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After pampering and pacifying and preserving their last “baby,”Scott McCombs and Rick Anderson gave it up for adoption.
“I just started bawling,”McCombs remembers.
But after regaining his composure, “I just threw my rabbit in the Mercedes, stopped by Wendy’s to get him a salad and came over”to welcome their new addition at 120 Fulton St.
McCombs and Anderson, who have been known to restore a few of the city’s old and historic houses, didn’t realize, though, that their new addition at 120 Fulton would pose a bit of a challenge for them.
The “adoption” process started off fairly painlessly when Susan Norvell, who works at the pair’s Sidewalk Deli, “tricked”them into looking at the 116-year-old house when it was for sale.
“By the time we got off that afternoon, she had (Realtor)Martha Hawkins waiting on us,”Anderson remembers. “She was like, ‘I knew they could get you guys to come and look!’ ”
They wanted to investigate the house, which started out as a single family structure and then was transformed into a duplex, four apartments and, finally, “dormitory-style living for 12 men in a halfway house.”
“There were three rooms and a little house in the back we hadn’t even seen when we made the offer,”Anderson says. “We made a blind offer just to take it off the market so no one else would get it.”
No one else got it. The house went on the market one Thursday morning, they put in an offer for it that afternoon and closed on it the following Friday. Simple.
But even after they bought it, they couldn’t see the entire house for about six weeks because tenants were still living in it.
“The guy who was in charge of the house would call us when somebody else would leave, and then we could see the room we hadn’t seen yet,”McCombs says.
Then what seemed to be good thing turned out to have happened at an inopportune time. The house they were living in on Long and Bank streets sold in a mere five weeks.
“So instead of us having six months to do what we thought we were going to be able to do, we moved into (a house) with almost no floors,”Anderson recalls, referring to the hole in the middle of the first-floor hallway.
“From the basement, you could look up through the room above it, up to the attic — the entire center of the house!” McCombs explains. “And in the mornings you’d get up and there’d be animals in here … where Susan’s and Ed’s (the Norvells, now their next-door neighbors) dogs and cats would have crawled inside the house in the middle of the night.”
And though heating the 5,000-square-foot house with a huge hole in the middle of the hardwood floor was clearly a challenge, they had to face the unique interior decor.
“You can’t imagine … everything was nicotine yellow!” Anderson says. “The floors, walls, ceilings, everything!”
The two presume that the men who’d rented rooms in the house — since they had to forgo all other recreational activities — came home after work, sat in front of the TVand smoked.
“They couldn’t drink or smoke anything else anymore, so they had to smoke cigarettes,” Anderson says. “And having 12 guys here, they probably weren’t real big cleaners, either.”
Along with smoke, grease seemed to have been absorbed into the walls downstairs. One of two kitchens was in the room McCombs turned into his library.
He points inside the room where there are cozy chairs, shelves covered with books and baubles he’s collected over the years and wide windows that line the walls.
“This was a hellhole in here,”he says. “There was a sink, range and refrigerator there, and there was so much oil and grease on that radiator, I don’t think anyone had cleaned it.” McCombs’ mother, he says, spent a week doing the dirty work.
One of three staircases leads from the library to the second floor where the bedrooms are. It’s still a bit of a maze upstairs, where corridors lead to what seems like a hidden bathroom or bedroom.
The master bedroom has broad windows that look out over the street, and the long main bathroom is now decorated in deep reds and golds, to complement an Asian theme.
Around the corner from that, Anderson points out, there used to be a washing machine and dryer near what was a “death- trap commode” which had a 12-inch drop to its side. They removed the bathroom and made closet space.
Near it is the bedroom of Falon, McCombs’ youngest daughter, a suite complete with a private bathroom and office space for work she brings home from classes at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.
“One good thing about this house is that the kids were old enough this time, so they could tell us what they wanted us to do,”Anderson says. They were also “thinking bed and breakfast”when they redesigned the second story.
The “salvation”of the entire floor, Anderson says, is the charming all-cedar closet that was completely empty. Anything they needed to store during renovation was put there. All they had to add was a light bulb.
Back down another staircase, and visitors are led to the wet bar, a warm and comfortable area accented with eye-catching paintings. A few steps beyond is the elaborate, high-ceilinged kitchen-sitting room, an area that was once two rooms.This is Anderson’s favorite room.
“I wanted a huge kitchen, and Scott told me, ‘If we buy the house, we can have a big kitchen.’ ”
Plush couches face sliding doors at the far end of the kitchen. Tables topped with candles, pictures and McCombs’ cat, John Scott, surround them. In the center of the kitchen is a wall unit that hides an entertainment system, including a TV which pulls out and swivels to face the loungers on the couch.
In the middle of the kitchen is a bar topped by a racy red “runway” — which friends tease them about — where the family sits for dinner. Underneath is the dishwasher, which matches the industrial oven where McCombs and Anderson do their personal and professional cooking.
“I wanted the professional oven, but it’s the darndest thing to clean!” McCombs says.
But that’s not to say that when they’re cooking they can’t enjoy family entertainment:The TV that pulls out from above the refrigerator makes sure no one misses a scene.
“Everyone can be here at one time; it’s one big room,” Anderson says. “Someone can be cooking dinner, someone can be doing homework, someone can be reading the paper. We’re not in each other’s way, but we’re all together. “
Through the kitchen door is the formal dining area, (“where nobody sits,” they admit) which faces an extravagant view of the fountain behind First Presbyterian Church and the house-length porch where McCombs and Anderson sometimes sit to relax and unwind.
Atop the dining room table are items that represent the international tastes of the twosome: French chargers sit on antique rice bowls with American-made linen napkins in African napkin holders.
That same multicultural flavor resounds throughout the house. On the kitchen wall hangs a semi-gallery of African masks that complement the red bar top, accented by Asian-style ornaments.
In the library are safari-type scenes, the result of Anderson’s fascination for elephants throughout the years. Persian rugs line the floors, French-style paintings hang on the walls. And, oddly, the styles do not clash or detract from the flow of the decor.
“If you take the best of what each country has to offer and put it together, it’s all going to go well,”Anderson says.
McCombs and Anderson agree they “got the last good deal on this street,”an old house where “no one prominent ever lived except for the first family who owned it.” The house now falls under the guidelines of the Historic Salisbury Foundation, although McCombs says they’ve had a few instances when they had to stand before the board to make an addition or renovation.
“The Historic Salisbury Foundation does have a few people who like to ask, ‘Why do you want to do that?’ They’re true preservationists,”he says.
Anderson, however, thinks they’re a bit “too traditional.”
“They want it to be the way it was 100 years ago instead of adapting it for the way it needs to be today. And Ithink there’s a big difference there. I think we need to keep all the good ’ol history stuff, but we need to make good use of it.”
There are still a few things left to be done to the house, such as painting and molding work, as well as the “little house”in the back, which they plan to turn into a guest house with a courtyard.
“We don’t expect it to be perfect,”Anderson says. “That’s the good thing about having an old house — you don’t have to have perfection.”
“I would never move into a house with the floor thing again,”McCombs says. “Unless you have a lot of money, you have to do it yourself. But that does help you appreciate it more. Once we got started on a project, we just had to make sure we didn’t have to hire someone to come out and fix our mistakes.”
For the past nine months, McCombs and Anderson have been nurturing the house they affectionately refer to as “The 13th Step” (“one step more on the 12-step plan”). Now, with the exception of a few ribbons and bows here and there, their labor of love is over.
“Now, when we see an old house, we look the other way,” Anderson says, “Our baby’s born!”
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