Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 22, 1990 TAG: 9004230410
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY HOMES EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The homes are refuges for their owners and represent years of planning by people who wanted to carve out a way of life and a place that draws family members back home again and again. The Shively and Phillips homes are among the six houses and three churches open in the Fincastle area for Historic Garden Week in Virginia. The tour takes place Wednesday.
The stone portion of the Shively house was built in 1766 by Bryan McDonald III, a descendant of a family that came to America in 1691 from Scotland. A brick addition was added in the 1830s.
When Ed and Joyce Shively first saw the McDonald house it was empty, overgrown with weeds and generally run down. "You had to be a little bit crazy to have bought it," said Joyce Shively. Ed said the place was "a little bit better than a barn."
The first job they had to tackle was building a road into the property.
After seven years of Ed's nurturing while he, Joyce and three children lived in a trailer on the land, the home was finally habitable in 1981.
To bring the 3,200-square-foot property back, the Shivelys modernized heating and plumbing systems and constructed an addition for kitchen and baths. They re-exposed ceiling beams in the stone portion and salvaged stone from an abandoned chimney on a nearby farm to rework their chimney, which was leaning about four inches off the vertical.
When it was possible, they used old materials for replacements. Ed salvaged boards and shelving from a Kress store in downtown Roanoke to repair flooring and to use in doorways to the latest addition. Doors came from a house torn down on Franklin Road in Roanoke.
The Shivelys, natives of Franklin County, have decorated their home with a combination of new and old pieces and many items made by Ed and his father. Ed found the plans in a magazine for his reproduction of a 1745 American Colonial corner cupboard for the dining room. He took the carcass of an old organ and converted it into a desk for the upstairs hall.
Ed, an electrical engineer with General Electric, said doing the renovation work, even hand-chiseling the ripple effect on the kitchen cabinets, was a joy. "I didn't do it for the end result," he said. "I'd relish the thought of jumping on something else."
Joyce just smiles at the idea of another project. She said her husband is a frustrated carpenter.
Fred Phillips is a frustrated architect, said his wife, Ferrel, but the vacation hours the banker spent sketching and resketching house plans paid off. Their weathered cedar contemporary home overlooks the Botetourt Country Club golf course and has views of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the front and of the Alleghany and Appalachian mountains from one side.
"This is our retirement home and we knew what we wanted in it," Fred said. Ferrel said the family spent years of weekend picnic trips in search of the right tract of land.
The couple always wanted to be in the country, but found it more convenient to stay in their South Roanoke home while the children were growing up. The same month in 1984 that the youngest of their four children turned 16, they moved to their new home, Woodsedge.
The Phillipses passive-solar house is surrounded by 14 acres of open and wooded land. Recently, a one-bedroom cottage was completed near the main home and has entertained its first bed-and-breakfast guests.
Ferrel is a member of the Mill Mountain Garden Club, which cosponsors the garden tour with the Roanoke Valley Garden Club. The Mill Mountain club promotes recycling and Ferrel regularly takes a 3 1/2-mile walk in her neighborhood collecting cans and bottles.
She said she gets "funny looks" from passers-by, but she and her husband are "devoted environmentalists," one of the reasons for their passive-solar home.
The house is a reflection of its owners from a kitchen equipped for a left-handed Ferrel to Fred's hideaway office up the circular stairs from the sleeping-wing corridor. The guest bedroom has a built-in crib for visiting grandchildren. In front of the kitchen fireplace is a seating arrangement of his and her wing chairs. The kitchen is a focal point for the Phillipses because both like to cook, Ferrel said.
They also preserve their garden harvest and enjoy it year-round, she said.
The house is divided into the living room, kitchen, sun-room area and a sleeping wing. The corridor to the sleeping areas also is a gallery of photographs of children, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Its centerpiece is a crib-size quilt made by Fred's mother, who used scraps from clothing Ferrel made for the children.
Throughout the home are furniture pieces handed down in their families and complemented by antiques acquired by Fred and Ferrel.
An oak side-by-side in a bedroom dates to 1890; a hand-carved walnut bed in the master suite is a family piece, circa 1840, the same period as a Dutch press that contains a "Forget Me Not" Early Depression glass collection from Ferrel's mother.
Also in the living room is a tavern table that Ferrel bought as a skeleton and had antique pine boards added for a top. The table frame had been used for hog butchering, she learned. A small round table beside a sofa formerly was in a shoemaker's shop and has the markings of its use.
Mantles and the front door came from a Buchanan house that was Confederate headquarters during the Civil War, Ferrel said.
Although homes have been standard on garden tours, Ferrel Phillips would like to see more emphasis on gardens and if the weather cooperates, visitors to Woodsedge should be greeted by deciduous azaleas in the unusual colors of gold and peach. The front lawn also features an English garden containing 700 plants.
by CNB