On Golding Road The restoration of a landmark home

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Five years ago, Joyce Jackson found her dream house while surfing the Internet from her New York home. She clicked on the pastoral picture of a spare, clapboard house standing in a rolling field of apple trees, sugar maples and a riot of pink and purple wildflowers. The Georgian-style country house, overlooking a quiet lake, was in the far-flung Maine town of Perry.

Jackson and her husband Patrick Mealey had spent their honeymoon tracing the Maine coast on U.S. Route 1 in 1997. Jackson, a 33-year-old photojournalist, and Mealey, a 53-year-old painter and carpenter, were ready for a lifestyle change. The couple missed the way the Hamptons used to be – a more rural area with potato fields, fishermen and an artistic community – before they and many of their friends got priced out. They began to contemplate a move Down East. Way, way Down East.

Driving up Golding Road in June 2001, past fields of lupine and over a clear little brook, Jackson and Mealey fell in love with the Golding family homestead as the yellow house came into view over the hills. The couple had pretty much made up their minds already.

“It kind of looks like a block of cheese,” described Mealey with a laugh, speaking from Long Island, where he and Jackson have been renovating a friend’s home in Sag Harbor. “It’s reminiscent of a Georgian country home. Very austere and simple. We just loved it.”

Built in 1893, the homestead was originally home to Nathaniel and Mary Golding. Their son Robert Golding and his second wife, Jane, lived in the house for decades until Robert’s death in 1969. Then the homestead passed to Virginia Golding Pottle. Her relatives sold the property to the New York couple in 2001.

“It was painted beige with green trim originally,” Mealey continued. “And then the story is that Virginia [Golding’s daughter from his first marriage, to Mary Pottle] wanted white, but the guy they hired to paint it bought yellow because yellow paint was on sale. It was yellow for 30 years. It hadn’t been repainted in 40.”

Mealey and Jackson, who now run a home renovation and cabinetry business from Perry called Fine Artist Made, knew that they had bought a “fixer-upper.” What they didn’t realize was that the homestead would become a four-year project in which they did exhaustive research into the Golding family and restored the kitchen and bathroom to look like they had in the 1920s and ’30s.

Mealey and Jackson’s efforts have paid off, garnering a spot on television. Their renovated and restored Maine home will be featured on Home & Garden Television’s “If Walls Could Talk,” at 10 p.m. Sunday.

“Patrick’s brother Tom and his wife, Diane, came to visit, and they absolutely loved the place. They told their daughter Karen, who’s a hairdresser in Denver,” said Jackson. “The production company that does ‘If Walls Could Talk’ is located there, and one of the production assistants on the show came in to have her hair cut. Karen told her about the house, and eventually she found our contact info and asked us to be on the show.”

Meet the Goldings

After acquiring the Golding homestead, with their cat, Lily, in tow, Jackson and Mealey moved in and largely emptied the place and stored the contents and bric-a-brac in a back room. A year later, Mealey and longtime Perry resident and neighbor Bill Kendall began sorting through all the things and came across an old military uniform. They knew instantly that the uniform had belonged to Robert Golding, a veteran of the Spanish-American War.

Kendall’s mother, Leona, who was related by marriage to the Golding family and who died several years ago, had spoken with Mealey and Jackson at great length about their new home’s former occupants.

“We’d walk next door, and Leona would give us her famous homemade doughnuts and sit us down and talk,” Mealey recalled. “She gave us all these old pictures, and we knew that was the uniform from one of the photos [of Robert Golding]. It was instant recognition. He was in the Spanish-American War, in 1898, in the Maine Artillery. That was the exact same jacket that was in the photos, with the brass buttons and red epaulets. We have it in safekeeping now.”

Robert Golding, they learned, was a hunter, farmer, woodsman and Maine guide. He also was remembered locally as a storyteller and poet. Their interest piqued by the historical finds and stories, they started digging further.

“Before Leona Kendall died, she introduced us to Emma Golding, who married Rob’s younger brother James,” said Mealey. “She’s 103 years old now. She’s amazing.”

The last surviving Golding, Emma Golding shared more stories with the couple. They learned the property had been a working farm, producing apples, maple syrup and honey. The Goldings raised chickens, sheep and cows. A tiny cemetery, where five generations of Goldings are buried, is a short walk from the house.

Jackson and Mealey were able to obtain a tape of Robert Golding’s stories of Down East life recorded by Thomas Archibald Stewart, a wealthy businessman from New York, during the 1930s and 1960s. Golding was Stewart’s guide on hunting and fishing expeditions, and his humorous yarns and poetry are part of the collection at the Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine.

Renovation and reinvention

Besides delving into the Goldings’ lives, Jackson and Mealey remodeled the old homestead, which had been gradually falling apart for 30 years. And they did it in a rather unique way: not just to reflect their own tastes, but also to reflect the history that has accumulated there over a century.

“We have a lot of antiques and folk art and historical things, but we also like the clean lines of modern furniture,” said Mealey. “It’s kind of a fusion.”

Large, abstract paintings are scattered throughout the house. The couple had the house completely rewired and plumbed, but restored vintage fixtures in both the kitchen and bathroom. The claw-foot tub is original, but the toilet – “70 years old and it still works beautifully,” Mealey says – was imported from a friend’s house in Sag Harbor.

“They thought we were crazy,” said Mealey. “But it looks great. It’s authentic.”

“They put in Bakelite patterned brown light switch covers, which were really handsome, so we kept them,” said Mealey. “We really loved the brown pattern so much that when we go to yard sales and antique shops we look for similar ones to clean and install.”

“We added a 1949 Florence stove, which used a combination of gas and oil,” said Jackson. “They used it to heat the house. The actual original stove was out rusting in the apple orchard, so we found one to match. We spied one outside someone’s house and asked them about it, and then we got it.”

Then came the porcelain kitchen sink, with two drains, which was restored. They tried to refurbish most of the old wallpaper, but some of it was in such poor condition it had to be stripped and replaced.

The couple’s favorite find was from Emma Golding herself.

“She had this old tin bathtub that you can carry around, that they used to use before indoor plumbing,” said Jackson. “We saw it hanging in her garage. It was the original tub they used in the house. She was going to throw it out, but she let us have it. We hang it up now.”

Living history

There’s still more work to be done – especially the garage built in the 1920s – but Mealey and Jackson’s house-restoration philosophy is reaping rewards. Their business has started to take off, with major projects completed on houses in Dennysville and Calais.

Mealey and Jackson have no plans to open up their house to the public. It’s their home, not a museum. But Mealey’s cabinetry and furniture are for sale through Fine Artist Made, and they’re always taking offers for other homes to renovate.

“We’ve done some work elsewhere, but our house has taken up every free minute that we have. We’re always working on it,” said Mealey. “Learning about who the family really was became part of the renovation project. It’s about finding out who lived there, who they were, and the lives they lead.”

Joyce Jackson and Patrick Mealey can be reached at 853-9504. Visit their Web site at www.fineartist made.com.