Couple bring Victorian dream back to life

The grand old house on Belmont had been the home of sev­er­al fam­i­lies going back to the late 19^th cen­tu­ry. In recent years, how­ev­er, it had fall­en into dis­re­pair. The last own­er was elder­ly, and when she left, the house stayed emp­ty for a while.

But when Nicholas Seiber first saw the house, he didn’t see a ruin, he saw a good invest­ment, or maybe a for­ev­er home. He phoned his wife Sarah, who was work­ing in Texas at the time.

“He called me and said, ‘We have got to buy this house,’ and I said, ‘Well, buy it,’” she recalled.

The cou­ple, who were look­ing for an old­er place they could restore and remod­el, bought the 4,800-square-foot, three-sto­ry house at 122 Belmont Ave., in 2019.

Once they start­ed work­ing on it, they real­ized it was a big­ger project than they had anticipated.

“I did not intend for it to be this,” Nick said. But now that they owned it, they had no choice but to do it right.

Nick closed down his con­struc­tion com­pa­ny and com­mit­ted him­self to the house’s makeover. And Sarah cast a vision for what she want­ed her “dream house” to be.

“We just went all in on this,” Nick said.

In his words, they “took this place back to studs.” They rewired it, inspect­ed every­thing, re-insu­lat­ed it, and used a 3D print­ing com­pa­ny to recre­ate old mold­ing so that it looked like the original.

They moved win­dows and relo­cat­ed doors, extend­ed the kitchen from 16 to 28 feet in length, installed a load-bear­ing steel I‑beam, added mod­ern con­ve­niences includ­ing cen­tral air con­di­tion­ing and wash­ers and dry­ers in the old scullery. They equipped a new din­ing room with an ear­ly-1900s mar­ble man­tel for the fire­place (which had been hid­den behind a wall), a large chan­de­lier, and two built-in chi­na cab­i­nets, and installed a Murphy bed in the state­ly library so it could dou­ble as a bedroom.

They con­vert­ed the third-floor attic space into a study and bed­room, refin­ished an old claw-foot tub and moved it to the attic bath­room, added a green­house to the back­yard, and restored the arched front porch that had impressed Nick most when he first saw the house.

When they and their con­trac­tors began work­ing on the house, it need­ed plen­ty of atten­tion. There were birds in the ceil­ing and rac­coons under the porch. A boxed gut­ter failed, flood­ing the library with rain­wa­ter where they had been sleep­ing on a mat­tress on the floor.

“I’ve done con­struc­tion my whole life, and this place should have been con­demned,” Nick said. “It should have been pushed over.”

But they’re glad it wasn’t.

“The worst thing in a his­toric neigh­bor­hood is when there’s a vacant lot,” Sarah said. “It brings every­thing down. … I just think degra­da­tion is contagious.”

Transformation

Over time, the Victorian-era house under­went a transformation.

Nick, who had remod­eled bath­rooms and kitchens before he became the gen­er­al con­trac­tor for their own home, learned a great deal as he went along.

“He knew a lot before he did this project, but he has recap­tured some lost crafts­man­ship,” Sarah said.

For exam­ple, they couldn’t find any­one who knew how to build a boxed gut­ter, so he fig­ured it out.

“There’s noth­ing that he can’t do or can’t learn,” Sarah said. “I kept push­ing the bound­aries and the pos­si­bil­i­ties because I knew he could deliv­er it.”

They didn’t always agree on things, she said, but she added, “We’re a good team.”

For exam­ple, the house had been white on the out­side, and she want­ed it to be green and red, recre­at­ing the ear­ly lay­ers of paint. He wasn’t sure. But he’s col­or blind, so she got the col­ors she wanted.

The sid­ing on the house is a wood com­pos­ite called LP SmartSide, which looks like cedar but is more durable and termite-resistant.

Those liv­ing near­by watched the trans­for­ma­tion occur.

“Our neigh­bors have been won­der­ful and very under­stand­ing, and they’re also hap­py that the home has been brought back to life,” Nick said.

“We tried to do as much as we could on the inside first, and then we start­ed on the out­side,” Sarah noted.

The library is one of the most strik­ing exam­ples of inte­ri­or design. It is a study of time­less beau­ty with a mas­cu­line, yet ele­gant atmos­phere. Its dark espres­so walls and high cof­fered ceil­ing com­ple­ment the large fire­place with vin­tage book­cas­es behind glass doors on either side, hard­wood floors, a red rug and match­ing cur­tains, and four heavy, black leather club chairs fac­ing each oth­er across a stur­dy cof­fee table.

Yet there are also slen­der can­de­labras, thin white sheers that allow plen­ty of light, lamps and vas­es, a del­i­cate set of chi­na for tea, and a large-screen tele­vi­sion above the man­tel that streams images of clas­sic art.

Sarah said she likes the “polar­i­ty” of the room.

She also loves the kitchen. The big, bright kitchen has a mod­ern vibe that con­trasts with the library’s retro atmos­phere. The cab­i­nets, built by Winchester crafts­man Josh Lowry, are paint­ed Dressage Red by Ralph Lauren, and the book­case for cook­books is the same color.

The coun­ters, tile and walls are white or light gray, and there are three small chan­de­liers above the island where a sink and dish­wash­er are.

