The kitchen, at the back end of the main floor, has been cleaned up and painted, but still retains its functional, old-fashioned appearance. The main entrance, with its spiral staircase serving all three floors, has been opened up and painted a regal red. Amazingly, the original Tiffany-style light fixtures remained intact. A ceramic tile floor has been installed, the original plaster ceiling medallions painted and the walls papered. The other half of the main floor, with its enormous white fireplace, had not been chopped up, but it did need redecorating.
Those rooms are soon to be ripped up and turned into one, large, open living room with the original 14-foot ceiling uncovered. The entire ground floor of the house had been set up as one apartment, with half of it divided into three small bedrooms, their ceilings lowered substantially.
She's enthusiastic, competent and boasts about having her own power tools, admittedly relying on a handyman for help with some of the heavier jobs. She's also added mouldings to all the ceilings. Tina is doing most of the decorating herself, including all the wallpapering and painting. While much of the exterior work on the house has now been completed, the interior remains a work in progress. No one is sure if its resemblance to the White House in Washington was intentional. The parents felt the original style of the house was beneath their daughter's social standing and so the gargantuan pillars and portico were added. According to Stratford-Perth archivist Carolynn Bart-Riedstra, "oral tradition" has it that a former owner's wife came from a distinguished and wealthy Toronto family. Local folklore has it that the grand, two-storey porch was a later addition to the Regency style home. They sealed those areas with white vinyl strips that look like wood but, again, don't require painting. They paved the circular driveway out front and are now in the process of reseeding the lawn.įortunately, the original slate roof was nicely intact, although the wood on the underside of the massive portico was rotting, both on the ground floor and on the upper story. They put a new roof on the coach house, brought in a large white statue of an Italian goddess for the front lawn, and surrounded the entire property with a white, wrought-iron look-alike fence that's actually made of vinyl and doesn't need painting. The Dills did some initial landscaping of the property, and are planning to do more. It was an inspiring start to a lengthy process. In two days, the house was completely whitewashed. The crew cleaned off the loose paint with pressure washers, then got to work with brushes and rollers.
They thought we were tearing it down," Tina recalls. Last Thanksgiving weekend, two boom trucks and four men pulled into the driveway. Fortunately, the place was structurally sound, although some of the plumbing and wiring naturally had to be updated.Ĭontracting out the work themselves, one of the first things the Dills did was hire painters to spruce up the exterior. Tina even found a raccoon family and squirrel skeletons in different parts of the house. The place was a mess: Pieces of eavestrough were dangling from the roof, paint was peeling everywhere, and a section of the adjoining coach house roof had caved in. The old mansion had been divided into apartments since the 1930s, and while some cosmetic updates had been done to the interior, there had been no maintenance on the exterior of the house for more than 30 years. "Even in its disarray, I could see the potential," Bill now admits. When the White House came on the market last year, they bought it, outbidding a developer who, according to the Dills, planned to tear it down and build five or six new homes on the ¾ acre property. "I'd drive by with Bill, and say, 'I'd just love that house,' and he'd say, 'what would you want that piece of junk for?' "īill, who owns an automobile auction centre on the outskirts of Stratford, must have sensed the possibilities, however. "I've loved this house for six years," explains Tina, who used to work in an accountant's office and now works on the renovation full-time.