Uncovering a home's spirit.

Byline: Laura Porter

The small ladies' trunk fits perfectly against the wall in Leslie M. Leslie's upstairs bedroom, where it holds sweaters. Dating from the mid-19th century, it was the first antique she ever bought - at an auction with her grandmother when she was only 10 years old.

Her love of history naturally drew Mrs. Leslie to the 280-year-old home on two acres that she and her husband, Walter, bought in Westboro 12 years ago. Built in 1729 as a Colonial farm, the home once sat on a land grant of 100 acres and has operated at different times as an apple orchard, a working dairy farm, and a bed and breakfast. Two families, the original farmers, the Grouts, and the McTaggarts, each owned the property for well over 100 years.

"People ask me if there are ghosts," she says. "I sense a lot of good spirits. There have been a lot of children born in this house."

Capturing "the flavor of the old house and its sense of history" has been at the heart of the Leslies' work to restore it. After they moved in with their two young sons in 1998, they discovered clapboards from the 1800s hidden beneath the white vinyl siding and black shutters. It took them two years of stripping, repair work and painting to restore the Federal-style facade, now in a historic mustard yellow. They also removed the foundation plantings and restored the Colonial fence.

Elements of the house reflect different aspects of its history. It was originally built with a Colonial center chimney, which was torn down at the turn of the 19th century and replaced with two chimneys in the Federal style. Only one of them now remains, with a fireplace in the formal parlor at the front of the house.

The inside doors date from both the 1700s and the 1800s. The older doors, on the second floor, are "much thinner, not even an inch thick." The floorboards, too, tell a story of three centuries. In the front hall, pumpkin pine dates from 1800 while in the two parlors on each side of the front door, one formal and one more casual, new oak circa 1900 contrasts with wide King's pine from the 1700s.

The challenge for the Leslies was to determine the period they wanted to emphasize. In choosing hardware, style and colors, they have essentially restored the house to the early 1800s.

"We wanted to live here as well as restore," Mrs. Leslie says. "Otherwise, you create a museum that no one else is going to buy."

Much of the work they did was cosmetic, but even so it was substantial. When they moved in, all of the rooms had wallpaper that hid the old, cracked walls. After they removed it, Mrs. Leslie patched and repaired the horsehair plaster. To do so, she sanded, put on an oil-based paint to seal the walls and added two coats of latex paint.

They also redid the kitchen, in this case compromising historical accuracy for modern living. By removing a wall and reconfiguring the orientation of an earlier kitchen, they created a comfortable open plan. At one end, wooden kitchen cabinets mimic furniture, and the west-facing window over the stove brings in afternoon and evening light. An island bisects the kitchen area, making it especially easy when the Leslie sons, one now in high school and the other in college, are home.

"We have hosted I don't know how many boys' lacrosse and soccer parties here," says Mrs. Leslie. "Last spring, we had 46 lacrosse boys. There were kids everywhere, on the stairs, all over the house."

At the other end of the eat-in kitchen, where the hearth would have been in the original house, Walter Leslie shifted the interior wall, installing a replica of a period paneled wall and a fake hearth, using old bricks discovered in the basement. The resulting look "brings it back to what it would have been," says his wife.

Although the couple has done much of the work themselves, they have relied on certain experts for help. "When you have an old house," says Mrs. Leslie, "you have to find people who love to work on old houses - they're tricky." To that end, they brought in a roofer, a plumber, an electrician and a soffit expert who did "such a beautiful job that the soffits look original," she says. "He took each piece of old wood down and scribed it and recopied the moldings. Meanwhile, I was below, painting and scraping."

Her involvement in an informal association of owners of old homes has been helpful in finding specific artisans and resources as members share ideas and information. So has her general passion for history. A former attorney, Mrs. Leslie is a board member of the Westboro Historical Society. She runs "Change Over Time," the local history program in the public schools done in collaboration with the Historical Society. Every third-grader spends a week immersed in "three centuries of the history of the town" using a question-based curriculum that she continues to revise.

She is an inveterate collector, from the fans she displays in an upstairs bedroom to old maps of New England that cover the wall in the second floor hallway. But that doesn't mean priceless antiques. Instead, she is a firm believer in the found object. "Pieces need to find the right home, the right place," she says.

