April 23, 2003
Historic house reborn
Designers' Showcase April 26-May 4 at Hull House
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
The vision of Barb Rishel is coming together at a frantic pace this week.
Capping years of renovation work, historical research and painstaking restoration, the Wellington Inn will be open to the public during a series of Designers' Showcases held between April 26 and May 4. The nine-room inn and tea room is scheduled to open for business on June 1.
As the final days before Friday's Gala Evening event loom, an army of volunteers and workers swarm through the 12-bedroom, nine-bath, three-story home. Wielding paintbrushes and stencils, vacuums and dust cloths, the volunteers plan to have the place sparkling with all the furniture in place.
Rishel will be ready to showcase the Inn from the mosaic-tiled billiards room in the basement to the airy ballroom on the third floor. Though the grand opening will be bittersweet because her brother Ray Maleski, an architect from White Lake, died before the project's completion.
"We had a plan on restoring it, drawn by my brother," Rishel said. "He died at 55 and after that I was on my own."
The opening events and tours are the culmination of years of effort and persistence. Rishel likened the restoration quest to a giant jigsaw puzzle as the home, built from 1905-08 by W. Cary Hull, was put back together.
"It was like putting a puzzle back together because we had the original house plans," said Rishel, who purchased the property in 1999 and spent a year obtaining all the necessary permits.
"In the dining room, every bit of wood was taken down and refinished," noted Rishel. "There's a story in every room of this house."
Cabinets from one floor were moved to their original home in the girls' playroom. Original lead glass from the front doors were discovered in an upstairs closet so the design - still visible in the grime - was copied on the new windows.
Rishel also put in countless hours of sweat equity on obscure projects that were part of the process.
"Every night I would take a hinge home and scrape the paint off, it was an hour per hinge," she said of hinges on cabinets discovered on the second floor and moved to their original home on the first floor. "This house needed everything."
The house had been split into four apartments in the 1929, 13 years after the Hull family relocated to New York State with the family business, the Oval Wood Dish Company. Rishel and her workers removed four kitchens and restored the original kitchen and dining room. One exterior wall suffered years of water damage from the original clay barrel tile roof and had to be rebuilt.
Rishel is a stickler for details and insisted on accurate fixtures, colors and styles of every accessory, wallpaper, cabinet or window.
"Between 11 and 12 every night I was on E-Bay to find antique fixtures, from plumbing parts to towel bars to light switches," she noted.
Volunteers from the community and the Grand Traverse Pioneer & Historical Society helped with the effort. Numerous designers gave hours of their time to restore the home to its original splendor. They uncovered delights like the murals of little girls in sunbonnets working and playing in what had been the girls' playroom. These murals had been buried for decades under layers of paint and grime. A local artist patiently recreated them on the walls of the room.
Rishel has been determined to make the restoration historically accurate - gaining the respect and admiration of the workers and volunteers along the way.
"Barb has tried to restore it completely to the original condition," said Tom Booth of Kingsley, who along with his wife helped with the wallpapering and interior design. "She's very talented and she won't settle for nothing less than perfect. It is she who brought everyone together here."
The Designers' Showcase 2003 will be held April 26-May 4 at 230 Wellington Street. The Gala Evening event will be April 25 from 7-10 p.m.; admission is $40 per person. Tours are available on April 26-27 and May 3-4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; admission is $15 per person or $12 per person in advance. Special group events will be available by appointment during the week of April 28-May 2. All proceeds will benefit the Grand Traverse Pioneer & Historical Society.
Tickets are available at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center, The Muffin Tin, Wilson's Antiques and the Antique Company East Bay. For more information, call the Grand Traverse Heritage Center at 995-0313.