Six years ago, Tom Melaniphy bought a house in a hurry.
“A Realtor phoned to say she had an investment opportunity; I said, `Fine, let’s look at it tomorrow.’ Then I called her back and said, `How about this afternoon?’ A few minutes later I called again and told her I’d meet her there in 10 minutes,” he said recently.
What he bought was “The Conway,” a Sears, Roebuck and Co. ready-cut bungalow, one of thousands of houses sold by the retailer from 1909 to 1939. Ordered by mail, they arrived by rail, hundreds of thousands of house parts, ready to be hauled out of boxcars to suitable sites and assembled, according to markings, accompanying plans and instructions.
To put it mildly, the Hinsdale house needed help to bring it into the ’90s, and to this end, Tom enlisted the aid of his friend Roselyn, now Mrs. Melaniphy.
“She’s very good at interior decorating. She knows what’s current; she has clever ideas and she knows how to carry them out,” he said.
No strangers to real estate investments, the Melaniphys own apartment buildings and laundromats. The little frame bungalow was bought as a “fixup”; once work was completed, they intended to put it on the market and realize a profit.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace. As work progressed, Tom and Roselyn realized they wanted to continue living in the house. Tearing out windows installed by a previous owner brought the front porch “back to its beginning.” The kitchen has new cabinets, appliances, and sliding glass doors that open to a small, rear yard deck. Some rooms have been replastered, the bathroom has been updated and Roselyn’s decorating savvy has created a bright, appealing interior.
But although the house is charming inside and out, it still has a few drawbacks.
“We love living here,” Roselyn wrote us, “but the house has only one bathroom and the closets are almost nonexistent. We want to expand the upstairs with dormers to include a second bathroom and closet space.”
For solutions to their wish list, we called upon architect George R. Matocha, founder and president of Matocha Associates in Clarendon Hills. Aware of the owners’ wish that any additions be sympathetic to the original building, he took notes and sketched floor plans as they showed him through the house.
The floor plan is straightforward: The front door opens to the living room; to the left, on the north side of the house, is the dining room, furnished with a round, glass-topped table and white wicker chairs; behind that is the eat-in kitchen. Tom’s small office is to the right of the living room on the south side of the house. A doorway on the right side of the living room’s rear wall is open to a small hall, which affords access to a guest room on the south side, behind Tom’s office; to the bathroom, straight ahead; and to the second floor stairway, which curves right at the top to the doorless master bedroom.
“This space had been separated into two rooms that were dinky and dark,” Roselyn said. “We tore out the partitions and installed that skylight at the top of the stairs, which I hated to do, because it’s out of character with the house, but we needed more light. We still do,” she added, pointing to the small windows at either end of the room, which runs the width of the house, north to south, and has typical bungalow slanted ceilings.
“We desperately need a bathrooom up here,” said Tom. “I’d like a whirlpool bath, all the amenities.”
“You can do that,” Matocha said. “You can put a master bath to the right of the stairway, overlooking the back yard. And you might want to tear out the east wall of the bedroom and extend it, putting in French doors that open to a small cantilevered deck.”
The architect and the owners discussed the idea of raising the front roof. “It’s a strong possibility,” Matocha told them. “It would be raised only slightly so as not to alter the exterior appearance, but it would certainly give you some much needed headroom.”
“What you need to do is make a business decision,” Matocha said. “Look at the current market value of your house and its appealing features, then ask yourselves, `What are the detriments?’ Lack of closet space can be dealt with easily, but you do need a bedroom/bathroom suite for today’s market, and a bigger kitchen would be desirable.
“(In this community) if you spend $40,000 for improvements it should add $80,000 to the value within a year’s time,” Matocha said.
“At the end of the day, my Mother always said of her house, `I’m glad to be here,’ ” Roselyn said. “That’s how we feel about this place.”
For the Melaniphys, buying a house in a hurry has worked out well.
