Couple chooses to call preservation project home

Marc Dobiecki and Jennifer Murray’s story starts like other home buyers’. They didn’t expect to buy a 100-year-old home in East Atlanta when they stopped to take a peek after attending an estate sale in the area.

They had grown up in older homes and were passionate about making sure the structures remained to link to the city’s past. But a tour of the home, in need of exterior and interior restoration, changed their mind.

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Jennifer Murray sits outside the house that she and her husband, Marc Dobiecki, are restoring. The planning alone took three years.

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

The distinctive columns and molding of the front entrance were painstakingly stripped and restored. When lead was found in the paint, a special removal process had to be followed.

RESTORING AN OLDER HOME
Jennifer Murray recommends three things to consider before starting the process.
Don't rush into it. Research the National Park Service preservation briefs (visit www.nps.gov/history/hps for more information) and talk to people who have restored homes. Murray also attended the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference, held each March in Boston.
Be a resident of the home first. That will give you a better understanding of what needs to be restored first, Murray said. She and Dobiecki were able to accept and appreciate much of the original design, which she said significantly reduced portions of their budget.
Attend old house tours. The tours Murray and Dobiecki attended, in Ansley Park, Grant Park, Inman Park, Madison, Marietta and other Georgia towns, mostly through the Georgia Trust (www.georgiatrust.org), introduced them to homeowners and craftspeople and generated ideas.

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• See more of the restoration project

“It’s such a unique house in this neighborhood,” Murray said. “We felt the need to restore it. It’s like our whole lives changed when we got this house.”

They purchased the Zuber-Jarrell House, which is situated on 2.25 acres on Flat Shoals Road, in April 2003, becoming its third owners. The bulk of the exterior work was completed late last year. The parlor and library have been updated, and the kitchen and foyer of the Classical Revival-style home are next.

“Our lives have evolved around restoring this house,” said Murray, who works for the Coca-Cola Co. and is a member of the Rhodes Hall board. “It’s a very gratifying feeling to know we’re restoring a piece of Atlanta.”

History in the making

After a three-year planning process, it took a team of 30 craftspeople, including eight paint strippers, eight painters and 12 carpenters, to complete the exterior renovations.

“It’s slow work,” Murray said. “You can’t rush through restoration. It’s meticulous.”

The couple’s efforts were aided by discovering items previously removed from the house had been stored in the basement. They struggled with finding quality workers, seeking craftspeople sensitive to the home’s past and able to make repairs without damaging original materials.

Project manager Doug Frey with Metropolitan Restoration was hired to represent them with contractors. During the Georgia Trust’s spring and fall home tours, called Rambles, the couple learned about restoration professionals, even meeting their plaster contractor that way.

For issues such as the lead paint on the house, they needed to make sure the removal process was safe and wouldn’t damage the exterior wood. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division supervised the process.

Conversion Technologies, a certified lead abatement company, used a chemical process to remove the paint, which took two months. After the paint was stripped, 10 carpenters took two weeks to handle exterior siding, soffit and molding repairs. Instead of replacing any siding, they used Abatron wood epoxy to repair and stabilize the wood, Murray said.

She thumbed through photos of the transformation, stopping at a shot of the only knot found in the longleaf pine. It was the first time the wood had been exposed in 100 years, and less than 1 percent of it had to be replaced, she said.

“All of a sudden, you see this perfect old growth wood. You’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing,’” Murray said.

Living through the chaos

The painting process took six weeks, with DeLoche Painting hand-brushing the primer and paint so it didn’t appear sprayed, she said.

Also late last year, they restored the double-hung windows, with the work done by Dick Jarrell, son of the prior owner. Twelve of the 13 stained-glass and lead-glass windows (six are installed) were restored, with Jeff Loose of Buford’s Studio Glass Co. removing and cleaning each piece of glass, repairing broken ones and rebuilding the lead divider between the pieces.

The light fixtures on the wide porch were restored by Buckhead Plating. Once the paint, which caked the sconces, was removed, it revealed ornate brass, Murray said.

The work last year was in addition to 2007 updates, including rebuilding one of the deteriorating chimneys (there are three) to match the original design and replacing all the shingles. A copper roof was added over one section of the home; the widow’s walk was rebuilt; and a gable was added to improve access to the attic, which will serve as a guest suite and an office for Dobiecki, owner of Tsunami Films.

Still to be finished is the landscaping, planned by renowned Atlanta landscape architect Edward L. Daugherty, and rebuilding the porches and porte cochere, Murray said.

The couple has lived in the home throughout the process, which at times meant walking through plastic encasing the house and dealing with darkness when the windows were covered with plywood.

“It was really depressing,” Murray said.

When the scaffolding came down in mid-November, her spirits lifted.

“It revealed this amazingly beautiful, perfect exterior,” Murray said.

PURCHASING THE PAST

Older homes are forced to compete harder for buyers because of the number of new homes on the market, said Winston Killingsworth with Re/Max Greater Atlanta Intown. Killingsworth, who owns the Burns Mansion in Grant Park with partner Glenn Storie, suggests five things to consider when thinking of buying an older home.

Don’t assume it’s going to be the last house you’ll buy. For your first restoration, you may want to tackle only a kitchen and see what the process involves. Then with your next house, you could do a kitchen and a bathroom, he said. By the third one, you likely will know what you’re doing.

Start with the top. See whether the roof needs work, then check out the plumbing, electrical and heating/air conditioning systems. On a 2,000-square-foot home, for example, plan to spend around $5,000 per system.

Research the home’s history. Determine whether you’re in a historic district or if the home is on the historic register (the Murray’s home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997), which can affect what you can do to the residence. Also determine what past homeowners have done.

Wait a while. Don’t work on the home for the first six months. “You have to feel it,” he said. “You kind of get an idea of what you want to do.” They also take a year off between projects.

Focus on one area first. Don’t gut the entire house, but work on one bedroom and finish the job before starting another room. Killingsworth has been working on his 9,000-square-foot home for a decade.