Flipping out

I wore a dress the day I met Nancy Gilbert. I made my fiancé put on something nice, too, because Nancy and her husband, Tim, would be screening us as potential tenants.

We were on a plane when we learned we’d made the cut, and wound up gasping and hugging each other like newly pregnant people, or ones who’d just won a car and maybe a lifetime supply of Coors Light. Our prize was the mere permission to rent a smallish, 1926 Chicago bungalow in Old Southwest Reno. And we couldn’t shut up about it, from its stained-glass windows and built-in shelves to the sense of welcome that wrapped all around us when we walked through the front door.

Nancy, for her part, wasn’t dressed up when she emerged that first day to show us around. She was in painting clothes with a fine layer of dust, and joked that Tim—a fifth-generation Nevadan who works in gaming software—was her “cleaner half.”

A construction lawyer by day, our landlady spends her free time restoring vintage, often neglected homes “to the period,” researching them at length and adding authentic touches that she’s traveled abroad to find, when necessary. Tim handles tasks such as bookkeeping, and ensures infrastructural elements (think wiring, plumbing, and all manner of unsexy, expensive, crucial things) are modern and up to par. And as ever, they credit contractors with all the work.

The 50-something couple and their team have renovated 10 Old Southwest houses so far, and that’s a tally Tim and Nancy are apt to count aloud, pursing their lips and reminding each other of the various addresses. The list includes a 1930s English Cotswold cottage with a Cathedral window and English-style garden on Joaquin Miller Drive; the Spanish colonial-revival number right next door to it; and a mid-century abode on Bret Harte that they recently sold after just a month on the market, with an asking price of more than $400,000, according to real estate websites.

Faithful restoration isn’t cheap, and it’s hardly simple. So why pull out all the stops to make a virtual time capsule?

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Nancy says without hesitation.

“Prior to World War II,” Tim adds, “Reno was a very small city, and [the Old Southwest] area is one of the last intact pre-war neighborhoods. There are just a few golden blocks, so to speak, that have these bungalows. … Homeowners there could command the top architects, and no expense was spared.”

Tim has warm memories of visiting his great aunt. Frances Humphrey was a longtime Reno High School teacher, and “going to her house was always an experience; the light switches were pushbutton, and all the woodwork was pristine.“

In short, these are anti-McMansions.

“They deserve to be preserved,” says Debbie Hinman, a tour guide and writer for the Historic Reno Preservation Society. “They're a part of our history. When you walk into one of [the Gilberts'] houses, it's not as though you're walking into a house that's been remodeled. It's as though you're walking into that house when it was brand new.”

Hinman was so taken by the pair’s work, in fact, that she featured them in the society’s newsletter after they overhauled Casa del Rey—the bona fide title of their Spanish-revival house on Joaquin Miller. It’s adjacent to their own Greystone Castle, another property name they didn’t make up. The two were model homes when the Newlands Manor area opened more than 80 years ago.

“What they look for is a distinctive home—a home with good bones that doesn’t need major renovations,” Hinman says. “In the case of Casa del Rey, it was sort of demolition by neglect, which is what we call it when a house sits for a long time without anybody living in it, or anybody caring for it. It starts to deteriorate.”

Such buildings often become too costly to fix. And out comes the wrecking ball.

“A few more years, and [developers] would have bulldozed it,” Hinman says of the petite casa, which stands at just over 1,000 square feet, “and stuck some stucco monstrosity on that lot.”

Then along came the Gilberts, who are now so smitten by the house and its neighbor that they joke about adopting a his-and-hers setup.

“I would live at Casa del Rey,” Nancy tells Tim, not unkindly, “and you could live at Greystone Castle. And we could meet for lunch.”

You’d never know it, but they don’t actually live in the Old Southwest now. Their place in Caughlin Ranch has more space, plus a sprawling backyard for three giddy daschunds. They were in their target neighborhood when they married, though, in 2003, and plan to return.

Their shared passion comes with challenges, but none too serious.

“As a couple, they seem to be very, very happy—I know that,” says one of the Gilberts’ hired guns, who asked not to be named in this story. Their subcontractors are always local, he adds, “so as far as the economy, that’s tremendous,” with as many as 14 people working on a given house at one time.

“We have our moments, like any couple,” Tim says, “and it’s part of the creative process. If we hated it, and if it just put a horrible strain on our marriage, we wouldn’t do it. We each have a set of skills we bring to the table.”

Thanks to time constraints, however, “our exercise schedule has fallen by the wayside,” he says with a laugh. Ditto their nights and weekends. “We have made some sacrifices in order to do this, but we’ve felt the opportunity was right.”

Real-estate prices are steadily climbing, of course, as the market continues to heal.

“When they were down, you could pick up a really nice little brick bungalow for $170,000 to $180,000,” recalls Hinman, who recently saw a small one on Gordon Avenue go for twice that much.

The Gilberts tend of brush off talk of finances, though, and certainly spare no effort to finish a job.

“I’ve never seen a client do their homework [so well],” says their hardwood-floors expert, Jeff Punya. “There’s a lot of TLC and time spent to get things … most clients would rather just go to Home Depot and pick up a light fixture, versus a light fixture built in 1956.”

Nancy’s one to take a mover by the elbow, actually, and have him study her favorite fixtures long enough to promise not to break them. She even tries to limit herself to paint hues from each building’s construction era, using sites like Pinterest (and pronouncing it “pea-interest”) for color research.

One wonders why she rents to anybody at all.

“People who want to live in these houses are not run-of-the-mill tenants,” Tim offers, flatteringly enough. “They really like the neighborhood and they really like the décor, so we don’t have any problem recruiting great tenants.”

The arrangement isn’t for everyone, mind you. Ask where you can mount multiple TVs and/or satellite dishes, and you’re probably out of luck, with no skin off the Gilberts’ noses. Their standard lease even bars the use of candles.

In turn, renters get to “live 60 to 80 years ago,” Nancy says, and “experience the house with all the features it had originally … but at the same time, have flushing toilets—”

“—and plumbing that works,” Tim interjects, and “electrical [wiring] that won’t short out your appliances and computers, and heating and cooling that works.”

Works for me.