May 2006 update:

Leisa had very cool visitors this morning.

We got back from San Diego yesterday evening, and she took today off to wash some of the over fifty pounds of clothes she packed for the six day trip. (I now know how Ginger and Mrs. Howell had so many clothes for just a three hour tour.) The doorbell rang and when Leisa opened the door, there were two men there. They said they used to live here and introduced themselves as John Kerr Jr. and younger brother (Leisa didn't recall the name when she was telling me this later). Leisa gave them a tour of the house and John Jr. told her what it used to be like. Very cool!

They told Leisa they'd get some old pictures of the house when it was new copied and send them to us. As soon as I get them, they'll be up here.

And in re-reading this history page, I realize that I need to do a final update, as this still talks in the future tense about what we're going to do with the remodel. Except for bookshelves in the office, the remodel is pretty much done.

July 2006:

We went on vacation at the end of June, the day before we left, an envelope arrived in the mail, containing this photograph

The photograph is taken on the west side of the front porch, facing east. On the left is John Kerr Jr., and on the right is his sister Caroline. I'm guessing this was sometime around 1930. The house in the background is four houses down from us. Not only is Roberta's carport gone, but the house is gone, too! I'd like to see some pictures of the house back then. One thing they mentioned to Leisa during their visit was that the house was natural brick back then.

And now back to what I wrote in October, 2002. (It's hard to believe I started on this page, and that we started doing the remodel nearly four years ago!)

The house at 1525 West Willetta was originally built in 1930 for Phoenix fire captain John Kerr and his wife Mary. It is located in Phoenix's FQ Story historic district. The historic district is named for Francis Q Story, who oversaw the development of  the neighborhood. In addition to his turn as a real estate developer, Story is known primarily for his work in the citrus industry. He was the first to brand citrus, selling oranges under the "Sunkist" logo.

The neighborhood is bounded on the east and west sides by Seventh Avenue and Grand Avenue, and on the north and south sides by McDowell Road and Roosevelt. The neighborhood was developed in sections, with the first homes being built near Seventh and Roosevelt, starting in 1920. Primary development occurred between 1920 and 1938.

The Kerr House originally consisted of five rooms: a living room; kitchen; two bedrooms; and a bathroom. Did I mention that the Kerrs had two kids, a boy and a girl? All four of these people in a 673 square foot house. Sometime after it was built, another room was added at the back of the house. A cellar was also added underneath this room at the same time. No building permit was issued for the addition, so we're not exactly sure what year it was constructed. This brought the total square footage to about 900 square feet. The demolition guys hated the cellar. They found that the concrete had been reinforced with two car axles and an old bedspring, as well as many other random pieces of steel. It took several days and many day laborers to bust the cellar apart.

One of the distinguishing features of the house is the rolled copper roof. The roof is one of twenty or so of that type in the City of Phoenix. It is original to the house, and based on searches of copper roofs on the internet, we can anticipate it lasting at least another thirty years. Although it might last another thirty years, though, if a dust storm rips off part of it, the closest place I can find that installs this type of roof is a company in Scotland.

The Kerr family lived here for several years before Mr. Kerr "quarrelled with [Mrs. Kerr] and left the home of the parties without any cause and told [Mrs. Kerr] that he would no longer live" there and never returned. Or so Mrs. Kerr's divorce papers claimed. (I've got a copy of the paperwork, filed July 30, 1941, No. 7729, and need to scan it and put it up here.) She continued to live in the house, with Mr. Kerr retaining a one-half interest until such time as the home was sold. Mr. Kerr must have been doing well with the fire department, as his child support order was about eighty  dollars per month, and they were driving a three year old car. (When I started working at child support enforcement twelve years ago, the order amount for a person making minimum wage was about $55 per month, and that's 1990 dollars. What would eighty 1945 bucks be in 2003?)

(2006 note: We went on the Willo Home Tour last spring. One of the buildings on the tour was the old firehouse at 7th Ave and Encanto. I was looking around in the firehouse and noticed a picture on the wall of several firefighters, one of whom was John Kerr. I need to go back with a scanner and get a copy of it for the website, as well as see if they have any more pictures of him.)

The house had a succession of owners following the Kerr dissolution, each of whom attempted to "modernize" it. You can still see the small holes in the wood floor where carpet tack strips once were. In their right mind, no one should want to cover the beautiful hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpet, but that apparently happened at one time. The majority of the house, though, retained its original character. The windows, for example, are the original wood, never replaced with sliding aluminum windows. The kitchen cabinets are original. Reluctantly, though, they're going to go in the remodel. The 1930's kitchen just doesn't work in 2003. There's almost no counter space, very little storage space, no dishwasher or disposal. We want to make the kitchen a functional space, where it's fun to cook, rather than continually shifting stuff around to make work space.

I purchased the house in 1997 from Charlie and Gina Collins. They had done a lot of work on the house, bringing it back from decades of abuse. They told me that when they bought it there was Contact paper on the kitchen walls and linoleum on the kitchen floor. How disgusting is that? They said that a previous owner had opened up the wall between the living room and what will be our TV room. They put the wall back, along with a french door. They did a great job bringing the kitchen floor back, only to have us cover it up again with Pergo. Part of the floor is concrete, part is wood, and there's no way that we could think of to achieve a uniform look on the floor. We reluctantly decided to cover the entire kitchen in Pergo, leaving the dining room, TV room, and living room in the original hardwood. (2006 note: we found out that the house had settled in the kitchen, and that there was a two-inch variance over the twelve-foot run of the floor. In order to fix it, the floor guy had to add oriented strand board over the existing floor to help level it.)

