“It took work, but Haddonfield home feels right” |
| It took work, but Haddonfield home feels right Posted: 10 Oct 2010 12:15 AM PDT Posted on Sun, Oct. 10, 2010 By Jen A. Miller Toni Bonnette was driving her son's teammate home from track practice in 1995 when she saw a man put a "for sale" sign out in front of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house on Kings Highway in Haddonfield. Unlike its neighbors, which are cut up into apartments or offices, this was a single-family home. Bonnette stopped the car and grilled the man with the sign. "Are the ceilings on the ceiling and the floors on the floor, and do the toilets flush?" she asked. The house had some other problems: no central air conditioning; cracked and bowed plaster ceilings and floors; a tangle of electrical systems relying on extension cords. But "yes" was the answer to Toni's three questions, and soon the Bonnette family was moving out of Cherry Hill and into the circa-1857 home. It's a house with a history, something the family of five craved. Since meeting at West Chester University, Toni and Rick Bonnette have always lived in and restored historic homes, including one of the oldest houses in Oceanport, N.J., also built in 1857, and the pitched-roof Cape in Cherry Hill where they lived before their move to Haddonfield. The land for their current house was part of the John K. Roberts farm, and the house was built by William Shinn, a Haddonfield builder. The house passed through a series of owners who kept it as a single-family home until 1945, when it was broken up into apartments, like many dwellings on that stretch of Kings Highway. In 1971, Jeanne and Don Jackson bought the building. They restored it as a single-family home and closer to the way the structure had looked when it was built in 1857. "They should be given all the credit," says Toni, an adapted-physical-education teacher in the Lindenwold School District. (Rick is a financial adviser with the Bonnette Ross Group of Merrill Lynch.) "People almost knocked the house down many times, and [the Jacksons] didn't allow it," she says. The Jacksons' efforts notwithstanding, when the Bonnettes bought the house, there was a lot of work to do. Their goal was "perpetuating it for the next 100 years," Toni says. Doing that required a complete overhaul of the bones of the building. The electrical system was replaced, new I-beams were added to the basement, and new heating and central air were installed - a big relief. The first week the family lived in the house, there was a 100-degrees-plus July heat wave, and everyone huddled into the master bedroom, which then had the sole air-conditioning unit. "It was so hot, even the plaster was sweating," says Toni. The Bonnettes rebuilt the staircase, and the exterior has been restored twice. A small balcony with French doors was added to the office, formerly a bedroom, "to bring the outside in," she says. Hardwood floors throughout the house were restored - except in the kitchen, where the floor had been covered in "layers and layers of linoleum," Toni says. There, they used hardwood flooring re-milled from the wood of a whiskey mill. One of her favorite changes was practical: A side-by-side washer and dryer were installed in the master suite - no hauling clothes up and down the stairs. The longest project involved the plaster walls, which were replaced over the course of nine years by Ed Capozzoli, who does exterior and plaster renovation. "He has painted every inch of this house," Toni says. "This was a house meant to be used," she says. "I don't care where people go. There's nothing sacred here." With that in mind, the formal dining room was turned into a living room. And the front sitting room has a pool table, with a cover that turns it into a dining table whenever the Bonnettes need one. Every Christmas until four years ago, the family room - painted a deep brick red to match a carpet that came from Morocco - was converted into a dining hall for their holiday feast. The celebration topped 130 people before it got too big and was moved to Grace Church in Haddonfield. Antiques and items from Toni's family are used throughout the house - she grew up in the Gettysburg area- but the decor is neither cold nor too formal. Photos of the couple's children line the staircase on what is known as "the brag wall." Their two 12-year-old dogs - Ozzie, a chihuahua mix, and Missy, a mutt of indeterminate lineage - lounge in the kitchen, which still has the Amish-made cabinets the Jacksons installed in the 1970s, though they've been repainted with burgundy paint from Holland to give the room a warmer feel. Every year, the Bonnettes host a Fourth of July party that draws about 200 people. (Toni hand-makes 300 doughnuts that morning.) They are, after all, situated right along the parade route. There is one thing Toni worries about: If the couple should move to a smaller place now that their three children are grown and out of the house, who would host the party? Says Toni: "I hope the new owners would be ready for all the people who'd show up." Is your house a Haven? Tell us about your haven by e-mail (and send some digital photographs) at properties@phillynews.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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