The Kenwood Street home was built in 1890 and thus is about 124 years old. The building style is called Shingle Style, cross-gabled. This style is considered Late Victorian. For more information on this building style, please check out: http://www.dahp.wa.gov/styles/shingle-style

The home is categorized as 1 1/2 story, since the second floor does does not have full-height walls on all sides of the house, due to the roof.

The kenwood home still has the original wooden windows, made from old-growth wood, which is significantly more durable than the wood you can buy these days. How many windows last 124 years?! We have every intent to restore these windows and keep them, instead of replacing them with vinyl windows.

The home also has the original staircase. It is steeper than the staircases you would build today, but it is made out of solid wood and just needs its hand rail repaired (it misses a few of the spindles).

The house is numbered on Kenwood street (west side of the home), but the main entrance has been on the south side, using the open porch entrance. It is our plan to re-instate the Kenwood side as the main entrance. We will do so by giving it a different entrance than the relatively recent addition that is currently there. We will remove that addition, reconstruct the original outside wall and add a new addition that will have a proper footing and and entrance that would fit the Shingle Style look-and-feel. It will also help that we will make a formal path from the street to the door, which is currently not present.

The kitchen and the downstairs bathroom are located in an addition on the north side, that dates back to the first half of the 20th century, based on the electrical wiring used (knob-and-tube) and the lath and plaster walls. The problem with the way it was built is that the roof ends on top of the top plate of the outside wall. In the Minnesota climate conditions, this will eventually cause water to enter into the wall and rot to occur. It is our intention to repair the wall by replacing the rotted sections and redesigning the roof line above the kitchen and bathroom.