Virginia-Highland Tudor comes back to life

Years ago, when he was living in Virginia-Highland, Anthony Guy couldn’t pass the stone Tudor apartment house on North Highland Avenue without glancing up at the window on the third floor.

“I’d walk by and think how cool it would be to live in the attic,” Guy said with a grin.

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Shane Blatt/Staff

Anthony Guy and his wife Ann bought and refurbished the property at 936 N. Highland Ave. The home will be included on the The Virginia Highland Tour of Homes Dec. 6-7.

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Shane Blatt/Staff

The dining room shares space on the first floor with the living room, kitchen, a bathroom and Ann Guy’s office.

Photos: See more of the Virginia-Highlands English Tudor

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At the time, the 1915 house was cut up into four apartments. There were two entrances and lots of cut-up spaces inside. But in May 2006, Guy and his wife, Ann, decided to buy the place and turn it back into a single-family home.

“The apartments were really decrepit,” Ann Guy said. “We wound up living in an apartment nearby for 20 months until the work was done. We never thought it would take that long, but we had to take it down to the walls and start over.”

The couple and their young daughter finally moved in a year ago and are now preparing to open the house to the public for the Virginia-Highland Tour of Homes on Saturday and Dec. 7. Visitors will see how the house has been turned back into a spacious family home while keeping some of the charm of the original structure.

From the front door, guests arrive into a new foyer, built by extending a room out around the front door. The foyer provides a break between the outside and the living room beyond, with a marble fireplace, a salvaged antique mantel and a French door to a small patio. The far end of the living area is open to the kitchen, finished with antique off-white cabinetry, tile backsplash and an island that’s actually an antique.

“I found this old chest and I liked that it had all these little drawers,” Ann said. “I had it redone with deeper drawers for pots and a space for the microwave, but I kept all the original hardware. I tried to use these sorts of salvaged pieces wherever I could.”

A guest room to the left of the foyer opens to a twisting hallway that meanders to a hall bath, back to the dining room and around to a small room at the front of the house where Ann has carved her office out of the space that was once the entrance for the second-floor apartments.

At the rear of the house, builders blended an addition to the rest of the stone house by designing the exterior stucco to look like cut stone. Inside, the room with three walls of windows includes a casual dining area, a sitting area, built-in bookcases and a bar. A portion of the wall next to the bar connects the serving area with the dining room.

A staircase to the second floor is lined in wood moldings and lit by a radius window on the landing — another piece that Ann reclaimed from a recycling bin. Upstairs, there are four bedrooms and baths with salvaged, old-fashioned soaking tubs and new floor tiles in retro styles. The master features a second fireplace with a restored mantel and bath with a double art deco pedestal sink.

“I really wanted people to guess what was here and what we put in new,” Ann said.

One space tour-goers won’t get to see is Anthony’s third-floor sanctuary, outfitted with leather sofas and a big-screen TV. “It’s now my man cave,” he said with a laugh.