Couple renovates Verona home built in 1886
Jul. 15—VERONA — Ever since Carson Lancaster was a little girl, she dreamed of living in a big white house with columns on the front.
"Those houses are hard to find, and if you do find one, they either need to be torn down, or they cost $5 million," the 29-year-old said.
During dinner one night in 2021, she and her fiancé, Nicholas Webb, who were living in Oxford, saw a big old white house that was for sale in Verona pop up on her phone's Facebook feed.
"The pictures online looked really bad, but it was something we could afford," she said. "I knew I had to see it. I couldn't get it off my mind. We came here to look at it and fell in love with it when we walked in the door."
Turns out the online pictures didn't do the 4,300-square-foot home justice. The couple who had owned it for 36 years, Sandy and Rick Maharrey, had taken really good care of it, Lancaster said.
"Some things were a little dated, but fortunately all it needed was cosmetic stuff," she said. "It just needed some attention. Nobody had lived in it for about two years."
The couple immediately set to work on the house and grounds.
They had to use a tractor to pull out the boxwood shrubs that had grown to the size of trees in front of the home.
They removed peach-colored carpet from the staircase and the upstairs bedrooms and discovered beautiful hardwood floors beneath that just needed refinishing.
"We had to redo a lot of electrical work, but the plumbing was fine," Lancaster said. "We completely remodeled the bath upstairs — we kept the clawfoot tub — and we've done a little work on the bathroom and half bath downstairs."
Several rooms were covered in wallpaper. Lancaster kept it in some rooms where it was salvageable, and painted the rooms where it wasn't.
The kitchen was in good shape, with beadboard walls and cabinets and a double farmhouse sink.
"We replaced the Formica countertops with quartz and added an island with a gas cooktop and double ovens," she said.
Twin Oaks
The home, which the Maharreys named Twin Oaks, was built in 1886 by the Clarks, one of Verona's pioneer families.
Downstairs, there are double parlors separated by pocket doors, a dining room, study, kitchen, master bedroom and bath, and a half bath.
Upstairs, there's a sitting area, three bedrooms, a bathroom, a sunken playroom for Lancaster's daughter, Mary Ellis, and a long, narrow clothes closet that was once a "trunk room" to store trunks used for traveling.
The ceilings downstairs are 14 feet tall, and those upstairs are 12 feet. Almost every room has a fireplace with original mantels, and all the doors have workable transoms above them. There are also stained-glass windows in the library, the master bath and on the staircase landing.
Lancaster and Webb have been busy filling the massive home with antiques.
"Sandy left a good bit of antique furniture here, and I had it refinished or recovered," Lancaster said. "And I'm always going to estate sales and auctions, so I had a lot of stuff in storage. We've just been finding stuff here and there."
Lancaster said some people in town think the home, which sits on almost four acres, is haunted, and she's not so sure they're wrong.
"Sometimes, we hear people walking around upstairs," she said. "When we first moved in, I had a cutting board sitting on top of a china cabinet, and the next morning, it was all the way across the room. I put it back where I had it, and the next morning, the same thing happened. I thought, 'OK, the ghosts don't like it there. And they were here first.' They must like us now because they've stopped messing with us."
The couple still has a few things left to do to get the home like they want it. Some of the tile on the fireplaces, the four white columns on the front porch, and the second-floor balcony all need some attention.
"We've gotten all the big stuff done," Lancaster said. "I want to do some more decorative stuff — that's my thing — and there are so many rooms for me to do. This house is everything I've always wanted. It's a dream come true."
