Victorian House Tour Part 1...

You have heard me mention my brother, Tom and his wife, Nina.  


Well, every Christmas they decorate and open their house to the community for a tour.  They begin decorating each September or October and for the next 6-8 weeks their lives are consumed with decorating,  lighting and baking so they are ready to welcome friends and neighbors to their home to kick off the Christmas season.


This year, I volunteered to make the invitations and the signs for the open house.  I LOVE doing that kind of stuff!  I also volunteered to help at the open house so I could meet and greet the neighbors too!  What lovely people!

So, today let's begin with the outside of the house--just to tantalize you a bit...


I made the sign.  Well, I mean I designed and printed it on legal sized paper and then taped it all together to create a 2'x3' sign.


Tom cut a board to size and made the stand for it...he's good that way...

This is the Nebel-Stine House.  You read that we had Thanksgiving at my niece and her husband's house--you can see it in this picture to the left--the little white Victorian cottage with green shutters.  


Back to Nebel-Stine house...It is a bow front Queen Anne built by Emil Nebel who owned several businesses in the small town of High Hill, including a lumber yard, beekeeping supplies (at one time said to be the largest supplier west of the Mississippi river), builder and vineyard.  


In 1890 to accommodate the needs of a growing family he built a new home on a corner lot to showcase his building skills and was the most impressive house in town.  


After the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904, he purchased several lots of salvage material and built several new buildings in town including  an Italianate addition to his own home which contains the kitchen.   


There is also a rare ginko tree in the front yard which is thought to have come from the World's Fair.  (Note from Nina--The Ginko tree is from the same time frame as the World's Fair but again no evidence of it coming from the Fair as salvage.  It is rare for this area of Missouri as the house was very rural at the time--and still is--and the trees are not indigenous to the area) It is huge and they are slow growers, so it appears to be more than 100 years old.

The house stayed in the Nebel family until 1994 when Tom and Nina bought it at auction 

and set to work lovingly restoring her to her former beauty and elegance beginning by removing the interior floors to access the wooden foundation beams which had catastrophic termite damage, jacking up the house and replacing the rotted wood with steel I-beams to level and support the house.  (NOTE to correct the above--They jacked up the house and repaired the sills and replaced the floor joists but not with steel beams)  Did I mention that they did that THEMSELVES????

To the side of the house, they dug a stream that leads to the fish pond that they dug out and then gathered HUGE rocks locally to integrate it into the landscape and make it look like it has always been there.  This was sometime around the late 1990's because it was there when we celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary and Tom and Nina's 25th in 2000.  


The fish in the pond are my great great great grandfish.  When we sold our house in Iowa back in 1995 I brought my fish from my pond to their small original pond (which is still in another area of the garden) where they have flourished and added color.


Tom and Nina designed and built this gazebo in keeping with the Victorian design of the house.  You can see the front of the lumber yard barn to the left of the gazebo in this picture--just over the arched bridge that spans the little creek.

This is Tom's 1954 Dodge Pickup.  Isn't she a beaut!  

You can see that she is loaded with a tree destined for home...And YES the truck DOES run--very well!

Let's head down the sidewalk and take a closer peek at the front porch of the house...

As Nina said to me--this house just lends itself to Christmas lights and decorating...


See the brick walk?  Tom and Nina put that in.  It is paved with bricks from one of the old pre-Civil War buildings that had to be razed in the town.  (NOTE from Nina--The bricks came from the old bank building but there is no evidence of it being pre-civil war)


You have to choose left or right around the street light that they added to the landscape years ago.

It has 5 lights and GARGOYLES!!!!  What is a Victorian House without gargoyles--right?  Even they are ready for the season with a big red bow and ribbon...

Candy canes with lights light the way up the brick path to the front porch...


There is a door on either side of the porch.  I asked my brother how people knew which one to enter when they visited in the "olden days"...I mean which one is family and which is for visitors???


After a short pause, he decided that the right door was for visitors since it enters by the parlor door (the parlor is located in the bow front) and the dining room door.  The left door enters into what used to be the kitchen.  Makes sense.


So, with that figured out, let's go to the family side--okay?  

This is the left side from the side street (which you saw in the original picture above) where people generally park now.  You head through the arch along the brick path set in a herringbone pattern to the door...

Come closer...


Isn't this great with the live greenery and bows and garden decor????

This is the screen door.  The door on the other side looks identical, but opens the other direction of course...


Do you see the thing on the wall to the right???  With the swag of greenery and bow????

This is what you are seeing...


It is an iron plaque that my parents bought on a trip to Silver Dollar City one year to celebrate the house purchase by Tom and Nina and the fact that only two families have owned this house since it was built...

This is what the door looks like on the inside...


This is actually the one on the right side of the house but they both look alike.  Aren't they beautiful????  Nina spent HOURS stripping those doors and using dental tools to get the paint out of the carving.  Let me tell you, the old lead paint really STICKS!!!!  The inside of the door doesn't have a lot of carving on it, but the outside is heavily carved and really ornate.  I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the wooden doors though!  Duh!

Here, take a closer look at the window in the door.  The etched design is the original glass and both doors actually survived intact since they were put in when it was built in 1890!!!!!  Great aren't they????

As you enter into the hallway just behind the "family" door, you see the "lady's desk" (seen here from the other end of the hallway) which is sporting Nina's collection of bride's baskets with pictures of the family brides...well, not ALL the family brides because she didn't get pictures of some of the nieces...

Bride's baskets were a gift to the bride on her wedding day in the Victorian times.  


The bride to the right of the tree is their daughter Heather.  She lives next door.  I mentioned that we had Thanksgiving dinner at her home this year.  The bride in the front on the left is our niece Julie.  She and her husband, Daniel, and their children live in Mexico--the country...


The little girl to the left of the tree is my mother's sister when she was little.  The picture on the front right is Nina's grandma...


Tomorrow we will take a gander at the first level of the house...


Until then, if you would like to see more of the restoration, you can go to Tom and Nina's website to read about all of the restoration...


See you then...