Old home repaired, returned to family

WASHINGTON — Linda Richards, very young at the time, moved from East Jefferson Street to a house on South Iowa Avenue in 1947, where she would grow up with her sister, Jeanette. Their parents had bought the place for a cool $15,000.

She eventually moved out at the age of 19, and the house eventually sold to another family circa 1989, then another owner after that, who went on to rent it out, then put it back on the market after years of use.

By that point, the building was in disrepair. A garage beneath the house had a too-low ceiling to accommodate modern vehicles, years of use had shifted the frame such that windows and doors on one side couldn’t open, a factor that also cracked and crushed bricks under the uneven weight. Demolition seemed likely, and the property was listed for about the price of an empty lot.

Shortly after Jeanette’s death in May of 2022 her son, Perry Libe, drove by the old house, where he saw a ‘For Sale’ sign. Knowing the tie to his family tree, Libe bought it and started seeking out contractors to repair the property.

“I think I had a void in my life,” Perry Libe said. “I thought I’d check into it, just to see, because I’d spent a lot of time there … I just didn’t want to see it pushed in a hole.”

  Buy Photo

One problem was clear early on: the house, built in 1916, would need new bricks in order to repair anything without leaving holes in the outside wall. But few manufacturers made them with same patina anymore, having evolved from a century of new coloration and mass production techniques.

A look around town for other buildings with similar construction dates revealed the not-yet-demolished Smouse House. It was completed in the same summer, and, in a stroke of luck, used exactly the same color of bricks as the family’s home four blocks south.

After a conversation with real estate developer Jeff Hazelett — who owned the Smouse property until its sale to make way for Scooter’s Coffee — Libe was given roughly 1,000 bricks to patch up the home.

“They just matched,” he said. “If I wouldn’t have washed them, you’d never know. You can see them less and less every day, they get more blended in.”

Reconstruction wasn’t just limited to the building’s exterior. Repairs involved tearing out walls, adding new doorways, installing new plumbing, fresh paint and corrections to the structurally questionable basement.

Still, the home kept several of its original features, including the fireplace mantle, antique buffet cabinet, radiators, and a built-in window-side bench Richards used to sit on to use the telephone.

  Buy Photo

“Our goal was to keep it as original, but still updated,” Libe said. “Everything since the house settled had to be re-squared and did back up. It’s amazing that they did it … it’s a long ways from a new house, but we saved it, I can tell you that.”

Community members seem to agree. Libe said he couldn’t work outside without someone walking by and telling him they were glad to see “the Choat House,” as the corner landmark was known the family’s 40 years of living there, making a comeback.

All said, construction has taken around 14 months, but is almost finished at last. Richards said she was initially shocked when she first walked into the renovated home, although it’s grown on her since then.

“I like it a lot,” she said. “It’s beautiful, I love it, and my mother would love it, too.”

While the original plan was to fix up the property and flip it, that changed when a particular buyer approached Libe before it went on the market: his son.

Richards said she was excited about that as well.

“I’m thrilled, keeping it in the family is awesome, it just broke my heart to see it go down, down, down,” she said. “And it broke my sister’s heart too, we talked about it a lot … we felt like it would never get put back into shape at all.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com