VICTORIAN BATH

Enamored of the housing stock, Julie and I moved to Lynchburg from Aspen, where we had restored two old houses. I’m a carpenter’s son, and I’d run a successful woodworking business in Colorado. We began restoring this Victorian Queen Anne in 2001. It had been divided into two apartments and was horribly maintained. I like to say the house was tormented by people who didn’t know what they were doing—in fact, it could have been condemned had it not been in the Garland Hill Historic District.

The original plans were lost in a Lynchburg Library fire years ago. But we did know the house was designed by the local architect E.G. Frye in 1894 for a prosperous drugstore owner named C.H.S. Snead. Frye designed many of the buildings that remain in Lynchburg, including the Academy of Music and some steepled churches in town.

The gingerbread façade retains lots of detail, including span- We found space to add a new master bathroom, using the end of an excessively long upper hallway. There are no subfloors, so we took up finish flooring to run plumbing and also install plywood beneath the joists, tiling on cement board so that the new floor, flush with the old wood flooring, appears original. Subway and hexagon tiles, beaded wainscot, even an antique clawfoot tub that we had resurfaced are all of the period. See the next page for the big reveal.