at home
Tour of Homes
Come Taste the Wine The couple overhauled this neglected old house, board by board, wire by wire and pipe by pipe. Why? So they could have their vineyard. By Steve Kaufman | Photos by Tim Furlong, Jr.
T
he 112-year-old house was dilapidated. The nearly 11 acres were overrun with wild brush.
The realtor said, “I found this piece of property, but it’s in really bad shape.” A team of contractors, called in to evaluate the viability of the project, all voted with their thumbs: Don’t do it. The prospective homeowners did their own calculations, and concluded it would be too expensive. “It would bankrupt us,” said the wife. They had every reason to walk away. But each had a reason to stay. “I fell in love with the barn,” admitted the wife, “a beautiful two-story Dutch Colonial structure set into the hillside.” And for the husband, it was a perfect location to plant his vineyard. Apparently, vineyards can be temperamental. The soil has to be poor, so that water runs off it. “Grapevines don’t like to be wet,” he said. They don’t like to be cold, either, and in the winter a foggy warmth comes off the nearby Ohio River and rolls up the valley to create a blanket for the budding vines. The slope of this property, facing the river, was perfect.
34 TOPS LOUISVILLE | March 2017
And so they plunged, into a year of clearing the grounds, stripping the skin off the house and rewiring and re-plumbing, pulling up the wood floor, and renovating the kitchen and all the bathrooms (a work that’s still in progress). The property, originally a country estate home for the wealthy homeowners who also had a Fourth Street mansion, is on the National Historic Register. It had been in the same family’s use for roughly 100 years. As the new owners ripped and stripped, the charms of the 5,400-square-foot house became evident – 74 windows, all with the original glass; interior brick walls; multiple fireplaces; elegant crown molding around the nearly 12foot ceilings; period woodwork; original light fixtures; carved Greek columns.