Caring for Lansing area's century-old homes a balance of patience, sweat equity, owners say

ST. JOHNS — Since she was a child, Claire Breen knew she wanted to live in a historic home

She remembers sitting in the back seat of her parent's vehicle watching for, and falling in love with, the grand, older houses they'd pass by.

When she and her husband, Trevor, had a chance to purchase the 5,400-square-foot Hicks Mansion in St. Johns, a 13-room French Second Empire-style home built in 1873, it was an easy decision, she said.

"It's beautiful," Claire Breen said of the house, originally home to successful local businessman John Hicks. "The architecture is just incredible and it's so well preserved, right? It's like finding a needle in a haystack."

But caring for and maintaining the century-and-a-half-old local landmark will be "a lifetime project," Breen said.

"When you're interested in doing something like this, owning a home like this, yes, you need to be prepared to spend money, but you don't need to spend all your money right away," she said.

The Breens, like other residents in the Greater Lansing area who own and care for historic homes in their communities, say living in one can be gratifying, but it usually requires an appreciation of history, and more work, patience, research, sweat equity and money than a modern home does.

Documenting life in historic homes

The Hicks Mansion sits on more than an acre off West State Street.

"It's really one of the first big things you see right as you're getting toward downtown St. Johns," Breen said.

The house features heavy decorative window trim, carved walnut doors with original glass, Italian tile, and an ornate walnut banister and staircase.

There were plenty of projects to take up when her family moved in last August, Breen said. The couple updated some of the home's electrical outlets, installed wood flooring in a few rooms, and tackled landscaping on the property where trees and plants were overgrown.

Their efforts are being shared with an audience through a personal blog, "our.mansard.mansion," on Instagram. Nearly 3,100 people follow the account.

"It's a really cool house and I think that it deserves to be seen," Breen said. "My hope is that by sharing our journey and this home's history that more people will be interested in preserving and living in historic homes in their own communities," she said.

Eaton Rapids residents Deb Measner and Bill Darr are sharing their journey as owners of what's known as the "storybook house" on social media, too.

Their century-old, 6,400-square-foot fieldstone house, which sits along the Grand River, was built by a wealthy businessman, Merton Pettit Bromeling, and his wife, Margaret, in 1918. Inside are hand-painted murals and Italian tiles on the walls.

Measner and Darr bought the house in January 2021. Measner has been chronicling their ownership through the Facebook page "Bromelingstorybookhouse."

"We like everything about it," said Measner. "We love the location, that it is set on the river. We love that even though some of it is painted over on the inside, there was still so much original that was never redone."

The couple doesn't see the house as a project, she said.

"If we would have gone into this as a family with young kids like, 'OK, let's redo this,' it would have been very intimidating, but other than putting on a new roof to preserve the interior of the house and doing some stuff like that we're kind of living in it as is," Measner said.

"It really hasn't needed a lot of work inside," Darr added.

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Know what you're getting yourself into, owners say

Understanding what goes into becoming a historic home's caretaker is important, said Bob Myers, the Historical Society of Michigan's director of history programming, who's lived in more than one historic home over the years.

"What you need to do is go into the project with a clear understanding of what you're getting into," he said.

Julie Kimmer and her husband, Dan, had a very good idea when they bought their home: a three-story, approximately 2,400-square-foot brick and stone home in Charlotte, about seven years ago.

Once a funeral home, it was built around 1900 on property that once housed one of the community's first churches, Julie Kimmer said. She had admired the home for years, but knew restoring it would take work and money.

The Kimmers bought it for just $17,000, but have so far spent more than $250,000 bringing it back to life. The couple didn't move in for the first year and a half they owned it because they were completing necessary repairs, she said.

"The plumbing was bad and the heat was terrible and the wiring was unusable," Kimmer said. "There was a completely mummified cat under the staircase."

The Kimmers said they went into owning it with an understanding of the commitment involved after having lived in another century-old house not far away for decades. And Julie Kimmer is the manager at the 1855 Eaton County Courthouse.

"You need just understanding of the amount of expense and the amount of work involved," she said. "People can end up with a fabulous house out of it as long as they realistically know it's not like that 30-minute home renovation TV show. You don't have a crew that when you go home finishes all the stuff that you didn't get to."

More people are tackling the restoration of historic homes today than they were in the 1990s, Myers said, and there are more resources to help them do it right.

"Before, say you wanted to buy a light fixture for your house and it's a 1903 house," he said, "you'd have to develop an understanding of it, maybe find old catalogs somewhere and archives of what lighting fixtures looked like back then. Now you go online and there are old hardware catalogs, building supply catalogs that have all been digitized."

Videos on YouTube give clear instructions for projects, like old window restoration, Myers said. Historical societies and organizations can often assist new homeowners in researching a property's history.

Myers often urges the owners of older homes to first focus on the mechanical and structural projects, rather than aesthetics, and to pay attention to what they can afford and do themselves.

"We've restored all the windows in all the houses we've had," Myers said. "You learn how to do things."

Tom Hedlund, who's lived in an 1893 Victorian-era home in Grand Ledge for five years, said historic homes require special care.

"Not everybody should live in an older home," he said. "I think the reason that it works for a lot of people is that they understand the quirks of an old house and they enjoy learning the quirks of an old house. For them, it's fun."

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ .

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Residents living in historic homes say it's an investment, but worthwhile