During the last weekend in April, residents of five Bridgeland homes welcomed a steady stream of visitors as part of the 20th annual Minneapolis/St. Paul Home Tour. Visitors got a glimpse into the process and product of home remodeling, and homeowners got a chance to show off the fruits of their labors. Margo Ashmore, home tour coordinator with the Neighborhood Revitalization Project (NRP), hopes both ends of the experience will encourage others to share their homes on the tour in coming years.

Longfellow — 2852 35th Ave. S.

Leslie McKenzie and Peter Foster have turned the 860-square-foot bungalow that McKenzie bought in 1994 into a colorful work of art, in some cases literally. Poetry, painting and other artworks fill the house, including the ceiling mural that Foster painted above the dining room. The adjacent living room is a bright aqua blue, and there is poetry above the doorways. The remodeled kitchen is similarly bright, with yellow walls and blue cupboards with orange flowers.

Behind the artistic surface is 14 years of remodeling, enabled in part by home improvement loans through NRP and the Longfellow Community Council. The couple has remodeled virtually every room in the house, replacing sinks, cabinets, floors, an “ancient” furnace; and adding a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a shower and central air. They have turned the finished downstairs into a second bedroom and family room, but the pinnacle of achievement is the second floor addition, now a master bedroom and office. Working with builder John Orfield, of Orfield Construction, the couple replaced the entire existing structure — with ceilings less than six feet tall — that had been rendered unsound by a leaky roof.

“People think that a smaller, older house like this is just a starter home,” said McKenzie as she stood beaming in her new master bedroom. “We went about doing something so we could stay here.”

Prospect Park — 135 Arthur Ave. SE

In 2005, Stacy Sorenson and Jack Whitehurst added a kitchen, deck and basement space to their 100-year-old home. Though they describe their project as “small,” the couple enlisted McMonigal Architects for design help and hired Flannery Construction as the general contractor, having been impressed by the Minneapolis-based company’s previous work in the neighborhood.
While contractors built the addition — now a new kitchen, and a back hallway and bathroom where the old one was — Sorenson and Whitehurst were busy painting rooms and installing trim, tearing down walls and ceilings, and building a new wooden rear deck, which Sorenson’s father designed and helped build. Upstairs, a small closet gave way to a larger bedroom, and a small adjacent room became a closet.

The couple brought in numerous reused and salvaged items, such as a closet door from The ReUse Center and an old, now-refinished clawfoot tub.

Both Sorenson and Whitehurst work for NRP, which has enabled Minneapolis homeowners — like McKenzie and Foster — to take on similar projects. Sorenson said the Home Tour was “a great opportunity to practice what we preach.”

For the day-by-day countdown of their race to complete the project before the Home Tour — including pictures and “a sampling of projects that probably won’t get done before the Home Tour” — visit www.hometour2007. blogspot.com.

Prospect Park — 3212 Fourth St. SE

The second 100-year-old house on the tour was almost demolished in 2000. Instead, Julia Wallace — the granddaughter of Dr. John E. Hynes, for whom the house was built in 1907 — moved the house to Southeast Fourth Street and then set about restoring it in the spirit of its original character. In 2004, she received a Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Award for her efforts.

In the house’s original layout, only the kitchen is entirely new. (A single-car garage and basement were added after the move.) Many of the original elements remained, including woodwork, windows, tile floors, light fixtures, built-in bookcases and fireplaces. Due to this fact, the house retains the feel of its earlier days, when it housed both Hynes’ home and office. (A sign from his practice now hangs on the wall inside the doorway above which it used to hang.)

On the exterior, wooden gutters replicate the originals, and the original stucco was a covered with a new coat that matches the old. Wallace also added a new front porch. During the tour, she and architect Robert Roscoe of Design for Preservation — who designed the rehabilitation for Wallace — showed off the new basement, for which existing support beams had to be reinforced. Other major projects included a new foundation, roof, plumbing and electrical, reinforced ceiling beams in upstairs rooms — and the list goes on.

Prospect Park — 157 Seymour Ave. SE

Mary Alice Kopf’s Home Tour offering was just barely the oldest of the five — it was built in 1905. It was also the only one without a resident. Kopf, a realtor, already has a house in Prospect Park. “I like my garden too much to move,” she said, standing in the kitchen of the renovated brick bungalow. Most of the 988-square-foot house’s space is in its length, which the modest green façade facing the street belies. In the front, Kopf moved the original entryway to make room for a larger living room, now the first of three consecutive sunlit rooms. Kopf remodeled a tiny bathroom, now with heated floors and accessible from two rooms. The kitchen leads to a wooden porch outside, where cellar doors lead down into a cellar basement. With no access from the inside of the house, the lower level adds an old-time flair to the property.

At the time of the tour, Kopf was planning to list the property for sale through the month of May and, if no buyer emerged, to rent the house until one does.

Southeast Como — 1058 14th Ave. SE

Wendy Menken’s home was the closest to a “work in progress.” Menken was proud to show off her new second-story addition, which almost doubled the square footage of her formerly single-story bungalow. Surprisingly, Menken said the “dramatic option” — tearing off the old attic and putting in an entirely new second floor — was the most cost-effective option. Demolition began in August, and four major supports were placed soon after, followed by side walls, prefabricated roof trusses and the roofing deck and shingles.

A month later, indoor work commenced on the interior walls, closets and bathroom. Mencken had to add a whole staircase to reach her new bedroom and office space, where large windows light the white walls in three rooms separated by large open doorways. A new bathroom is set off to one side.

The result, said Menken in her description for the tour, is “two distinctive living spaces — the dark and traditional bungalow below and an open, airy loft above.”

While the upstairs windows brought up the cost of the project, the solar panels for the water-heating system should help by bringing her energy costs down.

All in all, it “turned out better than planned,” said Mecken.

last revised: June 14, 2007

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