, being grander,
I initially mistook for the original -- admits you to the living room. Their
operation makes this space almost impossible to arrange as a usable room.
They would best be locked and forgotten or changed to a pair of windows.
Once this mental readjustment is accomplished, you'll see this plan makes
a lot of sense.
The living room connects through a deep, stuccoed arch to the banquet-sized dining room. There's a high, box bay window that appears to be a window seat but is high enough to permit a long buffet to stand here. The current kitchen is an addition probably added when the house was triplexed. It's long and narrow but functions well, and comfortably holds a breakfast table, too. Besides windows on two sides, it also has a skylight ensuring plenty of natural light. There's a sun room beyond, and these two spaces flow out onto a multilevel deck in a nicely landscaped and fenced backyard. There's even a two-car garage out back, with alley access and arbored walk leading to the house. Rear entries are ofttimes neglected, but this one is as nicely landscaped as the front.
The original kitchen now functions as a den. The rear door here was replaced with a single, fixed pane of glass, but since it, too, connects to the deck, I'd consider having that glass out and a door back in its place.
Upstairs is less altered and more typically four-square in layout. A bedroom in each corner allows all of them light and air from two sides. I frankly think this should be a minimum FHA standard. There are richly colored yellow-pine floors upstairs, whereas downstairs has the narrow oak more highly prized in the 1920s when this house was built. The original bath upstairs has small, white hexagonal ceramic tile also typical of the period and an overscale soaking tub that looks like a perfect fit.
The two other bathrooms are downstairs and were probably added when it was triplexed. This seems odd until you consider swapping the den down for one of the upstairs bedrooms. This would do a lot to balance the seeming inequity. None of these changes involve much, and a creative rethinking of this interior seems to offer a lot of options for easy improvements.
The outside, though nicely landscaped, suffers from the same sort of overlooking of alternatives. Narrow shutters have been applied to the wide, upper front windows in a half-hearted attempt to add interest. Whereas if the three exterior materials (ground-floor wood siding, upper stucco, and the trim) were called out in three paint colors, the architectural features of the whole house would be emphasized. There are lots of easy options here for improvements, which just require a little free thinking.
1763 Galloway Ave.
Approximately 2,400 square feet
4 bdrm, 3 baths; $144,000
Realtor: Lignon Hughes, 272-0008
Agent: Linda Kaiser, 272-2126