Historic Portland Estate: A Meticulous Vintage Revival | Old Home Stories

I mean, it actually feels like a time capsule living here. We've had people come knock on our door, what is this place, a museum? Is it a state property? Some people think it's a school. The colonial revival architecture of the house is one that is so unique to Portland and to Laurelhurst. It's sitting up on a hill, and it's just so pretty to see when you drive down the street. I always think of it as kind of the centerpiece to this neighborhood. It's important to preserve homes like this for future generations, because there's not many of them left. Well, I was thinking we could go to the nursery and just see what looks good there. We need coffee today? Sure. This is our home in Portland, Oregon. It's called the Albee House after the former mayor. The property on which it stands was purchased in 1910 by H. Russell Albee, the fellow who eventually became the mayor of Portland in 1913. The house is on the National Historic Registry, built in 1912. The park on which it sits, the 32-acre park, was opened shortly thereafter. And it was beautiful, because you could overlook the entire park from the house. The park is right on the other side of the fence, and so it just feels like a continuation of the park in here. And we started the restoration in 2019. And we remodeled for about four years, and then moved in. It's been an amazing project. So we just came through the vestibule, which is the first entrance to the home. This is the heart of the home. It's basically unchanged except for the roof. We went for new lighting, and we added wallpaper and painted. On one side is the living room and a sunroom. And on the other side is the parlor, dining room, and the kitchen. And then it takes you up to the bedrooms. And you can also go outside straight through. So we have four grown kids, four sons. The space that it has is enough to have all the kids come over, so we can all celebrate holidays and family get-togethers. It's just under 6,900 square feet, five bedrooms, and four and a half baths. All the flooring is the original flooring from 1912, and we just had it refinished. And all the woodwork that you see throughout the house is all the original woodwork. And we didn't even touch it. It was beautiful when we bought the house. Basically, we're honoring the house by fixing what was broken. The previous owner had been running it as a bed and breakfast. It was very dark because he had covered up a lot of windows with kimonos. I thought I was in a funeral home. It was very somber. I think the first time we did a walkthrough with the designers, they were like, is your husband okay? I was in like a state of shock. Just like, this is a lot of work. I mean, it was a lot, but. It turned out way better than I even thought it could be. My name is Mira Ingetz, and I'm a designer at Jessica Helgerson Interior Design. After I bought the house, I had been following Jessica for a couple years on social media. And I knew she was based in Portland, and I thought this is the perfect person to do this house. Mira was the head designer for this project. It just seemed like we were on the same page for everything. It's a very well-known house here in Portland. We let the house kind of speak to how we were going to remodel it. We just tried to enhance what was already there. So this is our living room. Originally, they had a piano in here, and I think they would just sit in here formally and listen to music. Even though it's a more formal house, I wanted this to be a more casual living room. We had this huge coffee table made. It adds a really fun feel to the room. All the woodwork is original. One of my favorite features, that when I walk into this room, the first thing I noticed was the bowed windows in the back. I think that's amazing. All the windows in this house are original. We just restored them because some of them couldn't open. And believe it or not, there's 106 windows in this house. Liz said, I really want the indoors and the outdoors to be connected visually. And the way that we chose to do that was by bringing in a lot of motifs from nature throughout the house, in the hand-painted details, in the wallpaper, in the textiles. So the mural, if you look closely, I put in little tiny creatures, and then I got going, and I just kept on adding more and more. So you'll see rats in the basement. You'll see bees everywhere. They just, I think, add a fun element to the house, and people love to spot it when they walk through. Right off the living room is the sunroom, which we use as an office. I think they would dance in here on the marble floor. That's where they're dancing. And so it was quite a party house. It feels so sunny in here, and there's lots of plants, and there's beautiful windows that you can open up. Actually, the windows throughout the house are very unique, and the mechanisms they used, very unique. Every section of the house, we tried to make it so when you look out, it has its own special thing. So for the sunroom, it's the rose garden. So this is our dining room, and this room is exactly how it was when we bought it. We just added a new light fixture and the gold leafing. A lot of dining rooms, I don't think everybody always uses, but we use this all the time, every day. This is an original stained glass, and we have stained glass in the- In the pocket doors here. In the pocket