1 Year -- Making History

That's right. It has been one year since we started construction. All in all, I have to say it has been fun. There have definitely been some bad times like the flood and that windy night I was up all night because of the flapping tarp. But all-in-all, it has been worth it. We love the result. We have totally changed this house and how we live in it. As part of our 1-year celebration, I thought I'd take a little walk down memory lane and document some of our home's history.

The only thing we really knew about our house before we started this process was that it was built in 1937, was 1955 sq. ft., had 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 baths, and the previous owner was named Teresa Smith (we still get her mail sometimes). We decided to start by going down to the Utah State Historical Society building and doing some research. We found this early photo at the Historic Preservation Research Office.



Then, after searching microfilm for an hour or so, we found the original permit to build our house. It was taken out in October of 1936 by C. L. Schettler. The builder was J. E. Jensen and it looks like it cost $4000 to build. According to the inflation calculator I used, that's about $62K in today's money.

We then searched the phone directory books and found the following lineage:

Dates	Owner's Name	Occupation
1951-1970	Christian Leopold Schettler	Salesman for E.B Wicks Co. / Chief Department County Recorder
1970-1987	Mrs. Hilda K Schettler	Widowed (Christian L) Retired
1987-1989	Paul W. Fine	Unknown
1989-1991	Gordon Heninger	Clinical Therapist
1991-1998	Jeffrey Heninger	Unknown
1998-2004	Theresa A Smith	Unknown

The other place I've looked for info has been the Salt Lake County Assessor's website. There I found the following two pictures. The second one was taken the right around the time we bought the house (March 2004).


The last item I found on that website was a drawing of the dimensions of the house -- never knew the back porch was only half the width of the house. Currently it spans the entire back of the house.

We're still trying to find out more info about our house, but this is a good start.

Here's a picture of what the house looks like today:

Our contributions to the history of this house can best be summed up by a look at the layouts before and after we started this renovation. The house is now about 2825 sq. ft. (including the balcony), has 5 bedrooms (one of which is part of a master suite) and 3 3/4 baths (when we get the master bath finished). The following table shows the basement, main floor and new upper addition before and after:

Before	After

As far as what we've done on the house lately goes, the answer is not much. All that we've done is add a few fun things to the master closet: some hooks for belts, a tie rack, and a nifty jewely organizer. I need more earrings.