Northside Neighborhood Historical Home and Garden Walk: Woman takes thrifty approach to projects in
In the late '90s and preparing for retirement, Barbara Gibson sold her Curdes Avenue home and moved into a brand-new ranch in Stillwater addition. She lived there five years before selling the ranch and moving back to a two-story house in her old neighborhood on West Drive.
She liked the ranch, but wasn't totally content. One of her biggest issues was that “it was a new house and I had no projects.”
While that might sound like heaven to some, Gibson, now retired, is a person who likes putting her creativity to use, particularly on home projects. She also prefers the character of older houses.
“I should have been born back in the '20s,” she says.
Gibson's handiwork will be on display inside and outside her home on West Drive this Friday and Saturday as she opens it to the public as part of the Northside Neighborhood Association Historical Home and Garden Walk.
Built in 1927, Gibson's two-story, three-bedroom home sits on a basement. She has to go up and down steps every day, but right now it's not an issue.
“I will live here until I can't go up and down stairs anymore,” she says.
Although she has hired some work to be done, such as reconfiguring the solarium and porch roofs and taking out an airing porch to expand her bathroom, most of the rest of the work on the house she's done herself.
Her most laborious project was remodeling the basement, which included ripping out a faux fireplace and laying a new floor.
Other projects were smaller but reflect more of her creativity, such as a backsplash in the kitchen she designed herself by pressing river rocks and marbles into Mastic, a putty-like substance.
In the solarium she made window benches as well as paper lanterns. In the evening, “I just love the light that comes out of them,” she said.
She also gave the banister going up to the second floor a unique touch. She placed contact paper in the shape of a vine on the rail, stained the exposed wood darker, and then removed the contact paper to reveal the lighter vine pattern underneath.
Many of her projects were not costly to do. “I think that comes from when you have more time than money,” she said.
Her talent and thriftiness extend outside, too. When she had a sidewalk replaced, she used the old broken pieces as steppingstones to form a path around the side of the house.
A pretty birdbath a neighbor had put out as trash is now a planter in Gibson's backyard. A fire pit that wasn't being used also has been converted into a planter.
Now that most of the biggest house projects are done, Gibson may turn her attention to sewing bags and purses to sell at craft shows.
She has space to do it in the back room of her basement now that she's got a spiffy new sewing table to work on — one that she made herself, of course.
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