• August 29, 2024

Evanston Mansion Renovation – Stairwell and Upstairs Landing

Take a tour through this beautiful 128-year-old Evanston mansion before we begin the renovation process. 

We arrive at the second floor on the stunning main stairwell featuring built-ins and stained glass. Come along as we solve the mystery of the “marble” columns added by a previous homeowner and the “elevator” marked on the 1896 architectural plans.

Follow along!

• Episode 1 – Exterior and Foyer
• Episode 2 – Library and Family Room
• Episode 3 – Dining Room and Porch
• Episode 4 – Kitchen and Pantry
• Episode 5 – Stairwell and Landing
• Episode 6 – Primary Bedroom and Bathroom
• Episode 7 – Porch and Third Floor
• Episode 8 – Lower Level
• Episode 9 – Laundry and Guest Bath
• Episode 10 – Kitchen and Pantry After Demo
• Episode 11 – Primary Bath and Closet After Demo
• Episode 12 – Laundry and Guest Bath After Demo
• Episode 13 – Third Floor After Demo
• Episode 14 – Temporary Primary Bedroom

Transcript

Welcome to one of the most beautiful mansions in all of Evanston that was built more than 100 years ago. Welcome to the second floor. So, I’ve just come up a beautiful staircase and on the landing there’s gorgeous built-ins. There’s also a series of windows that has a big stained glass panel. We’ll see if that one stays. It’s not historic. It was added later. I feel like it blocks a lot of light into the house and sort of visually competes with the beautiful leaded glass that’s on either side which mimics what we saw in the dining room. And when I saw that it really made a huge impression on me because – part of what we try and do at SSDB is to have recurring themes in the architecture. So if you see something somewhere you might see it somewhere else. So the fact that they’ve done it here and did it so well so long ago, validation that we’re doing the right thing.

Part of the fun thing in working on a project like this is removing crazy things that previous owners did like faux painted marble columns. When we were first looking at the real estate plans there was a square, a big blob on the plans and it was marked “elevator.” And I was really confused by that because to retrofit an elevator in a house of this era is like unheard of. And so it was one of the first things that I was really curious about to see. Like how did someone do that? We’ve never been able to do that. We tell everyone it’s too hard. Well lo and behold, it’s not an elevator. It’s a dumbwaiter.