Historic McMahon House Gets Makeover

The old girl was showing her age when Nancy Greenberg met her. Her roof was dilapidated, her cedar shakes were rotting, and vines and overgrown grass had taken over.

The old girl is the Mary J. McMahon House, a historic shingle-style house built in 1910 at 965 Forest Rd., named for the woman who once owned the house. And when Greenberg saw her she knew there was potential to not only restore the home to its former glory, but modernize it for a new owner.

“The bones were nice,” she said.

Last July Greenberg bought the house for $145,000 from Wells Fargo Bank. The house had been in foreclosure and had sat on the market for three years, with plans to transform it into the diamond of a house that she knew it could be. The East Rock attorney bought it as an investment property with the hope of turning it into a jewel and then reselling it.

But first she had to come up for a plan for renovating the house. The plan had to pass muster with the state if she wanted it to be eligible for a historic tax credit.

That meant she couldn’t just go in and rip everything inside the house out and start over — not that she wanted to. It meant preserving and even repairing certain design elements like French doors to preserve a stained and lead glass feature instead of a big new window.

“It’s not a huge amount of money,” she said of the tax credits. It’s also not easy to get. She had to not only provide all of the details of what she wanted to do in her application, but she also had to have cost estimates for every part of the renovation. And there was a lot to do.

There was an underground oil tank on the premises and another above ground in the basement that helped fuel an old oil furnace that had to be removed. There also was a chimney that ventilated that furnace that cut through part of the house all the way to the unfinished third floor.

“Everything was being heated by oil,” she recalled. ​“There were gigantic cast iron radiators all over the house.”

Because the bank sold the house ​“as is,” it was on Greenberg to remove the oil tanks and deal with the consequences of whatever was left behind. Lucky for her, they were able to be removed without incident and she was able to install an more efficient gas furnace, and three-zoned air conditioning. The house got a new roof and new cedar shakes and shingling, it also got a Navien tankless hot water heater which Greenberg said further makes the 3,037 square foot house more cost effective to own.

“The shingling on the outside of the house was deteriorated, re-stained and repainted,” she said. ​“But the shell was in very good shape.”

The biggest transformation is inside. Greenberg said when she bought the house she made discoveries that just didn’t make sense for such a grand home — like a random closet at the top of the stairs, and no closet at all downstairs. Rooms downstairs were effectively closed off to each other, including a tiny galley kitchen and formal dining room area that were divided by a wall and a swinging door.

The spaces also were dark. They’re not anymore.

From the huge clear window in the newly brightened dinning room to the additional windows added in the kitchen, Greenberg transformed the dark and dingy first floor into a bright and open modern space. She did that while preserving some of the details that were already unique to the house including its fieldstone fireplace, coffered ceiling and lead glass windows.

Greenberg went for a similar treatment on the second floor. She decided to combine two of the home’s original bedrooms to create one large master suite that features a very large walk-in closet and a spa-like master bathroom all decked out in beveled marble-tiled walls, mosaic floors, a frameless glass rain-shower and his and hers vanities.

An even bigger transformation probably occurred on the home’s third floor. It was an unfinished floor with a single room that Greenberg found had an interesting purpose.

“I was told the reason that they put a room up there even in an unfinished space at the time that these homes were built,” she said, ​“they called it a sickroom.”

Now it looks ready to be a study or private office, while the rest of the finished third floor could be used as a playroom or relaxing space for watching television.

With a new space for a washer and dryer created on the second floor, the basement got a clean sweep and new paint. With no oil or water tanks taking up room, it’s big enough to create a video arcade, a ping pong or a pool table.

“I love doing this kind of stuff,” said Greenberg. A lawyer by trade, she got involved in commercial real estate development while working for a company out of Westport that did hotels and shopping centers. She moved on to historic restorations like the Oysterman’s House and when she realized that she wanted to work closer to home and that she wanted to do something that was more artistic creative.

“I just wanted to do something that was more creative that would help improve the community and also be for fun and profit,” she said. She said the McMahon House took a little longer than she’d wanted it to, but the results were worth it. The boots-on-the-ground work of transforming the house didn’t get started until November after she had submitted her application for tax credits to the state. No work could start until the state gave the go ahead. And she won’t see those credits until after she sells the house, which is now on the market for $529,000.

“I think it came out well,” she said.