“Painted Lady “is a term applied to a house built in the late Victorian era, dressed in paint-box colors with contrasting trim. It can also be the name of a butterfly with orange and brown wings and dark markings resembling stained-glass windows.
Painted ladies — the houses —- are iconic in San Francisco, but the style is now migrating to the Clinton area.
The largest is a three-story apartment house on the corner of Ohio and Third Street that is being renovated by Bryan and Beth Goodson of Blue Springs, Mo. The Goodsons are examples of people who are taking advantage of Clinton’s affordable real estate market by investing their time and money to bring older houses back to life.
They bought the apartment house earlier this year, sight unseen, Bryan said, along the house next door, for a total of $60,00. Their plan: to resell, or flip, them.
They also bought the former Bloomers Flower Shop one block down, on the corner of Ohio and Second. That house is already a gem, with two stained-glass windows imported from Bolivia in 1892, Bryan said, and a wrought-iron fence imported from England the same year.
“The Bloomers house is number 20 on the list of historic buildings in Clinton,” he said.
Over on the 900 block of South Main, Pastor Thomas Waller picked up a Victorian-era painted lady at an estate auction for $50,000. Since he bought it as a hedge against retirement last September, he’s put in a lot of elbow grease, repainting everything on the outside. In the “before” photo he took, the exterior is a light brown. He painted it a cheerful yellow, and refreshed the red and green decorative trim and orange panels on the woodwork around the bay window to its original brightness. Fish-scale and triangular shakes above the window add to the look.
“It was built around 1900,” he said of the house.
When he asked the sellers what was under the decades-old carpeting in the central room, which probably was the dining room, they didn’t know, he said. When he pulled it up, he found planks of white oak flooring, which was not in good shape, but refinished to a golden glow. The front room with the bay window also had white oak flooring under the carpet, he discovered. It was glued down, so he had to scrape it off.
In the kitchen, he removed 3 layers of linoleum to reveal pine flooring, which he refinished to match the flooring in the other rooms. He painted the walls and kitchen cabinets a dark blue-gray and glazed the faux tin-tile ceiling, which now resembles real tin.
“I want it to look period,” he said.
He also removed the drywall nailed over the transoms and is replacing it with glass. The house already had ceiling fans and new glass in the sash windows, he said, along with its original wide baseboards.
Thomas has lived in Clinton for 20 years and considers Missouri home, he said, although his father was in the military so the family moved numerous times. Until he retires, the restored house will be a home for his daughter, who is doing the landscaping, and his granddaughter, 12. Canine pets Squeaky and Truman guard the shady yard from behind a fence next to the garage, also painted yellow.
Thomas is pastor of Clinton Church of the Nazarene next to the elementary school, and now lives in the parsonage.
Another ‘Painted Lady’ in Clinton is the historic cottage on the corner of Washington and Allen, across from the Allen Street Baptist Church. It’s the home of James Beasley, whose grandfather told him cottages of the type date from the same era as the courthouse, 130 years old.
“It has a hand-dug basement, and stone benches on three sides, ” he said of the rock slabs serving as the foundation. “The brick sidewalk also shows how old it is.”
James said his grandfather knew all about the history of cottages of that era built in Clinton. James kept his eye out for one to go on the market, and bought it to live in, doing the work himself.
The decorative woodwork around the windows and the porch was already there, he said, but he added the bright coat of red paint, contrasting it with white trim and the charcoal-gray exterior.
Last week, the apartment house on Third was revived by a new coat of paint.
“It’s called cobalt blue,” Beth said. “It’s a nice color that really pops.”
So far, the five-plex, which was white with black shutters, has been rewired and re-roofed, and new windows installed. Inside, the drywall has been replaced or repaired, Bryan said, and each apartment is receiving new flooring and kitchen appliances.
“It was rough when we got it,” Beth said. “ People have told us it looks a lot better.”
The renovation of the house they bought next door was within two weeks of being finished, Bryan said, when a fire destroyed their work and sent them back to square one.
The couple has bought houses to flip in Kansas, Arkansas and across the Kansas City area, Beth said, and are looking for more houses to renovate in Clinton. They generally find projects from people who bring houses to their attention, she said.
“Nothing scares us,” she said. “We’ve taken on hoarder houses, houses with raccoons living in them, and houses with cats.”
Renovating old houses takes vision and perseverance — plus paying for one of those big trash bins, called a roller, and having to fill and empty it six or seven times, Beth said, even for a small house.
But the return, both to the renovator and the community, is rewarding.