We're bringing the house into the twenty-first century, wiring it for high speed internet and satellite television. For seventy years, the sole method of cooling was evaporative, which is nice in May and June, but a demon in July and August. We'll be installing a new whole-house air conditioner, gas heater, and evaporative cooler. We'll also be updating the kitchen. It currently has about four square feet of counter space. We'll be knocking out the wall between the kitchen and dining room and adding a peninsula, which will dramatically increase the amount of counter space, as well as the amount of cabinets. It'll tie the dining room and kitchen together, making food service easy. We'll be adding a dishwasher and a garbage disposal, as well as a new modern gas oven and microwave. We won't be adding a SubZero refrigerator, though.

Outside, we'll be adding a barbeque island, with seating for four. There will be a gracious, vine-covered patio for dining near the island. This'll be great in the summertime--cook outside and not heat up the kitchen. There will be a covered deck on the back of the house. (Not right away, though, as the dilapidated carriage house dictates that the deck can only be about eight feet deep, since it can't be any closer than six feet to the garage. Once we tear down the garage, we'll put up a more spacious deck. We'll be tearing out the chain link fence and replacing it with block. We've torn the old carport off, and will be adding a new carport that will match the existing roof line. It, too, will be vine-covered. (2006 note: the old carport was sagging and had a spongy feel when you walked on it to get to the swamp cooler. It was at the end of its useful life. The best thing about putting the new carport on is the amount of light it allows into the living room in the morning. The carport does not have a full roof, just slats, and light can get through, as opposed to the old shingled carport that was like a cave. It's a bright living room now, as opposed to before, when the east windows were under the old carport.)

We didn't want to consume the small backyard with house square footage, so we are putting the master suite in the basement. We'll also have a small sitting room and wine cellar in the basement. By the time we're done, the 673 square foot house will have grown to around 1800 square feet.

We're also landscaping the property. When I moved in, there was a big ole mesquite tree in the front yard. In the spring, it drops this vicious yellow pollen. In late summer, it drops about sixty gallons of bean pods. In December, it drops about a million teeny leaves for about three months. December is also the rainy season, so all the little leaves are tracked into the house. It grows about six feet in radius per year, all of which has to be trimmed back. The branches have wicked sharp thorns. In all, it was a nasty tree. It's gone, now, soon to be replaced with something that never loses its leaves and is much prettier. The backyard boasted a Palo Verde tree, which was removed several years ago. The only other features were a palm tree at the back of the lot, a horrible oleander hedge, and a spindly little tree of unknown type in the middle of the yard. These will all be gone. Around the backyard, instead, we'll have a ficus hedge for privacy. We'll have a tree covering the dining patio, as well as planters and flowers and cool stuff. (2006: see the Landscaping page for what we eventually did.)

Eventually, we'd like to demolish the ramshackle garage and replace it with a new guest house. And hopefully, space (and budget) permitting, we'll put in a pool, too.

A word about the writing, and the cast of characters

When the web page reads "we're" bringing the house into the twenty-first century, "we" means a couple of things.

And when I say "under our direction," "our direction" wouldn't be possible without our architects, Bob and Terri Briggs. Mark recommended them to us. On meeting them, we found that they lived one block south and one street over from my house. That was cool, as they had a sense of the history of the neighborhood, and were sensitive to the detail in an old house. Working with them while we were coming up with the plans was great. They were very responsive to our requests. We'd discuss something, and they'd come back with revised plans containing exactly what we visualized. 

Roberta and Georgia are the next door neighbors. Roberta, to the east, was generally considered to be the mellower of the two neighbors. Week four proved that wrong. We are now having differences of opinion concerning MY property.

Georgia, to the west, is about ninety, and complains about everything. When I first moved into the house in 1997, I was watering the lawn. Some of the water was running down the gutter. Georgia came to my house and told me there were "special regulations" in the historic districts concerning water running down the street. I lowered the flow rate of the sprinkler and contacted the City the next day to verify this. Her claim was bogus. She has a thing about water in the gutter in front of her house. She apparently sued the City years ago and made them bust out the dip in the sidewalk to access her driveway and put in a new one. The reason: too much water puddled in front of her drive. She also complains about the oleanders the previous owners planted so they wouldn't have to look at her ghetto back yard.  When I moved in, she had three 1970's era Lincolns on her property--one in the drive, one parked on the rocks in the front of her house, and one on the dirt in her backyard. She'd get out there on Saturday morning and grind and grind and grind on the starters, until one of the fleet would belch to life. Who wants to listen to or look at that? No wonder Charlie planted hedges. She doesn't like the fronds on my palm tree. They might touch the roof of her car--if she was still driving. I don't feel like spending fifty bucks to trim the thing. She doesn't like the volume at which I play music. Yadda yadda yadda. Am I a crappy neighbor, or does she just complain too much? Don't care. I don't listen anymore. And now, in February 2003, she's complaining that my construction is causing the cracks in her 50 year old concrete block walls. Don't think so. They're actually banging on my house and I don't have any cracks.

And one last curious thing: when the Kerrs bought the house in 1929/30, they originally owned Georgia's lot. Then they bought this house and sold Georgia's lot back to the developer. I'd like to know the reasoning behind that.

Explore the site to learn more. And if you have any questions about stuff I've taken for granted, don't hesitate to ask me.