Area Realtor uses 'green' ideas in house renovation
CHAMPAIGN – When first placed on the market, the mid-20th century house at 71 Greencroft Drive was advertised as a tear down.
When Realtor Debbie Auble walked in, though, she decided the home with its "wonderful lines" was worth preserving. She purchased it in September 2007 with the goal of rehabbing it according to green and her own design guidelines and then selling it.
She did just that.
She and buyers are expected to close on the house later this month. But more importantly, Auble saved a classic period home, designed by the architectural firm of Simon and Rettberg. In the process she accentuated rather than diminished its ambience and efficiencies, paying attention to quality and myriad details.
"You can do a rehab without having a tricked-out Volkswagen bus," Auble said.
One of the first things she did was remove a wall that had boxed in the great room and dining area. That opened the view from the entryway to the wall of river stone surrounding an off-center wood-burning fireplace.
Also in the great room and nearly everywhere else she removed wood paneling, replacing it with formaldehyde-free insulation and chemical-free drywall.
She left intact in the foyer redwood paneling and a built-in set of drawers, as well as the redwood beams on the great-room ceiling.
"I tried to keep things that were valuable and had utility in the house," she said.
She didn't keep the carpet and linoleum that had covered most of the floors. Instead she had installed throughout most of the 2,450-square-foot, multi-level home top-quality Teragren bamboo flooring.
In the lower-level media room, she had the floor covered with eco-friendly Flor modular carpet tiles that can be easily cleaned or removed, if stained. She also painted the west wall in screen paint, meaning dwellers don't have to purchase a TV/DVD projection screen. In the nearby wet-bar area she had installed a deep sink that can double as a utility sink.
On the ground level she gutted the kitchen. There Douglas Kistler of Uptown Custom Concrete Products built terra-cotta color concrete countertops, including for a large island where there had been none before.
Auble designed for the triangular-spaced kitchen touch-latch cabinets made of reclaimed birch.
As for bathrooms, Auble upped the number from one and a half to three. Installed in those were two dual-flush toilets; low-flow shower heads; a 6-foot Toto soak tub; and on shower surrounds, recycled glass tiles that adhere to the period flavor of the home – as does everything else, including the new toilets, light fixtures, hardware and a stairway rail designed by Auble and built of stainless-steel cable rails.
On the upper level, where there was a dormitory-style space and one bathroom, Auble had walls put in to create three bedrooms and two bathrooms, including the owner's suite, which boasts the Toto tub, big enough for two or for a 7-foot giant, Auble said.
In that bedroom, she had a "Barbie-like" vanity dresser removed from one corner, replacing it with three open shelves of birch. Next to it are floor-to-ceiling shelves and touch-latch built-in drawers, also birch, with LED lights inside.
She had the entire house rewired. Installed throughout were energy-efficient appliances, among them a Noritz tankless water heater. Because the house is multi-level, Auble had an additional heating and cooling system installed.
Auble noted that many "green homes" nowadays have 6,000 square feet of space, leaving a large imprint on Mother Earth. That doesn't make sense to her.
She would rather take a smaller house and do to it what she did with the modernist structure at Greencroft and Kirby Avenue.
"You can take housing stock that has wear and tear and rust on the corners and turn it into a jewel box," she said.
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