INHABITING a fantasy

A bland old house, once home to musicians who were month-to-month, slowly morphs into a Victorian showcase born of its owners' imaginations.

- MAX DENZER

IT HAD BEEN A "BAND HOUSE" since the 1980s; one of those tired, featureless dwellings wedged between the bars and dorms of a northeastern college town. Each room was rented by the month to an aspiring musician; the common areas were an obstacle course of amplifiers, drum kits, and empty bottles. Upstairs, Goths flitted among bedrooms, a Grunge band resided in the dining room, while a reclusive Industrial composer lurked in the master suite. And this is how the current owners, Turner and Pherber, found themselves restoring it; the previous homeowner's band had broken up and she had moved away, leaving the rudderless coven blinking in the unfamiliar New England sunlight. Paperwork was drafted, funds exchanged, and for now, the house's legacy of a musicians' haven remained uninterrupted.

Built by a handyman, the modest house never had decent finishes, affording the owners a blank slate to create a scheme that one visitor dubbed 'Vampire Meets British Rock Star'.

The couple set about renovating it, room by room, as time and money allowed. "There was little to honor as far as the original fabric of the house," recounts Turner. "Aside from years of benign neglect, the modest house was built by a handyman around 1915 with little to nothing spent on finish details; materials came from the local lumberyard." This afforded the new owners a blank slate to create a scheme that a recent visitor dubbed 'Vampire Meets British Rock Star'.

For decades, the exterior was sheathed in aluminum, which upon removal revealed the original siding; economical triple-tab asphalt roofing hung in bands of grey and brown. Surprisingly, wooden clapboards had never graced the building. Winglets had been tacked onto the lower rake edges of the roofline at some point; the original porch had been remodeled into a cage of triple-track aluminum win- dows, now long missing many sashes.