A treasure restored

The house at 504 S. Cedar St. in Nevada, Mo., was built in 1880 by John Clack. It now belongs to Jack and Shirley Ann Bastow, who have restored much of the home and have decorated it with historical pieces accenting the time period in which it was built. -Neoma Foreman/Special to the Herald-Tribune

The love of "old things" inspired Jack and Shirley Bastow and their son, Stephen, to take on an aging house and restore it to its former elegance.

The house at 504 S. Cedar St., in Nevada, Mo., was built in 1880 by John Clack. He built the four south rooms and reception hall. When his and his wife Delilah's only daughter, Katie Ann, became of courting age, they added rooms on the north in 1890. The matching parlors still have the sliding doors. The two bedrooms were built for the widowed "aunties." In 1940, the home was converted to apartments and remained so until the Bastows purchased the house in 1984.

"When we moved in to the house in the fall of 1985, I had a disgruntled teenager that wanted to stay in his old house where things were all neat and finished, and a husband that had to give up his double garage. It was a long, cold winter; even the dog didn't like it and would run off every time the doors were opened long enough for him to get out. We debated about selling it," Shirley Ann said. "Then the floods came and we had to fix the roof, so we started working in earnest."

The library is filled with books and lots of family photos. The two old ones on the wall are of Shirley Ann's great-great uncle and great-great aunt. The windows show their unique window treatment.

The original roof was covered with slate, but the cost of restoring it with the same material was prohibitive; so they went with composition shingles.

Someone had resurfaced the entire front so that it looked like all one house and had painted the bricks white. When the Bastows tried to sandblast off the paint, they discovered that two sides had really good bricks, but the other two sides were soft brick and the sandblasting destroyed them. They had to repair and paint the brick again.

They were unable to find windows that fit the house that were in any way true to the Victorian look even though they searched all over the United States. Out of other options, they went to Louisiana and bought cypress wood from which Jack made all of the windows for the house. The windows do not go up and down, because they had to be screwed onto the brick. "It's quite a chore to get all 36 of the windows washed," Shirley Ann said.

The windows presented another problem when it came time to put up curtains. Nothing fit. Finally, Jack made fret work for the top and they put Venetian blinds at the bottom and created a light and very pleasing effect.

The Bastow family spent five years getting their home to its present condition. They both had full-time jobs and worked late into the night on the house with their son helping all he could.

"Jack and Stephen both think the house is wonderful now, but it was a lot of hard work and you have to stay focused on your goal to keep relationships intact," Shirley Ann said. "I think it takes special people to rebuild an old house. You have to love old things, and when you finish, the repair is constant."

Nevertheless, because of lots of hard work and meticulous attention to detail, the house has been returned to its earlier glory and is a treasure for the family as well as for the community.