This old Eaton house

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This article was published 29/01/2010 (5907 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TEULON — Finn and Jan Hansen bought a brand-new home in Island Lakes and were intent on living the suburban dream.

But 18 months later…

“After a little while, I don’t know, it didn’t have any character,” recalled Jan.

So on a rainy March day seven years ago, with nothing else to do, they checked the Winnipeg Real Estate News and drove out to Teulon to see a house.

“We weren’t looking. It just happened,” said Jan of the Eaton house, built in 1919, they ended up buying. It’s on a well-treed, full-acre lot, 50 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

They later learned the home was once called the Eastonborough in the Eaton catalogue and later named the Prairie Mansion, all 2,600 square feet of it. They found it on page 47 of Les Henry’s book, Catalogue Houses: Eaton’s and Others.

The Eaton house is one of dozens around Manitoba. The house has also been federally inspected and approved as an official heritage site, requiring that repairs and additions respect existing architecture. There’s something deeper about old houses, Jan said. Some new houses “are only surface deep in their prettiness. They don’t go to the heart.”

The old house has turned into a hobby for the retired couple, who have filled it with antiques. That includes a washing machine you operate by pulling a lever back and forth, circa 1905, and a “fainting couch”– a chaise lounge (not the poolside kind) for when women fainted because their corsets were too tight, or to escape a social predicament.

The fainting couch has one long arm and one short arm, the latter so a woman’s long and poofy gown could hang over the side.

There are also an abundance of tasseled lamp shades in the house and soft, billowy hassocks, and they’ve left up the old flowery wallpaper.

The couple’s only concern is they don’t turn into pack rats. “Yesterday, on TV, I was watching this show, The Hoarders,” said Finn. ” ‘Hold on,’ I thought. I don’t want to get like that.”

The Hansens now have a rule that something must go out for every antique that comes in.

The house was originally owned by James Grahame, the justice of the peace and secretary-treasurer of Teulon when the town was incorporated in 1919. It even came with hydro and modern plumbing. “There’s no fireplace because it’s too modern. It had central heating,” said Jan.

Four bedrooms and a bathroom run off the second-floor landing — a fifth bedroom if you count the summer bedroom, a screened-in room that seems to hang over the house.

The third floor has a billiard table and the only TV, kept out of sight inside a tall cupboard. The home’s laundry chute spans three floors.

The home has a wraparound veranda. It has brick window heads and limestone window sills. It has a hip roof and gable dormers and its red brick exterior is like new. It’s very warm in winter and cool in summer.

Unlike some Eaton homes in Manitoba that have stayed in one family for four generations, the Grahame house has changed hands and undergone modifications. The wood moulds are all painted. It also had the servant staircase removed, as well as a dumbwaiter — a pulley system for hauling preservatives from the basement to the kitchen.

It is not an Eaton house where Eaton’s shipped out all the materials and fixtures from British Columbia. The house was built from an Eaton blueprint using locally obtained materials.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca