GEORGETOWN — Long before Cathy McNamara’s mountain cottage was her mountain cottage, it housed miners, jewelers and widows.
Built in 1871, a stately Victorian it is not.
What the 650-square-foot, one-story house lacks in stature, though, it makes up for in character.
Take the discovery when McNamara and her contractor pulled back the wall board during a top-to-bottom renovation.
Layer upon layer of wallpaper emerged — graphic Art Deco patterns, hand-painted florals, mural scenes, even newspapers dating back to the 1880s — peeling away like fragile onion skins.
“A lot of it just crumbled,” McNamara said.
What shards and fragments could be salvaged, she transformed into a framed collage that now hangs on her kitchen wall.
Behind the kitchen sink, the pair uncovered a newspaper advertisement for a McNamara Dry Goods Co. store at 15th and Larimer streets in Denver, a find almost too good to be true. She cut around it — through wall and all — framed it and hung it by the front door.
“It’s like that concept, ‘If only these walls could speak,’ ” McNamara said. “That’s what they’re doing. There’s dates in these newspapers.
“It throws you right back, and you can imagine what Georgetown was like in those days. It was bustling.”
That history and soul is what drew McNamara to Georgetown in the first place. The house she found, though, needed some work before it could truly become her mountain retreat.
McNamara bought the property in April 2013 for $90,000. The price reflected not a foreclosure, but the need for “TLC,” according to the online listing.
Over the course of seven months, the house was gutted from floor to ceiling, the contractor replacing just about every interior surface.
The result is an airy, thoroughly modernized space that belies its small square footage with a full-size, eat-in kitchen and room to sleep four to five people.
The key, McNamara said, is the vaulted ceiling in the living room and kitchen.
When she bought the house, the ceilings were so low that the rooms felt suffocating.
Now, paneled in light wood, they add volume to the spaces. The living room floors were also lowered to create even more space.
That had not been the plan initially, McNamara said.
“I was just going to paint the surfaces and replace the old carpet and have it be a super-funky, rustic cabin.”
But her contractor, Blaine McNeil, encouraged her to see what would happen if they lifted the ceilings. The decision, though it was messy and ultimately raised the renovation’s cost to $30,000, changed everything.
PHOTOS: View more images of Cathy McNamara’s mountain cottage
“Once we got the ceiling open, that was — all of a sudden — this huge inspiration,” she said. “I realized I wasn’t just going to redo surfaces. I was going to create a new house altogether.”
Abundant details honor the history of the place. A wooden wagon-wheel cog, unearthed in the backyard, hangs on a living room wall. A hammer, discovered under the floor in the home’s rubble foundation, can be found in the kitchen.
An antique cast-iron stove sits in the living room, disconnected for insurance reasons, but gleaming.
“Even though it takes up a lot of real estate, I wanted to keep it,” McNamara said. “I wanted to have little elements from before as much as possible, but a lot of the stuff wasn’t worth saving.”
The décor overall is eclectic and Bohemian, with a “mishmash” of family heirlooms and antique finds. That’s in contrast to McNamara’s modern, Asian-inspired City Park condo, where she spends her weekdays.
At the cottage, the bathroom was her first task, she said.
The flamingo-pink walls and décor had to go. In their place, an antique chest of drawers she found at a consignment store has been repurposed as a vanity. The clawfoot bathtub was restored with a lot of elbow grease.
Her favorite room, though, is the main bedroom, where she displays a vintage hat collection on one wall.
“I really love my bedroom, even though it doesn’t have the vaulted ceilings,” she said. “I can lie in bed and look out the windows and have views of the mountains.”
Her efforts will be on display to the public during the July 26 Georgetown House Tour.
Hers is one of seven private residences on the tour, joining the elegant Victorians that Georgetown is famous for, including the Bride’s House, owned by novelist Sandra Dallas.
Historic photos, provided to McNamara by the Clear Creek County Archives, show her cottage to be the only house on the block from 1874, right around the time the Georgetown schoolhouse was being built.
In many mining towns, cottages like the one McNamara calls home did not survive. They were either swept away by fire or torn down for materials, said Gregg Pederson, an organizer of the home tour for Historic Georgetown Inc.
“To have a house like this still standing is unique,” Pederson said.
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/emilierusch
BRIDES, BELLS AND BARONS
Numerous private homes and historic buildings in Georgetown— including the 1870s cottage owned by Cathy McNamara — will be open to the public today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. as the town plays host to the area’s annual home tour. Tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and students, free for children under 12. Purchase day-of tickets at the Gateway Visitors Center, off Interstate 70; the Community Center, 5th and Argentine streets; or the Hamill House office, 3rd and Argentine. 303-569-2840, historicgeorgetown.org
