Atlantans Welcome Strangers to Their Kirkwood Home
Participating in neighborhood tour of homes requires lots of prep and planning
By C.W. Cameron
Photos by Jessica McGowan
June 19, 2008
As soon as spring arrives, brave Atlantans fling open their doors and welcome the city into their homes. Want a peek inside a renovated intown bungalow? Dying for a look past the hedges at a palatial Buckhead mansion? Wondering how you’d enjoy a mid-century modern or a 19th-century Victorian? There’s a home tour for you.
But what is it like to be on the receiving end? Are you good with hundreds of people commenting on your decorating style? Can your carpets, nerves and pets handle all those people crossing your threshold in search of inspiration? Are you down with providing fodder for the just plain curious?
Chris and Greg Wilkinson are two of those brave souls — people who open their homes to the public in order to benefit a good cause. Greg, 41, is a residential property appraiser, and Chris, 34, is an insurance agent who works with energy companies. Last month their home was part of the Kirkwood neighborhood’s Spring Fling and Tour of Homes. Proceeds from the sale of tickets go to support neighborhood projects like the Eastside Greenway, a series of neighborhood and linear parks.
Since buying their first home in Kirkwood in 1999, the Wilkinsons have been active members of the Kirkwood Neighbors’ Organization, the tour sponsor.
Five miles east of downtown Atlanta, Kirkwood first grew up along the railroad. Incorporated in 1899, Kirkwood had its own mayor and City Council until the citizens voted to annex themselves into Atlanta in 1922. Now, the east Atlanta neighborhood is bordered on the south by I-20 and sits between the Edgewood and East Lake communities. There are about 3,000 households in the neighborhood that is diverse in probably every way possible.
Chris is known as the neighborhood “cookie lady” and if you came to her house on tour this year you were treated to a kitchen buffet of five different kinds of homemade cookies. “It was just my way of welcoming everyone to my home,” she says. Tour goers left with ideas and recommendations for having work done on their own homes, and recipes. The classic chocolate chip cookies were the most popular, and the margarita cookies came in second.
“We had been asked to be on the tour last year, but the house wasn’t ready,” says Chris. “When they started planning this year’s Spring Fling, they asked us again, and we said, ‘Sure.’ We’ve gone on every home tour since the one in 1999 when we first moved to Kirkwood. It’s fun to get a sense of how people live, and in a neighborhood as bungalow-heavy as Kirkwood, it’s interesting to see how many different takes there are on this classic architectural style.”
If you’re one of those hosts who finds dinner parties are a great way to get some of those nagging projects done around the house, you’ll relate to the vision of a homeowner who’s just decided to put her house on tour.
“At first the date seems really far away, and you have all these ideas about things that would be great to get done before the tour,” she laughs. “But as the tour got closer, I decided that the house would be clean and the yard would be mowed, and I’d be happy with that. I did manage to hang curtains in the bathroom and hem the curtains in my bedroom.”
Part of what made life busy was that Chris went from being one homeowner on the tour to being the person in charge of the tour. “I had agreed to help with the planning, and it grew from there.”
She said the experience was worth it. “We ended up with 11 houses on tour. For those of us who open our homes, it’s a great way to meet our neighbors. We also have lots of people who used to live in the neighborhood come back and visit. It’s great hearing them talk about how the area has changed.”
Chris and Greg feel a deep sense of attachment for the neighborhood. She says, “A few years ago I was very unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. Our neighbors organized and someone brought us dinner every night for a month. Some were people we knew, and others were people we had never met before. That’s the kind of the community you want to be involved with.”
The Wilkinsons bought this home in February 2006. They were doing the “Kirkwood Shuffle,” a neighborhood phenomenon where homeowners move from one Kirkwood house to another. The couple renovated their first home themselves, one project at a time, one room at a time. “Greg runs his business out of the house, and as we were finishing we realized the house was too small to dedicate space for that. But it was really tough. We thought how can we leave now that we finally finished the kitchen?” Chris laughs.
Greg saw their current home when it was under contract to friends who own Kara O’ Brien Renovations. He says, “I came over to see it just to be nosy. I liked the location, I liked how big it was, and I liked that it had many of its original features. It took me a month to convince Chris to entertain the idea of buying this house.”
