DEL.ICIO.USAmy Brown spent six months planning and another year renovating her 1910 house in Conyers.
Published on: 05/31/07
Aunt Jane stands in the driveway of Amy Brown's newly renovated Conyers home, romanticizing about all the wonderful memories her niece and her family will create while living here.
"I see them all in the dining room at Thanksgiving and sitting on the porch at Halloween giving out candy," says Jane Benzing , who came up from Jacksonville to help Brown put the finishing touches on the decor.
"I can see the children growing up, the wedding receptions."
Before Benzing can elaborate, her Norman Rockwell moment is interrupted by protests fromHenry, Brown's 5-year-old son who has spent the last hour dodging a photographer who's come to take pictures of the house. It's bad enough he's had to change from his Superman PJ's into shorts and a shirt — at the coaxing of his mom, grandmother and Aunt Jane — so he's not about to pose for a picture without a fight. He sticks out his tongue while the camera clicks away and manages a sly smile when his twin sister Janey, his aunt's namesake, sticks out her tongue, too.
Brown is unfazed by the antics.
Between juggling her responsibities as wife, mother of five children all under the age of 11, soccer, music lessons, homework, meals and who knows what else, Brown was the principal contractor who directed the massive renovations on the historic 1910 home. So she's good at staying focused and keeping her calm when the unexpected occurs.
Like when her beloved baby sitter for the last 11 years died suddenly, the day moving trucks arrived to take the family's belongings to the new house. And Brown's determination to run the Atlanta ING marathon a week later, even though she was distraught by the loss and frazzled from the move.
"I don't know how I did it," Brown says now. "I'm a little militant — you have to be with five kids, so I run a pretty tight schedule."
Her mission was to turn the Arts and Crafts bungalow she and her husband, Andy, purchased almost two years ago into a kid-friendly home that could withstand a lot of running and jumping and fingerprints and slammed doors.
"The house is definitely about family living," says Brown. "We wanted a house that could be a wreck in five minutes and cleaned up in five minutes."
It took about six months of conceptualizing plans with architect Cynthia Karegeannes, and one year of renovations to make it that way.
By the time the Browns moved in at the end of March, the attic roof had been raised 18 inches, creating a second story for the children, with three large bedrooms, three baths, a "hang-out" room, second floor laundry and study area. Brown also added new gables and a dormer. A glassed sunporch was converted to a family room and breakfast nook. The old garage was replaced with a four-car garage that has an apartment/bonus room on top.
A new kitchen was installed with marble counter tops, a kitchen island large enough for all five children to sit at without elbowing each other, and a butler's pantry.
However, Brown and Karegeannes left the home's original charm intact, from the beadboard ceilings to the heart pine floors to the slanted roofline that enhances the beauty of the interior rooms.
Although Brown learned something about renovating homes from watching her parents, this is the first time she's overseen a project this large by herself.
Hiring qualified subcontractors helped her stay on schedule and avoid costly overruns, she says.
"I was so fortunate that every subcontractor was phenomenal," Brown explains. "Because they were so good, I wasn't chasing workers. Every person I hired I said 'if you leave this job, don't come back.' "
Luckily for Brown, that never happened. She didn't even have to ask her husband to run interferrence.
"I would definitely consult him, but I was the one in charge," Brown says. "He says 'this is the house that Amy built,' and it's true."
With the renovations complete, the home rivals any new construction when it comes to the size and variety of rooms, architectural character, amenities, floor plan and use of space.
The decor makes it extra special because many of the furnishings have been in the Brown family for years, such as the dining table that used to belong to Andy's grandmother, the iron bed in the girls' room that Amy slept on as a child and a toy trunk Amy's dad made from a fallen cherry tree 20 years ago.
The home, too, will be in the family for years because of the way Karegeannes designed it.
"Cinci has always said it's an accordion house for us," Brown explains. "It will stretch out to meet the needs of a family of our size and then shrink back down as we need it to."
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