Del Ray Home Returns to Its Victorian Roots

The Del Ray house at 103 W. Monroe Ave. has seen some changes through the years. It was built in 1915 as a painted wood Victorian, remodeled mid-century to adopt a Georgian-style brick facade, then returned to its Victorian roots in the 1990s. It was that restored Victorian character that attracted Joy Deevy when she saw it during a real estate brokers’ open in 2005.

“I’m not easily sold on houses. I’ve seen so many...there has to be something special,” said Deevy, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. “But I fell in love with this one because it reminded me of my grandmother’s house in Bluefield, Virginia.”

Joy Deevy asked Tom, her husband of five months, to take a look at the blue Victorian with wrap-around porch, and he liked it. "It had a lot of character, and a lot of potential to make it our own,” he said.

After buying the house, the couple learned the restored Victorian had been featured on an episode of HGTV’s now-defunct “Old Homes Restored” in the early 2000s. That television show outlined some of the home’s history.

The four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home has three finished levels that total 2,372 square feet. The first floor has a sunny living room off the foyer, and a dining room with a wood-burning fireplace and a door to the porch; both rooms have oak flooring. The eat-in kitchen, with granite countertops, red pine floors, and French doors leading to a rear deck, had been updated when the Deevys bought it, but the couple replaced the appliances. 

The second floor has three bedrooms, and a third floor is comprised of the master bedroom suite. In 2007-2008, the couple redid the master suite, taking space from a sitting room on the third floor landing to enlarge the master bath and create a second laundry area.

“We did not change the angles of the roofline on the third floor, we worked with them,” Joy pointed out. “A lot of Del Ray homes are being redone to the point of losing their original character, but that has definitely not happened here.”

Joy and Tom have added some personal touches to the house. Unbeknownst to Joy when they moved in as newlyweds, Tom, whose day job is working with computers, is also a carpenter with a large selection of woodworking tools. And he was eager to use them.

One of Tom’s projects was to remove the shoe molding and replace it with a custom molding he created using a router. “I wanted something more detailed and dramatic,” Tom noted. He also crafted rosettes for above the exterior doors and windows that matched the rosettes topping wall moldings inside the house. 

Tom also designed a new picket fence to wrap around their .21-acre, corner lot, and had his design implemented by a professional fence-maker. He then recreated that picket design in moldings that he placed below the rosettes on exterior doors and windows. Those details were noticed by a production company that approached the Deevys about filming the home’s fence and porch for a commercial.

As with most Victorians, the Deevys’ home has an abundance of unusual angles, ceiling heights, and charming features. Doors—inside and out—have transoms; the top two floors have the original heart pine flooring, and ceilings on the first and second floors reach 9.5 feet. The original, ornate floor grate remains in the foyer, along with a storage bench built into the side of the stairs.

Yet, with all of the home’s appealing features, Joy’s favorite is almost pedestrian: The original wood stairs leading from the foyer to the second floor. “I love the way they tilt,” she said of the time-worn steps. “And I love standing at the window on the first landing and looking onto the yard. I do it every morning.”

The couple recently contracted to sell their Monroe Street home.

“There’s a lot of character and space here,” Tom explained. “But we need more. I want a space to set up my woodworking tools so I don’t have to keep taking them in and out of a storage shed every time I use them.”

Although they are leaving, Joy and Tom hope the Monroe Avenue Victorian will continue to be restored. Soon after they bought the house they found, in the shed, a pair of large, wood-paneled pocket doors wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s.

“We think they are original, that they were used as pocket doors in the opening between the dining and living rooms, “ Joy said. “Someone took them out, and we are hoping that someday someone will put them back in."