BRINGING NEW LIFE TO THE FLOYD NICHOLS HOUSE

Jeff and Lisa Rehbine had two requirements when they were looking for a new home in the fall of 1996: 1) the house needed to be at least 100 years old and 2) it needed to have a rentable apartment. While driving down Grand River Avenue on the way to look for houses in South Lyon, they found both in a Queen Anne style house built in 1900 in downtown Farmington. The house was a diamond in the rough with peeling paint, ugly shutters and overgrown landscaping. Lisa’s 100-year-old grandfather called it a “cudya house”, according to the winning article Jeff wrote for the Lee Peel Writing Contest in 2006, “the outside definitely had a ‘cudya house’ potential: ‘Honey, could ya’ live here and still love me?’”

FLOYD NICHOLS WAS A FRIEND OF GOVERNOR FRED WARNER

Jeff started researching the house’s history soon after they moved into their new home. He found that a local man, Floyd Nichols, had built the house. Floyd was born and raised in the Farmington area where his parents had a 180-acre farm. At 26 years of age, Floyd was planning to marry and built the beautiful Queen Anne home on Grand River for his intended bride.

Floyd began his association with Fred Warner as a young man, delivering campaign letters for the Governor’s second term campaign. Soon Fred Nichols was working for Governor Warner at his large dairy farm. Eventually, Nichols became secretary and treasurer of the Warner Dairy Company. He was a long-term friend of Fred Warner, living across the street from him and serving as pall-bearer for the three-term Governor Fred Warner’s funeral.

In 1901, Floyd Nichols married Grace P. Voorhies. At the same time, he was starting his long career at the Warner Dairy Farm. Grace and Floyd had one child, a boy named Hinman. Rehbine suspects the boy was the owner of a vintage 1914 Daisy No. 25 BB air rifle he found one day tucked above a basement wall. Nichols was an active and popular member of the Farmington community, serving on the school board for 25 years and city council for 15 years. He was a charter member of the Farmington State Bank Board of Directors, where he became Vice-President later in his career.

The Nichols remained in the house on Grand River until approximately 1945, when he moved to 33718 Oakland. This was the original home of Governor Warner’s daughter, Edessa, who sold the house to the Nichols. In 1952, Floyd Nichol’s wife, Grace, died. He soon remarried to a woman with grown children, Alice Macksey. He stayed in the house on Oakland Street until his death in 1958.

FRUGALITY AND SMART PLANNING REIGNS

When Jeff and Lisa purchased their home at 33728 Grand River Avenue, all of the original woodwork had been stripped from the home. What remained was narrow trim and baseboards that were completely inappropriate to the home’s period of construction. Although this had been a deterrent to the purchase of the house in the beginning, the Rehbines had resolved to restore the original beauty of the home at some point in the future.

The original single family dwelling had been turned into a duplex in 1969 by Lawrence Mayer, a local florist who owned the home and the two neighboring houses on Grand River. All three homes were converted to multi-family dwellings by Mayer. The Rehbines had purchased a single family dwelling converted to a duplex for a reason: income.

Years of thoughtful trash picking of discarded antique treasures and purchases at garage sales had left Jeff and Lisa with an accumulation of furniture and architectural elements for the nearly century-old house they would be calling home. They continued to rent out the upper level apartment of their home for ten years, allowing them to finance the rehabilitation of their home on Jeff’s teacher’s salary as their family grew by three.

Because there were no pictures of the interior of their home, the new millwork for the interior of the home had to be designed by the Rehbines themselves. They toured every Queen Anne home they could, whether it was high style or a middle class family Queen Anne. From these tours, the Rehbines gathered a collection of pictures and profiles to reference for their own use. Jeff selected and installed all of the millwork in their home himself- from baseboards to door trim, spindles to porch railings. He has now been enlisted by neighbors for projects on their homes.

As Jeff and Lisa started the rehabilitation of their home, neighbors, friends and coworkers grew interested in their project and started giving them architectural elements and furnishings to add to their collection. As one tours the home, they share stories of furnishings, chandeliers, windows and even a large column in their kitchen. Each item has a story, tied to a person, a building or a place, many pieces coming from Farmington area homes. Or in the case of some of the rear porch spindles, the story is tied to the inside of a wall! The end result is a beautiful home with the character of a century-old Victorian era home that has been rehabilitated with great care and consideration.

Early projects included completely stripping the clapboards of peeling exterior paint and repainting. At the same time, Jeff created the gable and dormer peak details: sunburst pattern with center drop pendant at the gable peak and fretwork with center drop pendant in the dormer peak. The sunburst design is carried over to the front gate at Grand River. A year later, he rebuilt the front porch with a hipped roof instead of the original flat roof which had created water damage for years. He created the spindlework, gable pediment and porch balcony himself.

The backyard was completely overgrown. Since the former owner, florist Lawrence Mayer had designed the landscaping with special attention to the trees thirty years earlier, Jeff and Lisa Rehbine decided to restore original landscaping early on. In the process, they found more

treasures that had been buried by years of neglect, including the privy of a nearby house. The beautiful gardens created by Mayer have been restored. The privy is now a Queen Anne style playhouse, built with left over architectural artifacts not used in the house, including leaded glass windows and a Dutch door.

Later projects included a rear addition to the home which created a library with a barrel vaulted ceiling framed by Jeff Rehbine. The addition also added a needed second full bath to the circa 1900 Queen Anne house. The final major project was to convert the duplex back into a single family home. The house layout had already been completely changed during the 1969 split into a duplex. So Rehbine needed to rearrange the floor plan of the existing rooms on the main floor and create the room layout from scratch on the second floor. He was able to create three bedrooms as well as a sitting room, rear balcony and full master bath. The conversion took a full year of Jeff working full-time as a teacher and nearly full-time as a carpenter at night and on the weekends.

After nearly 17 years of hard work, TLC and dedication, Jeff and Lisa Rehbine now have a beautiful, noteworthy single-family home which stands prominently and gracefully in the center of the Farmington Historic District.

Written by Jena Stacey, Farmington Historical Commission.