The formal front parlor, her favorite room in the house, is a case in point. In the corner sits a small secretary that a friend gave her, a book of laws from Colonial Rhode Island open on the desk.

She found mirrors on the side of a

street in Framingham and refinished a piano stool she discovered at the dump in Westboro, removing its garish floral fabric to expose a horsehair and straw seat. A red chair once owned by her grandmother matches the piano that was her great aunt's, uniting the belongings of two sisters.

"They all fit in this house," she says, "and now they can have another life."

Living in a house of this vintage allows for "a lot of funky things," she jokes. An antique drying rack hangs over the up-to-date washer in the laundry room. She collects antique toys and weathervanes, feather trees and wooden spools.

The holidays provide an excuse to "bring the collections out" and to incorporate natural decorations from the property, where the Leslies have added and encouraged native plantings in a variety of settings, including an arboretum and a rock garden built by Mr. Leslie.

Last December, they offered their home as part of the Westboro Woman's Club holiday tour, welcoming the opportunity to support the organization. (Story, Page 56.) Mrs. Leslie wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to "decorate on a budget" by using "natural products." Every year, she saves dried seed heads and flowers from the many plants in her yard, and the holiday decorations vary accordingly. "It's all about what looked good in the garden and what I remember to save," she says.

For the tour, she filled the house with greenery, in swaths, wreaths and baskets, both upstairs and down. Huge pine branches with pine cones hung over the front door. Dried achillia in coronation gold and birds' nests (with tiny birds) added color to greens draped across the mantle. A handmade boxwood tree incorporated boxwood branches, moss and hydrangea, the base wrapped in birch bark.

Borrowing a professional design she had seen, she found a small metal sleigh at the dump that fit perfectly on top of the coffee table in her parlor. She spray painted it gold and filled it with white flowers from the supermarket, taking "a fancy concept and bringing it down" and in the process giving a nod to the role Westboro once played in the sleigh industry.

In the stairwell, which she completely refinished just in time for the tour, Mrs. Leslie wrapped a Federal-style garland made from dried magnolia leaves around the banister.

"I hot glue gunned them together and added white pine and round pine cones. People didn't see that it took me 25 hours to build!"

In the dining room, decorated in blue and silver, she tucked silver-sprayed spiky Queen Anne's lace into dark blue-green juniper on the sideboard, where it looked like fireworks. Fragrant cinnamon sticks floated in a small Colonial punch bowl, surrounded by magnolia leaves and nuts and the oranges that would have been a delicacy two hundred years ago. Blue and silver Christmas balls from the 1940s dangled from the pewter chandelier, the dining table below set in the fashion of a Federal formal dessert table.

"I learned a lot when I began to research," she says. "They would remove the linen from dinner and reset the table, stacking cookie trees and adding glassware."

To replicate the practice, she made butter cookies and stacked them on blue transferware plates from the 1800s. "People felt so comfortable in our home that they ate the cookies!"

For the past two years, the Leslies have set up their Christmas tree in the kitchen, in front of the fake hearth. Twelve years ago, they purchased 25 pines from the Worcester County Conservation District. Fresh cut from their grove every year, the tree provides "a breath of Christmas and lights in the cold, dark environment of December."

Leslie and Walter Leslie, too, have given warmth and life to this 18th century home, cherishing its odd angles and uneven floorboards, the stories it has told and the stories yet to be divulge.

ART: PHOTOS

CUTLINE: (1) Leslie M. Leslie walks from her Westboro home, built in 1729. Elements in the house reflect three different centuries. She and her husband, Walter Leslie, have essentially restored the house to the early 1800s. (2) The Leslie house is filled with greenery for the holidays, both upstairs and down. Pine branches, pine cones, dried flowers and seed heads come from the yard. (3) Leslie and Walter Leslie with their dog, Bandit, in their Westboro home. Says Mrs. Leslie: "We wanted to live here as well as restore." (4) Mrs. Leslie collects antique toys and weathervanes, feather trees and wooden spools. The holidays provide an excuse to "bring the collections out" and to incorporate natural decorations from their property, where the Leslies have encouraged native plantings in a variety of settings.

PHOTOG: PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM RETTIG

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Publication:	Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA)
Date:	Nov 22, 2010
Words:	1735
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