“Oh wow, this is really bad,” Tam Pham recalled saying when she first walked into the 1915 home at 714 N. Beacon Street in Lakewood. The general contractor can’t say she wasn’t warned.
“Structure is in poor condition; do not enter,” the listing agent noted in MLS. “Significant amount of work would need to be done to bring property up to living standards. Please note: Broker and seller assume no liability for injury to prospective agents and buyers if they enter the structure. Property sold as is.”
This week on the Dallas Dirt podcast, Tam Pham, owner/founder of Steel Toe Stiletto, described the enormous obstacles she faced while renovating this Junius Heights home that sat vacant and deteriorating for years.
https://feeds.transistor.fm/dallas-dirt-hosted-by-candace-evans“The home was sitting on the ground; there was no foundation so it was very very structurally unsound,” Pham said, “and it was completely dark. There were holes in the wood floors and the roof had been leaking for probably a decade.”
The home had been poorly added onto over the years and turned into a rudimentary duplex. “We literally tore off an addition that somebody had scabbed together long ago,” Pham said.
But to make the home attractive for potential buyers, she would need to turn what would traditionally be a two-bedroom home with one bath into a three-bedroom, two-bath home. Ordinarily, adding square footage on the lot would be an option, but this Junius Heights home was located in a historic district. Pham was restricted to the original footprint of the home.
“I’ve always said I can create magic with just six inches, and we did that,” Pham said. “We created a 3-2 home by scooting one room to make it a little bit smaller. Thankfully these rooms were very big, so we were able to create a hallway and tuck in a hall bath.”
Pham’s perseverance paid off. Already on the City of Dallas Office of Historic Preservation’s radar, the completely renovated home was featured on several home tours and lauded as a win for saving old, historic homes.
“I think every old home deserved to be saved,” Pham said.
Find complete shownotes and a transcript from Episode 5 of Dallas Dirt:
Watch the episode:
