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When she was a girl, Georgia Smith and her family would drive to Bar Harbor from Bangor on summer days. On the way, a stately Victorian in Ellsworth always caught her eye. When she looked at the dollhouselike home, with its white gingerbread trim, sweeping porch and widow’s walk, she wondered what it looked like inside.

“She used to wish she was a princess in the house, and now, she is,” Georgia’s husband, Tim, said recently as she heated water for tea in the home’s makeshift kitchen.

The Smiths bought the 1896 landmark – known locally as the Whitney house for the family that lived there from 1896 to 2004 – in October. But it wasn’t exactly the same as Georgia remembered it. The structure was in desperate need of a paint job and a new roof. Inside, plaster was falling from the walls and ceilings, and a leak from the widow’s walk had flowed down the ceiling beams, causing water damage on the lower floors.

Still, the graceful lines of the three-story painted lady, with its faded yellow and rust exterior, were enough to spark “This Old House” fantasies in even the most reluctant of renovators.

“We drove by one day and she said, ‘You’ve gotta buy me that house,’ and I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,'” Tim Smith said, laughing.

Georgia has a different take on the situation.

“We rode by and saw the for-sale sign. I just wanted to see it, that’s all,” she said with a sheepish grin. “Everybody knows this place, and we’ve always been interested in buying an older place and doing it up.”

Handyman’s special

The Smiths remodeled a year-round camp in Orrington before the Whitney house came on the market. The couple also had a house built to their specifications in Tim’s native England.

Georgia grew up in Bangor, and when the couple moved to the area, they opened the now-defunct Little Red

Rooster Antiques in Hampden. Given their background in building and antiques the house seemed like a perfect fit.

Then they moved in.

“The first weekend we were here it rained,” Tim Smith said. “What a nightmare.”

But they knew what they were getting themselves into. A new roof was the first order of business, and a new furnace the next. Still, 4,800 square feet of renovations is a lot to tackle.

“Some days you think it’s daunting, and other days you just think one jump at a time,” Georgia Smith said.

The couple are living in two rooms – one, which will become a study, is completely renovated. They stripped down the floor to discover gorgeous tiger oak. They cleaned and polished the tile fireplace and elaborately carved oak mantel. And they hung muted paisley wallpaper and matching heavy curtains. The other room, a living room, has been cleaned and painted, but more work remains.

The kitchen, though stripped, is functional. One set of pine beadboard cabinets needed to come down, but they’ve saved what they could, and they hope to bring up a slate sink from the basement.

“The living conditions are pretty good,” Tim said.

Better than it looks

Despite the initial leaky start, the house is in much better condition than it appears. The only structural damage came from the widow’s walk leak, and even that was salvageable. The woodwork – including the intricately carved crown molding, the heavy oak paneling that lines the curving staircase, the bull’s-eye molding around the doors and windows, and the original pocket doors – is pristine.

“Three or four couples thought about looking at the house but didn’t because of the outside,” Tim Smith said. “When you actually looked inside, you could see that most of it was pretty cosmetic. … I think we lucked out. I think a lot of people didn’t look.”

When they moved in, they found all the original house keys, rolls of wallpaper and Whitney family photographs, diaries and bibles. The servants’ paging system was still intact, though not operating.

Home with a history

It’s rare to find a 19th century home whose architectural integrity hasn’t been lost in “remuddling.” But the property remained in one family from the time the house was built in 1896 to 2004, when Elizabeth Whitney decided it was time to sell.

Elizabeth Whitney was born in 1945, and grew up in the State Street house built by her grandparents John O. and Henrietta Whitney. Her fondest memories of the house involve the horses she cared for and rode down the country roads and paths that surrounded the homestead.

The third floor, with its gabled roof, Palladian window and treasure trove of family belongings, captivated her young imagination. She was the youngest of three siblings and the only girl, so she had to keep herself occupied.

“I spent a lot of time up there, entertaining myself, dressing up and just imagining,” said Whitney, who now lives in Somesville. “I used to take my friends up there. I loved the attic.”

There was plenty to love – a grand, sweeping front room with access to the widow’s walk, and two side bedrooms that once were servants’ quarters. The best part? The rooms were filled with old clothing, papers and photographs.

“I always felt like my grandparents were still around,” Whitney said. “Lots of things they held on to and saved. My grandmother had a lot of beautiful clothes. My grandfather had a trunk of tuxedoes stored upstairs. That was really my way of knowing them, through their clothes and papers.”

Though Whitney never knew her grandparents, who died when her father, John J. Whitney Sr., was a teenager, the house and their belongings indicate that they lived in high style. John O. Whitney was a partner in Whitcomb, Haynes and Whitney, one of the region’s “last great lumbering companies,” according to historians Mark E. Honey and Edward Stern.

The elder Whitneys’ only child, John J. Whitney Sr., inherited the house in 1919. Later, he married Marjorie Jellison, and the couple raised their children there. When Marjorie died in 1980, Elizabeth acquired the property. Her brother Richard, her only living sibling, lives in the handsome white clapboard house across the street.

Elizabeth Whitney was able to keep up with the maintenance for about 10 years, but it was a huge home for one person. She tried renting rooms, but that didn’t go well. Add a personal illness and a failing furnace to the mix, and the house soon became too much of a burden. By the time she decided to sell, she was living out of three rooms on the first floor.

“There was a lot of interest. People were stopping by all the time [to ask if I would sell],” she said. “I wasn’t ready. I held on to the house much longer than I should’ve. A year ago, I really was ready.”

As she speaks of her family’s homestead, there’s sadness in her eyes. It’s getting easier for her to drive by when she’s in Ellsworth, but she has no desire to go inside. Still, she’s interested in what the Smiths have in store for the house, and she has good feelings about the new owners.

“I’m at peace with it,” Whitney said. “I’d done my grieving before. I really feel free and I realize it was just a big anchor around my neck. Even though I loved it, I look now and think it would’ve been much more stressful for me to have stayed there.”

A new era

The Smiths have big plans for the property. They’ve talked of turning the main house into a bed and breakfast, and opening an antiques shop in the three-story carriage house. For now, however, they’re focused on restoring what they can and renovating what they can’t.

“It’s 100 years old, but you’ve got to live for today, too,” Tim Smith said. “It’s 2005. We aren’t going to not use an electric range because that’s not what they used to use.”

If they can find an electrician, that is. The last one quit because it’s a bear to fish wires through the old plaster walls.

Georgia can’t wait to start decorating – they have a fair amount of Victorian furniture in their collection and they’re looking for more. And Tim’s excited about turning part of the third floor into his playroom, with a pool table, pinball machines and big-screen TV for football games (that’s the NFL, not soccer). Once they get a railing back up on the widow’s walk, that will be his retreat.

“The great thing is it’s big enough to sit up there and read a book and no damn fool can disturb you,” Tim Smith said.

They also hope to continue the Whitney tradition of lighting a Christmas tree on the widow’s walk.

Their dreams for the house are big, and occasionally, they wonder if it’s all worth it. Then they look around them and realize how lucky they are.

“Can you imagine it once it’s finished?” Tim Smith asked, sweeping his hand around the formal dining room and gazing at the woodwork, “when you have all these pocket doors open and people milling around?”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.