doors to the parlor. So the parlor is, it just feels like an extension of the dining room. Sometimes we'll have dessert in there, or drinks, and go back and forth. To me, I like the parlor. That would be my number one choice. The dining room parlor. I can really feel like what it must've felt like a hundred years ago. So this kitchen has probably had the most change. This was a bad late 80s, early 90s remodel. There was no continuity with the rest of the house. The kitchen had been remodeled in the 80s, and it had, I wanna say, a lot of 80s moves, like a drop-paneled ceiling, and a lot of can lights, and it didn't feel in keeping with the house. People ask me if this was the original kitchen, because it feels like it could've been the original kitchen. All the tile work is new. All the light fixtures are new. The beams are new. And we had this piece of furniture that my designers found for an island. What's interesting with these windows is they used to be squared off. And so we had all these windows redone with the weighted chain system. And then this sink is also a custom-made sink. It's a nice big sink, and it's so easy to keep clean. I love to have a kitchen where I can see everything and I don't have to look for it. So we did open shelving. Most people want everything hidden, but I want everything out. They're like, oh, I like it this way, actually. This is a second-story landing, and this is where all the bedrooms are. There's a primary bedroom and three extra bedrooms on this floor. The first one is what I call the blue room, and it has its own balcony. Directly across from that is kind of an olive green room. And then the green bedroom has really, really cute tiles in the bathroom. I have a lot of paintings. I probably have like 300 paintings that I've collected for decades. And I love when walls are just filled to the max with paintings and artwork, and it just adds something special to this area. So this is our primary bedroom. This is another part of the house that underwent a significant amount of change. The bedroom is composed of basically three large rooms and the bathroom, the bedroom, the sleep porch, and the closet. We closed off the two entrances into the smaller room that they used as a sitting room, so that allowed us to have more closet space, too. Back when this house was built, bathrooms were much smaller. So what we did is we pushed the bathroom into one of the bedrooms in the hallway. It allowed us to have a walk-in shower, a nice bathtub. The original bathroom was about a third the size of this, and it had a yellow pedestal sink, a yellow toilet, and a yellow bathtub. And it was a nice change to have this. All the bathrooms were remodeled, and all the tiles are new. The designers did these custom. They go, though, with the era of the house. Even though it's something new, it feels like it's timeless and could have been there 100 years ago. So right off the bedroom is this room that we use as a TV room, relaxing room, nap room. When this was original, I think that they used it as a sleeping porch because there's windows all around, and they didn't have air conditioning to cool. This was a room that they just used to be able to sleep. We've added the beams in this room to make a more interesting ceiling. Probably my favorite room to just relax in. So this is the original electrical box for the house. They just penciled everything in here with all the locations, the large stairway, living room, laundry, even the furnace downstairs. Doorbell had its dedicated fuse. Really cool how they did this. We were trying to figure out what to do with it. My designer, Mira, and I were thinking, we've got to put a diorama in here. Somehow we came up with the mice were running the show, and it's pretty much the cutest thing here. This is our backyard, and it's had a huge transformation. So when the house was originally built, there was roads on either side of the house. So the house really has two front entrances. I think the more appealing entrance is the one facing the park because you have the beautiful stained glass right above the entrance that kind of gives it a lot of character. So behind us is the knot garden. Past that is the rose garden, and behind the fence is a new hobby of mine, which is beekeeping. I'm still learning, but it's really fun, and I've been getting honey for about two years now. It's the third year now that all the plantings are in, and it's really now just starting to take off. It's almost, to me, like a meditation garden. All the wildlife making noise. It's just so beautiful. We built the greenhouse from the ground up. It wasn't here before. The moment that I saw this property, I thought, I got to have one. In the spot it is, it can be near the kitchen. We have a lot of herbs that we grow, vegetables that we grow. It's so amazing. To me, it's nice to be in a house that's one of a kind. It's such a labor of love for my wife, and I think every room shows the details and the effort she put into it, and I just think it's amazing. I hope that many, many, many generations of people can enjoy this home. The beauty of old homes. They were made with materials not available anymore. They were made in ways that are hard to replicate. It feels really great to make sure that they continue to exist. It's been an amazing project. I thought we stayed true to the history of the house. To me, it never gets old. Even though it's old.