Old House workshop to reveal preservation techniques

Janet Hobbs Conway knew what she wanted when she and her husband, Kevin Conway, searched for their Spokane home in 2008.

They wanted a Craftsman-style bungalow much in its original condition.

It had to have its original front door and a built-in china cabinet at a minimum.

It had to be in a good neighborhood within walking distance of cafes, shops or stores.

It had to be as far as possible from suburbia and its big houses and long commutes.

“It’s a lifestyle. It’s a philosophy. It’s quality versus quantity,” Hobbs Conway said of her 1,179-square-foot home.

“We wanted to live in a way that was minimal, beautiful and easier,” she said.

“We just fell in love with that whole idea.”

On Feb. 23, Hobbs Conway will appear at the 2016 Old House Workshop at Hutton Elementary School to talk about how she and her husband brought their classic 1916 bungalow back to its original elegance.

The workshop on three consecutive Tuesdays starts this week and focuses on modest-sized dwellings under the title of “Small Houses, Big Changes!”

Hobbs Conway said she grew up in a San Diego suburb and didn’t like the sameness of the neighborhood. Her husband had admired the bungalows near his college campus, so he was happy to live bungalow-style.

The couple had owned a Craftsman bungalow in San Diego and gained experience restoring it.

In Spokane, they searched for six months for the right house, even posting notes on doors asking owners if they were interested in selling.

After closing the deal, they spent the next six months in a wide-ranging restoration with a combination of their own labor and the help of experts in the trades.

They repaired a crack in the mortared stone block foundation by disassembling the blocks and restacking them.

They removed an attached carport; repaired the adjacent front porch; and dug into the basement.

The applied new exterior paint appropriate to the era.

Some of the most intense work involved stripping up to five coats of paint from the natural fir woodwork, including the requisite built-in china cabinet.

The fireplace and its original Grueby tiles were restored. Ingelnook seating was redone. Natural wood paneling was located to replace the paneling that had been removed below the plate rail.

Hobbs Conway said one of her most difficult jobs was hand-stripping paint from the baseboard molding. It had a coat of milk paint that required special stripper.

Some of the other pieces of woodwork, including the picture rail along the tops of the walls, were carefully removed and taken to a shop for chemical stripping.

The couple searched across the West in antique and vintage hardware shops for items to replace original hardware.

A swinging door from the period, which separates the dining room from the kitchen, was located at a shop in Seattle, then refinished and rehung.

The couple won a listing for the home on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Preservation consultant Linda Yeomans wrote the nomination for the listing and is involved in organizing the workshop.

Known as the Parent House, the residence is named after a the original owners, Louis and Alma Parent.

Hobbs Conway has advice for do-it-yourselfers.

“Find a good finish carpenter,” she said.

Wood staining is best left to a professional as well, she said.

Also, restoration is best done before moving in. Otherwise the process could drag on for years.

Make a plan for how to proceed. The Conways left old unauthentic carpet over the hardwood floors to protect them during the work, refinishing the floors as a later step.

Now, Hobbs Conway said, she and her husband enjoy sitting on the front porch on warm evenings, enjoying bites and drinks and visiting with neighbors who might wander by.

The cost of purchasing the home and doing a lot of their own restoration proved affordable, Hobbs Conway said.

As a result, “We can live well,” she said.