Charm in the City’s Core

BY MARY MICHAELS | PHOTOS BY JULIE PRAIRIE PHOTOGRAPHY

Heather Taylor has experienced Sioux Falls living in a few unique ways – from 20 years in the McKennan Park area to a few years on an acreage out by Wild Water West. After experiencing some life changes, she decided she wanted to come back into town – near friends, her kids’ school and her old neighborhood.

While she needed to find a place that had enough room for herself and two teenagers, she was also hoping to find a home to really settle into.

“I don’t really want to move again,” says Taylor. “My kids are in 10th and 12th grade, so they’ll be out of the house soon. I wanted to find a place that could work for us now but also work for me as I get older.”

She found just the spot last August, with a charming 1930s-era home not too far from both the All Saints and McKennan Park neighborhoods.

“The house had essentially been abandoned before it was purchased and flipped,” she says. “It’s so great when people make that investment and preserve the character and charm of the home and just add some modern updates.”

The foundation was redone, plumbing and wiring updated, and everything cleaned up with a fresh coat of paint.

‘The bones of the house were great, and after living in older houses all my life, this was perfect. I can’t see myself living in a modern-built home.”

While Taylor previously lived in houses with more than 4,000 square feet, she and her kids are now in a home half that size. But, she says, that has its benefits – maintenance and cleaning for one, and then it also enables you to simplify.

“Downsizing like this really makes you think about what is most important to you,” Taylor says. “So, we have the essentials of what we need, and then most of what is on display in the house are things that have special meaning to me or things that were

handed down through my family.”

She adds that she learned a lot from her parents about reusing and repurposing. Her mom often refurnished furniture because they couldn’t afford new when they were first starting out. That’s a skill that Taylor developed from working with her mom, and she appreciates the sturdy construction and craftsmanship of old furniture pieces.

Coming in the front door of the home, you step into a small entryway, where an old Singer sewing machine serves as a side table. On the table sits a metal and glass first aid kit box that holds special family mementos. There had been a second door from the entryway into the living room, but Taylor took that door out to provide a more open area.

The living room is friendly and inviting, with white-painted woodwork and darker wood floors, comfortable seating and a fireplace. In making some of her own updates to the home, Taylor had a flat cabinet built above the fireplace to conceal the TV.

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“When the kids are here, we’re usually doing things together, so I’m not sitting in front of the TV,” she says. “So, I wanted a way to just hide that away and not have a TV sitting out all the time.”

The two side chairs have been with Taylor a long time, and, she says they have been reupholstered probably three different times.

“I got these two chairs from a friend before she died, and I don’t want to get rid of them. I’m so glad I learned how to give new life to them with some new fabric.”

That same friend also gave Taylor a wood paneled screen painted with Japanese birds and trees on one side and an entire village on the other. Once she figures out the logistics, she wants to hang them on the living room wall so that she can change which scene is showing.

The sturdy wood cabinet standing against one wall tells quite a bit of family history, with her grandmother’s depression glass, old doll house furniture, her dad’s El Riad Shrine fez and her own set of first edition Nancy Drew hardcover books.

Taylor’s dad served in the military in Korea, so a beautiful doll he brought home stands on top of a book of fairy tales that her mom read to her when she was little and which she, in turn, read to her own children. The American flag they received when her dad passed away, in its traditional triangular case, sits next to the doll.

The family has been in the gas station business, so there are a variety of mementos to that history – like a Mobil pump topper or various items bearing the Taylor Oil name.

Most older homes have separate dining rooms, which Taylor enjoys. The arched walls between rooms are original to the house, and the dining room also features two built-in corner cabinets. On one of the shelves, she keeps a collection of vintage bar accessories, a nod to her own work in the liquor industry. There are a variety of shakers, as well as a golf-themed bar set that had been her dad’s. Taylor says she remembers him every time she pulls that out to use the jigger or strainer.

The stunning crystal chandelier over the dining room table has been with Taylor for 20 years, and it has quite a back story.

When Taylor was living in her McKennan Park home, she had a wedding cake chandelier. Unfortunately, one day while cleaning the crystals, it came crashing down. Taylor’s cousin, who also lived in the neighborhood, invited Taylor over to look at a chandelier she was wanting to sell – a fixture that had originally hung in the Horowitz jewelry store downtown. With some help from an electrician, it was attached to a pole and carried through the neighborhood to Taylor’s house. She was able to salvage some of the crystals from the wedding cake piece and added it to the new fixture. Her mom had also found a box of period chandelier crystals, and since there were already existing hooks available, Taylor and her daughter carefully filled out the rest of the fixture with the extra crystals.

“I am so fortunate to have this,” Taylor says. “It’s not only a beautiful piece that could be approaching 100 years old, but

for anyone who remembers the Horowitz store downtown, it is also a piece of Sioux Falls history.”

