By JOSEPH KELLARD
As she lived this dream for six years with her husband, Kevin, and their young son and daughter, however, Danca gradually awoke to the nightmares that, she said, also came with the home, named the Terrell House after its original owners and considered by some to be the oldest farmhouse in town. The Dancas decided to put the home out of its misery and demolished it last month, though not without some heartbreak, both for themselves and some of their neighbors.
The couple did have an engineer inspect the 3,200-square-foot house to determine its structural soundness before they bought it. But Danca¹s love was blind. ³I remember sitting with my husband and hearing about all its problems,² she recalled, ³but I didn¹t want to hear it.²
While most of the neighbors knew of the Dancas¹ demolition plans, others were unaware. When one day they found their property converted to an empty lot, some questioned why they would destroy such a charming old home. Others were even up in arms about it. The couple is quick to tell them what it was like to live in an original Victorian, and that a similar replacement home is on the way.
³It¹s a lot of responsibility to have an historical house because people are questioning your judgments when you do something like knock it down,² Danca explained. ³The house looked fine from the outside, but you would have to live with it to realize the problems it had. There wasn¹t a builder that we spoke with that didn¹t tell us to do this.²
On entering the Terrell House, visitors stepped into an all-wood 30 x 15 living room, known in Victorians as a great room, with thick-paneled oak floors, wall paneling, a painted country-scene mural behind a dry bar, and a large stone fireplace. But the floorboards had large gaps and were seriously splintered, and the octagon-shaped terra cotta floor between the entrance and the living room sank at different widths.
While the best room in the house, the kitchen, had been renovated by previous owners, the worst was the U-shaped cellar, which Danca referred to as ³a glorified boiler room.² ³It was dark and dank with a crawl space, and we had things I never knew existed living there,² she said. ³I would never go down there unless I absolutely had to.²
One problem some residents find living in old homes is that they reflect the lifestyles of their times, and so while the Terrell House¹s living room and other downstairs rooms were spacious, the upstairs quarters clearly didn¹t conform with modern living. The hallways were tight, the doorways narrow, the bedrooms and bathroom were all small, and the stairwell had a low, watch-your-head ceiling.
The Dancas originally planned to expand the bedrooms and bathroom, but perhaps the house¹s greatest obstacle was the entire second-level floor, which sagged so much throughout that books had to be place under furniture to keep it from rocking or toppling. ³The steel beams that had to be put in would have had to go down to our basement, and so through our downstairs walls,² Wendy said. ³So everything I liked downstairs would have been ruined.²
Further, the Dancas had unending problems with uninvited guests, including termites, crickets, raccoons, ants, moths and mice. On top of this, the house had major insulation ills. Meanwhile, though the exterior had been redone in cream-colored horizontal siding with slate-blue trim, stenciling throughout, and a new roof, the biggest problem outside was the huge crack that ran through the cement slab front porch. To fix all the problems in the house, the Dancas estimated that it would cost less to start from scratch.
Before the demolition, they offered to donate parts of the house, including the highly popular designer front door, and they allowed the Oceanside Fire Department to run a practice smoke drill inside. While there, one firefighter claimed the gable, with its octagon window.
The Dancas now live in a rented home in Oceanside, as they await the construction of their new 4,700-square-foot Victorian. They expect it will be completed next summer.
³The style of the house keeps within the integrity of what Terrell may have built if he were alive now,² Danca wrote in a personal remembrance about her former home. Among its replacement¹s features will be a living room done up in Brazilian mahogany and a wrap-around porch outside.
³I feel bad that we took away a house that stood close to 200 years,² Wendy wrote, ³but I feel glad that my house may stand well after I am gone and will have a history of its own.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516)569-4000 ext. 287.