In mid-June the Seibers were still in the process of con­vert­ing a big sun­room in the back of the house into a ball­room that could eas­i­ly accom­mo­date 50 vis­i­tors. It has a black-and-white check­ered floor tile pat­tern, white walls and ceil­ing, and the room is flood­ed with nat­ur­al light because the walls are most­ly win­dows and glass doors.

The Seibers didn’t want the house to be a muse­um, but a liv­ing place that would be beau­ti­ful, func­tion­al, and com­fort­able, yet “always be respect­ful” of its his­to­ry, Sarah explained.

“It’s not just a restora­tion; it’s giv­ing some­body the expe­ri­ence of com­ing home,” she said. “I think that’s a very pre­cious and pro­found thing.”

Homecoming

The house, built in the ear­ly 1890s, is believed to have first been the home of the Rev. Clarence F. Reid, a Methodist mis­sion­ary to Korea, who lived there until a few years after his wife’s death in 1901. He sold it to the Rev. William G. McCready, an Episcopal priest, and his wife, Margaret, in 1904.

The home has had nine own­ers, includ­ing the Seibers.

On Saturday, June 13, the cou­ple invit­ed mem­bers of some of those fam­i­lies and oth­er guests to a home­com­ing tour.

Among those who attend­ed were Kathryn Howard, a retired Clark County school prin­ci­pal, whose moth­er-in-law, Norine Gordon, grew up in the house; sib­lings Lynn Kennedy and Bill Pace of Winchester, whose grand­par­ents, Robert and Florence Pace, were own­ers in the 1970s; and local his­to­ri­ans Roberta and Ed Newell, whose research was invalu­able to uncov­er­ing the sto­ry of the house.

When Bill and Lynn arrived dur­ing an after­noon tea, they left some small choco­late bars in the draw­er of a small antique table in the foy­er because they remem­bered that their grand­par­ents had always kept Three Musketeers can­dy there. Sarah promised to always keep some in the drawer.

Lynn and Bill grew up next door to the house and spent their child­hoods there. Their grand­par­ents, Florence and Robert Pace, were stew­ards of the home for the longest time of any couple.

“What they’ve done with it is beau­ti­ful, but I can still tell it’s my grandmother’s house,” Lynn said.

“The books that are in the library look just like the books that used to be in there,” Bill remarked.

He remem­bered box­ing up books when the Paces sold the house to Sharron and James Kirby in the 1980s. The Kirbys were the last res­i­dents until the Seibers moved in sev­en years ago.

Kathryn said she had often dri­ven by the house and admired it, but had nev­er been inside.

“I was so excit­ed when I saw that it was being ren­o­vat­ed,” she said.

She said her moth­er-in-law, Norine, had a twin sis­ter, Pauline, and both loved a lit­tle widow’s porch on the house.

Bobbi said she learned about the restora­tion when her daugh­ter in Michigan told her she had seen the house on Instagram, and Bobbi told her it was near their own home. Bobbi said she and her hus­band were impressed with every­thing the Seibers had done to the home.

“They went the extra mile with all the details,” she said. “The house will be around for a long time since they took the time and effort to make it struc­tural­ly sound.”

Earlier this spring, the Seibers host­ed a meet­ing of the Clark County-Winchester Heritage Commission at their home. They have also host­ed guests who have stayed at the house.

While they have con­sid­ered many ways to share the home, the cou­ple’s long-term vision is cen­tered on their home being a his­tor­i­cal hos­pi­tal­i­ty property.

The house is fea­tured on Instagram and Facebook as thekyvictorian.

Aisling House

The Seibers have giv­en their home a name, Aisling House. Sarah explained to their guests dur­ing the home­com­ing how they came up with the name. Aislin (the first syl­la­ble is pro­nounced Ash) is an Irish word that means a vision or a dream, she said.

In Irish lit­er­a­ture, Aislin is the name of a woman who is in dis­tress and needs res­cu­ing — as the Seibers’ house was in dis­tress and need­ed res­cu­ing. Aisling, with a g at the end, is a 17^th-cen­tu­ry poet­ic genre in which Ireland appears to the poet in a vision as a woman.

“We didn’t want to name it after one spe­cif­ic fam­i­ly because a lot of fam­i­lies have lived here,” Sarah said.

“We want­ed to con­nect it to our family’s sto­ry, and our fam­i­ly start­ed in Ireland; that’s where we got engaged,” she said.

Something sacred

Sarah and Nick Seiber take pride in their work and what they’ve accomplished.

They have also found it grat­i­fy­ing that the work­ers they’ve employed have also tak­en pride in it. Some of them were going through tur­bu­lent times in their lives, and Sarah believes God sent those peo­ple to them.

“It’s not only been a restora­tion of the home, but a restora­tion for some of the folks who have worked here,” Nick said. “It’s kind of a sec­ond chance for them.”

The way the Seibers see it, Aisling doesn’t just belong to them. It has exist­ed since their great-grand­par­ents were liv­ing, and it has been a part of so many lives. The cou­ple see them­selves as stew­ards of the home, and the improve­ments they’re mak­ing as some­thing that will live on and ben­e­fit oth­ers long after they’re gone.

Nick recalls a say­ing, “Old men don’t plant trees for themselves.”

The trees are for future generations.

“We’ve tak­en the same approach” to rebuild­ing the house, he said.

“A house has a per­son­al­i­ty because of the per­son­al­i­ties of the peo­ple who lived there,” Sarah said. “There’s some­thing real, some­thing sacred about it.”

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