Old House Handyman: How one couple revitalized a 200-year-old eyesore in Granville
Even as folks in the village of Granville were cheering for Donna and Ken Yeager, some of them also thought the couple had lost their minds. The Yeagers themselves wondered about their sanity at times.
They were going to save a two-century-old house known as “Shadyside” – also known around town as that scary, falling-down place with broken windows and doors, and a dead tree lying for years across a gaping hole it had smashed through the roof.
“It needed a little bit of love – just a little bit of propping up and sprucing up,” Ken said with a smile while the couple told their story to a gathering of the Granville Historical Society in November.
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Rain poured inside the house for years. Furry creatures took up residence there – along with teens who repeatedly broke into the house displaying “no trespassing” signs to hold parties and scrawl graffiti on the walls.
Many people drove by the place that sits far off the main drag between Granville and Newark alternately wondering: “Why doesn’t someone tear that place down?” and “Why doesn’t someone fix it up?”
Ken was among them. He said he drove by one day and said, “For God’s sake, why doesn’t someone save that place?!”
It appeared to be doomed in 2013 when a descendant of the builders, Gill Wright Miller, a Denison University professor, rallied community support to stop a village council vote on the demolition permit requested by the church that owned it. It wasn’t easy because some saw little historical value in the place. Others, including Miller, knew that it was one of the oldest residences in town and it indeed had historical value in the context of the village.
No one knew exactly what might happen to the place after the village agreed to hold up the demolition permit and the church agreed to sell the house, which had been exposed to the elements for 13 years.
That’s when the Yeagers stepped in. They could see past the cracked plaster, the rotting wood, the weeds and fallen trees. They saw sturdy bones and fine craftsmanship. The hand-hewn beams in the basement still have bark on them, and they are so rock-solid that when Ken tried to shove a knife into one of them to check for rot, he bent his knife.
The Yeagers were smitten and saw this as their forever home – the place where they would retire and grow old together.
Donna is an accountant in Newark, and Ken is clinical director of the Stress, Trauma and Resilience program at Ohio State University and clinical director of Quality & Safety at Harding Hospital. Donna’s dad was a contractor, so she grew up around the building trades, and while they were dating in the early 1980s, she asked Ken if he would help her build a single-story house north of Newark.
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They fell in love – with each other and working on houses. They married in 1982, and in the ensuing years, they sold the house they had built together and restored a couple of 1800s houses in Newark – while also raising two children – before deciding to tackle the most challenging house project they had ever faced.
Their modest brick farmhouse dates to 1820, according to Licking County Auditor’s records, and a wooden addition dates to the early 1900s. In that era, as families and bank accounts grew, it was not uncommon to see such brick and wood combinations. And it is clearly visible in this house, which was built by William Spencer Wright, who was part of a family that help found Granville in 1805.
The Yeagers spent a year in meetings with the village and the church about buying the property on Granville Road, and they took possession in 2020. It took another year to carefully do the demolition work required before they could begin restoration.
“It took us a year and a half to rebuild and renovate what we could save,” Ken said last week. “We just had our final inspections last week.”
It was never easy, but their plans were nearly derailed at one point.
“Ken had a stroke while we were restoring the house,” Donna said. “He slumped over the wheel while we were in the car.”
She drove the car from the passenger seat and got him to medics who called for a medical helicopter, which took him to OSU’s Wexner Medical Center, where he works.
“She saved my life,” he said, and treatment by his colleagues allowed him to fully recover and get back to the renovation project.
They did about 25% of the work themselves and hired contractors to do the rest, he said. While he restored the cherry-wood staircase, for example, Donna removed and cleaned about 2,500 bricks that they saved and re-used.
The original two-story section and its 1900s addition were largely intact and are beautifully restored, with exposed beams in the living room and original wood floors and a stunning original built-in cabinet next to the fireplace. The original one-story addition on the back, which had been the kitchen, was in such bad shape that the Yeagers removed it and started over. They tried to save the original fireplace in that portion of the house, but it was too far gone. They did save the bricks from it, however.
The replacement one-story addition follows the original footprint for the most part, and it is their main living area, with a great room centered around a fireplace, a kitchen and dining room, a master suite, laundry room and bathroom. And they added an architecturally complementary four-car garage with enough space for Ken’s wood-working tools.
“Our big goal is to live and enjoy the property for as long as we can, after all the work we did, and hope that it will last another 200 years, because the village deserves it,” Ken said.
Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Old House Handyman: Granville couple saves Shadyside home