Agreeing this time that the renovation would be left to the professionals, the couple and their renovation team were insistent on saving as many original features as possible, and in finding old materials like columns and stained glass to incorporate into the house. They opened up the interior while keeping the original footprint and added a luxurious master bath in what was part of the old back porch. A stained glass window was custom made to fit into the front gable, and the kitchen was designed to showcase their collection of Fiesta ware. A little tweaking of the landscaping and they were ready for the home tour.
On tour weekend, family dogs Berkeley, Danny and Rex went to “Camp Grandma and Grandpa” for the duration, and Chris got out the cookies she had baked for her guests.
Sunday afternoon tour goers Laura and Brian McIntosh appreciated the attention to detail. Calling themselves “nosy neighbors,” they said they’d just bought a new Craftsman-style home in Kirkwood and were looking for ideas. “We loved the ideas we got here for built-ins,” Laura said.
That the couple is not afraid of color was obvious to visitors. The house exterior is painted a moss green, copied from a home in a neighboring community, and accented with pumpkin and cream. The walls inside are hung with the couple’s collection of brightly colored animation art, which Chris particularly enjoys for the way it showcases the artist’s imagination.
Visitors Ken and Linda Hagen of Kirkwood have lived in the neighborhood for six years. Linda said, “We always go on the tour. We haven’t finished our own house, but we love seeing what everyone else is doing. It’s a great way to reconnect with the neighbors, and we hope one day we’ll have our house on tour.”
On Sunday night after the tour the Wilkinsons were exhausted. Chris laughs, “We really enjoyed it. We met a lot of interesting people and had a lot of fun. It’s like after your wedding and the big party — you had a great time, but you’re absolutely worn out.”
Thinking about putting your house on tour?
Chris Wilkinson has some advice.
1. Use common sense about your things. If you have something special you’re worried about, put it away for the weekend.
2. Recruit your friends to work in your home during the tour. It’s a lot less stressful when you know the people who will be sitting at your house. I told my friends there would be beer and snacks and I expected each one of them to give us two hours. They willingly obliged, and I very much appreciated it.
3. Make up a fact sheet about your house and then let people ask you questions if they want to know more. Offering a guided tour will just exhaust you.
4. There will be lots of strangers and you might hear something you don’t like, but overall it’s a positive experience.
5. Relax and enjoy yourself. Then the people who come to your house will relax and enjoy themselves, too.
Greg Wilkinson and his wife Chris (both standing) are active in Atlanta's Kirkwood neighborhood. In addition to opening their home for the community's annual Spring Fling and Tour of Homes, Chris was in charge of the tour.
Their bungalow was one of 11 homes on this year's tour. It's the second home the Winlkinsons have owned in Kirkwood since 1999.
The couple bought the home in 2006 because of its location, size, and original features, such as the wood floors and fireplaces. They kept those features intact when they renovated the house.
The kitchen got a makeover during renovations. Alison Weidner (left) and Jennifer Ryan, who both live in East Atlanta, get design ideas during the tour.
The fireplace is made from reclaimed wood.
Floor plans from over the years are spread out on the Wilkinson's kitchen table.
Ken Hagen, a Kirkwood neighbor, admires the Wilkinson's stained glass pocket doors.
The home office.
The Wilkinsons added a luxurious master bath in what used to be the back porch.
The spare bedroom also has a fireplace.
Greg Wilkinson (left), a residential property appraiser, gives Charlie Coyle (center) and Matt Bischoff a tour of the master bedroom. Neighbors enjoy going on the tour to get decorating ideas and visit with friends.
The Wilkinsons accented their home with a number of stained glass pieces like this one in the gable of the house. They purchased the leaf motif to commemorate one of their dogs, who has since died..
There's more stained glass in the laundry room.
Many of the rooms are painted colorfully to match the cartoon characters the Wilkinsons frame and hang on the walls.
Chris Wilkinson, an insurance agent, hand drew all the houses on the neighborhood's tour of homes and made them into note cards to hang in her home office.
