Rejuvenating a Montrose bungalow
Couple brings 109-year-old family home into 21st century with thoughtful update
Lawrence and Marie Simon stood side by side at the corner of their humble white bungalow in 1909, posing for a photographer who’d seal their images in a black-and-white photo for later generations to see. Lawrence wore an austere, dark suit and Marie had her hair pinned up high, her skirt hanging to just above the ground.
They were on what then was Baker Street in Montrose, a dirt road just off of Lincoln Street.
Now it’s West Drew, and it’s accessed by a bigger, newer Montrose Boulevard, and the couple re-creating the scene for a new photographer is Hilary and JoAnn Bellew. Hilary, the Simons’ grandson, grew up not far away on Jackson Street. Hilary, 74 and retired from a career in the medical device industry, remembers using an upstairs bedroom to study with his friends when they were students at the University of St. Thomas.
While the Bellews have lived in other parts of the Houston area, Hilary’s roots are here on West Drew in this home that his family has owned since it was built 109 years ago. Marie Simon lived in it until she died in 1971; after that, Hilary’s mother, Emma Bellew, lived in it until her own death in 2005 at the age of 95.
The Bellews recently lived on the corner, keeping this little bungalow as their guest house until they decided it was time to give this slice of family history some contractor TLC and turn it back into their primary residence.
Back in 1909, the home had just four rooms — a living room and dining room, kitchen and a single bedroom — in 1,000 square feet. They had electricity but no indoor plumbing. A lean-to on the side of the house was their ice house, with a French drain — essentially a rock-covered hole — where water from the ice drained into the ground. In the backyard was a small barn where the Simons kept their horse and buggy — Henry Ford had just introduced his Model T’s, so few people owned automobiles then.
In 1920, after the Simons had children, they added a narrow staircase to the back of the living room, leading to two bedrooms and a tiny half bathroom upstairs. And indoor plumbing was added, too, in an 8-foot room at the back of the house.
Hilary jokes that the upstairs bathroom was so small that you had to open its window to lean forward to wash your face, and when you bent over, your backside went out to the hallway.
But that was life in Houston in the early years of the 20th century.
Hilary and JoAnn Bellew wanted to save his family’s historic home but live in it on their own modern terms. They started work in the summer of 2016, and on Aug. 1, 2017, they spent the first night in their renovated and expanded home.
While Hilary started some of the work himself — removing layers of wallpaper and cheesecloth revealed the home’s original shiplap — he knew he needed a professional. Not only was a full-home restoration a big job, but the home also needed to be completely rewired and re-plumbed.
Rob Hellyer of Premier Remodeling was called in, and after getting through the design phase and a tricky permitting phase — because the home was built 109 years ago and had never been sold, it lacked a certain kind of deed they needed for the permits — they got to work.
The original front door was on the side of the home and entered directly into the living room. They moved that door to the front of the home and, in the process, created a foyer. The kitchen got a complete makeover, and space once devoted to a bedroom allowed for a laundry room and new downstairs powder room.
At the back of the home is a new 27-foot-by-27-foot space that includes a master bedroom and bathroom and a morning room that has a wet bar, built in storage cabinets and room for a small, round walnut table that once belonged to Hilary’s great-grandfather, Joseph H. Schnell, who was a physician in Comfort and who lived in the home after he retired.
The home’s old-growth pine floors were covered in layers of paint, and the goal was to refinish them to their original luster, then add matching reclaimed pine to the new part of the home.
Hellyer said his fingers were crossed on that one, since they really had no idea what was under all of that paint and the floors had never been refinished. In fact, the flooring is glorious, with the wood’s strong grain showing through on the floors and in other mill- work throughout the home.
“Hilary’s a somewhat rare bird in that he was so committed to salvaging and reusing windows, millwork and other features of the home,” Hellyer said.
An old bathtub that was original to the home but sat in the backyard for at least 15 years was restored and reenameled for the master bathroom.
Upstairs, the two guest rooms finally got a nice, new bathroom that runs along the roof line on the east side of the home. And the second-floor space was extended on top of the new addition, adding square footage to the back bedroom and creating finished storage space, too.
It’s nostalgia that brought Hilary and his wife, JoAnn, 75, back to this home. It’s full of good memories and family history.
One day, he opened a trunk that was stored upstairs to find nearly crumbling Houston Chronicle clippings with blaring headlines about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There were old family photos, too, one showing Lawrence Simon at work at the Texas New Orleans Railroad and another showing Schnell and his beloved horse, Blaze, along the Guadalupe River with a group of cowboys.
There were boxes of his great-grandfather’s old medical equipment, leading Hilary to speculate that he might have treated patients while he lived here.
Life was hard when this home was built, and the Bellews are grateful it’s easier today.
Hilary recalls that his grandmother used an old-fashioned iron on everything in the home and every piece of clothing that anyone wore. Sheets, pillowcases, every inch of fabric was ironed.
“I remember in the 1950s when the canned biscuits — the kind that pop out of the can — came out. Oh, my grandmother loved those. Before that, she got up and made biscuits every day. Then the instant coffee, oh, she loved it, too,” Hilary said.
When the home was built, closets were small, mostly because people didn’t have extensive wardrobes like we have today. Hilary’s grandmother sewed everything her children wore and many things her grandchildren wore — and she made it by hand, not with a sewing machine.
“My grandmother could make anything. When I was in grade school, she made my shirts,” he said. “And the flour sacks, they were made into things. When you came home with your new school books, she sewed flour sack cloths into book covers to keep the books nice. They didn’t have much money, and they were very thrifty.”
It’s not just the structure that’s part of the Simon-Bellew family history. It’s also filled with things that three generations have used on a daily basis.
In the foyer, there’s an old chair with legs, arms and back rimmed with animal horns. Pure Texana, you’ll spot it on the porch in a sepia-toned photo of Dr. Schnell’s home in Comfort, likely taken in the late 1800s. There are other pieces of furniture that his grandparents owned, and family photos that span five generations, from Schnell to the Simons to Hilary and JoAnn and their two children, daughter Renee and son Ryan, as well as Ryan’s two young sons, Joseph and Henry.
The dining room table was purchased when the Bellews first married and at least a couple of chandeliers have followed the couple from home to home.
Hilary Bellew said that he and his wife expect to live here until they die, just as his parents and grandparents did. “If anybody doesn’t understand how much I put into doing this and getting it done, the amount of time, effort and drawings to get it right,” he said, smiling and shaking his head at the same time. “It was a house that hadn’t really been touched in almost 100 years.”