While the kitchen size in older homes tends to be on the small side, Taylor’s kitchen uses space efficiently with a peninsula for storage, prep space and a spot to pull up a stool for breakfast. The white cupboards are airy and bright against the wood floor and stainless appliances.

Going down the hallway, a small arch is cut into the wall, which “back in the day” would have been the spot for the home’s landline phone. Now, though, it serves as a handy mail center.

In the home’s original state, what is now the master bedroom used to be two separate, smaller bedrooms. When the house was flipped, those two were combined to create a spacious bedroom with a sliding, rustic barn door that opens to the walk-in closet.

The upstairs bathroom currently has a free-standing tub with a shower pole, but as Taylor thinks about the future and being able to age well in this house, she plans to eventually remodel and install a walkin shower. Before she moved in, she also had the utilities moved upstairs in order to have a main floor laundry room. This room was listed as a bedroom on the realty sheet; however, it’s unique, Taylor says, because there is a door that leads to the backyard.

“I decided that with teenagers, perhaps I wouldn’t want them to have a room with its own exit,” she laughs.

Instead, the room is outfitted with a washer and dryer with plenty of additional cabinet space so that it can also double as a kitchen pantry. Under the pantry cupboard is a roomy, built-on kennel with custom bedding for their two canine family members.

One of Taylor’s favorite storage solutions in this room was an idea she came up with to solve her ironing board dilemma.

“Whenever you see wall cabinets for ironing boards, they often just have a small fold-out board that is hard to use,” she explains. “So, I asked them to build a tall, mounted cabinet where I can hang

my ironing board and have a few shelves for the iron and other supplies. It’s perfect because the cabinet doesn’t take up a lot of space, and I can take out my full ironing board and set it up when I need it.”

Next to that cabinet is a handy solution for stray socks, not uncommon when both dogs and kids are involved. A board painted with “Lost Socks” hangs on the wall with single socks clipped to it, waiting to be claimed.

The door in the laundry room opens up to the backyard, where Taylor says there was no landscaping when she moved in.

“It was a bit of a mud pit,” she says. “The concrete slab that was there was uneven, so you kind of had to sidestep your way down it. My goal was to create a great space for us to hang out and grill or entertain, and to not have to worry about taking care of a lawn.”

She added a roomy deck with a high-tech retractable awning that has a wind sensor.

“That’s pretty amazing,” she says, “because if we forget to bring it in and there is enough wind, the awning will retract itself.”

Three tall posts stand out in the back where her kids can string up their hammocks and relax. Taylor added a retaining wall with small trees and shrubs, along with raised garden beds for flowers and vegetables so she can enjoy tending to them without having to be down on the ground. Behind the stand-alone garage is an outdoor stone fireplace that is original to the house.

“This fireplace is so cool, so we knew we wanted to create a sitting area around it. It’s one of our favorite spots to hang out when we’re outside.”

Originally, there was a gate in front of the garage, but Taylor says she moved it forward in the driveway for a couple of reasons – first, it offers a little more security, and second, it creates more living space in the backyard for the family and the dogs.

The lower level primarily belongs to the teenagers, Taylor says.

Her son’s room was the existing bedroom when they moved in and then, when she moved the washer and dryer

upstairs, they converted the old utility room to a bedroom for her daughter. They added an egress window and enclosed the water heater and water softener behind a door. The loveseat in her daughter’s room has also made several moves and been reupholstered to update the look.

“My mom gave that to me, and it’s still in great shape,” Taylor says. “She taught me all about reusing and redoing and not just throwing things away. So, I let my daughter pick the fabric, and we recovered it.”

The family room space has a large couch situated perfectly in front of the flatscreen TV for movie-watching or gaming. A dining room table has church pews for seating, along with mid-century modern chairs that came from the old hospital and hotel in Hot Springs.

“I love antiques, but I also love mid

century furniture,” Taylor says. “It’s unique and made so well.”

Because she wanted the kids to have this space to enjoy, she put a refrigerator downstairs along with a coffee maker, which sits on an old butcher block that was her mom’s.

“This has been around for a long time,” she says, “and has been used as a butcher block, a diaper changing table and now a beverage station.”

Because she loves the character of core neighborhoods, with the eclectic collection of houses in all shapes and sizes, Taylor also wanted to update the exterior of the house.

“The house has a stucco finish, which I like,” she explains, “but it was kind of this creamy color that I felt could just look a little dull.”

Wanting to go with something a little richer, Taylor chose a beautiful dark blue for the house and garage. Out in front, she had the sod removed and has planted perennials she hopes will grow into a bee and butterfly garden. Sturdy paver stones weave their way through the garden.

“It’s so exciting to see that people are buying some of the homes in this area that need a little TLC,” says Taylor. “One person starts a project, and the next, and little by little they are all getting some new life. These older neighborhoods are where our community started. There is history here we need to preserve. In the core of the city, you can find affordable homes in a unique neighborhood that provide a great living experience. When you pay attention to these core neighborhoods, the city as a whole is better off.”