“One of my favorite memories is coming to my grandparents’ house on Christmas Day,” says Anne Tuller. “We would walk into the foyer and see three tables, one for each family, overflowing with presents for everyone.”
Memories like this instilled the notion that the house should always remain in her family. Anne’s grandparents built the Federalist-style house in the Wales Garden neighborhood in 1929, when Anne’s mother was 15 years old. Similarly, when Anne turned 15, her father bought the house and renovated it for their large brood. He added a master bedroom on the main floor and turned the grandfather’s study into a nursery for the two youngest siblings while Anne and her five brothers and sisters filled the four upstairs bedrooms. Anne’s mother lived in the house for the remainder of her life.
After her brother Norman passed away in 2019, Anne and her remaining siblings began the dreaded task of sorting through the house in preparation to sell it. “Someone in my family has always lived in this house,” Anne says, “and it made us sad to think that we might have to sell it. Everyone else had jobs and families, and fortunately, I was willing and able to step up and commit to it.”
Anne believes that fate intervened as well. When her brother passed away, Anne had just moved into a condominium, but she was not enamored with the lifestyle. Her real estate agent, who lived in the same building, had even asked her how she liked where she lived, and Anne shared that it was not really to her liking.
“Then out of the blue, there was a knock on my door, and within two days, I had a contract to sell the condo,” she says. “That gave me something to start with to renovate the house.”
And so began the two-year process of renovating the nearly 100-year-old home, although Anne’s intentions were not really to change much about it. “I really wanted to keep everything about the house — except the kitchen and bathrooms. I wanted people to walk into the foyer and see what I remembered the foyer being like,” she says. “On Christmas morning, my dad would make movies of us coming down the stairs, little ones first and older kids last.”
She also recalls the multitude of Christmas stockings hanging from the marble fireplace in the living room and the garland draped down the banister. Many of her decorations bring back cherished memories — family ornaments on the Christmas tree and her grandmother’s hurricane lamps that still adorn the sideboard in the dining room.
Much of the renovation focused on painting and restoring the house to its original beauty. “My dad was in the heating oil business, so he was about comfort and warmth and had installed wall-to-wall carpeting in many of the rooms,” Anne says. “It was time for it to go!”
Anne was most keen to update the kitchen, which had last been renovated by her father in 1960. “The kitchen was much smaller then. I don’t know how my mother cooked for 10 people,” Anne says. “I love to cook! It makes me happy, and it’s good therapy.”
While much of the house remains in its traditional style, filled with collections of family heirlooms, the kitchen is much more contemporary in its design. Anne incorporated a black metal rolling tool chest, where she stores her kitchen gadgets and utensils. It sits against an exposed brick wall that was part of the house’s original coal-fired furnace. A large worktable that displays Anne’s collection of Le Creuset cookware, along with other Dutch ovens and pots, pays homage to Norman.
“He was a beekeeper, and when he passed away, we found this table in the beehouse,” Anne says. “We donated his 11 beehives to the university, and I got the table.”
To help open the room, Anne removed one section of cabinetry, replacing it with a built-in refrigerator, and removed a peninsula. She updated the cabinetry with a fresh coat of paint in Sherwin-Williams’ Big Chill, giving them a hint of a gray undertone. She added acrylic and chrome drawer and cabinet pulls and installed quartz countertops in Statuario Favo to complete the modern look.
“My desire was for the kitchen to be white with only a medium or small amount of marbling. I wanted everything to be subtly beautiful and to reflect my personal style,” she says.
Anne also renovated the four upstairs bathrooms, one for each bedroom, changing out tubs for walk-in showers and tiled walls. These renovations were more extensive than she planned because the old lead plumbing had been encased in concrete, and all of it had to be removed and replaced.
Each of the bathrooms, save one, features beadboard walls and white tile with splashes of color in Sherwin-Williams Neutral Ground and Tidewater, evoking a spa-like environment. She added one touch of modernity — vanity mirrors that light up with the touch of a finger.
“I used a wallpaper with bees that I ordered from England in one bathroom,” says Anne. “It is a tribute to my brother and his beekeeping.”
Another major renovation included finishing sunrooms that had been added onto the second level of the house. When originally built, the first floor rooms extending outward from the side of the house had flat roofs. Through the years, the roofs had begun to leak. Anne’s brother resolved that issue by adding the sunrooms above but left them unfinished. Anne completed the rooms, adding flooring and walls. The sunrooms offer 180-degree views with wraparound windows.
Once the two-year renovation was complete, Anne finally settled back into her “new” old home in April 2021. Two of Anne’s prized possessions are the large wall mirrors, one in the living room and another on the landing leading up to the second floor. “My mother’s wedding portrait was taken in front of the mirror on the landing, which originally was in the living room when my grandparents lived here,” Anne says. The mirror is nearly 5 feet in height and 5 feet in width with an ornate wood frame.
A gold gilt framed mirror that adorns the living room wall makes quite a statement at more than 7 feet tall and just over 5 feet in width. Anne’s father hung it to cover where a door once led from the living room into his study. “When my dad renovated this house, he removed or closed off 23 doors throughout the house,” Anne says.
Each room throughout the house is filled with treasured memories from days gone by. Oil paintings from generations past hang on the walls of the library and music room. The 200-year-old four-poster bed her grandmother slept in and the sugar chest dating back to the Civil War; settees, needlepoint chairs, and a marble top table are among the furnishings handed down by family members.
Documents and portraits from more than a century ago sit in an antique “bachelor’s chest,” also known as a “gentleman’s chest,” waiting to be restored. However, she regrets that she has other pieces about which she does not know the origins. “I wish that I had had the foresight to ask my mother about the history of some of these pieces,” she says.
The dining table and chairs that belonged to her grandparents have remained in the dining room these many years, along with a corner hutch, a sideboard, and china hutch filled with collections of crystal goblets and stemware, much of which belonged to Anne’s mother and grandmother. “Everything in the dining room, with the exception of the china cabinet that came down through my husband’s family, was my grandmother’s,” she says.
Next to the dining room, Anne also entertains in the wine room. Wine has played a vital role in Anne’s family — her father made wine in their basement, and one of her brothers owns vineyards in New York — so Anne found a mural for one wall that depicts a vineyard, reflecting her family’s passion for wine.
Portraits of Anne’s parents hang in the wine room. Her father’s painting includes the inscription “All the Best,” a phrase he was known to share with everyone he met.
Several pieces of art throughout the house were painted by Anne’s Aunt Martine, her father’s youngest sister. Prints by South Carolina watercolorist Gil Petroff and Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, known for her Charlestonian art, hang in the dining room. Anne also has a cherished painting in her kitchen, a still life of an eggplant, painted by local artist Kirkland Smith.
“Kirkland grew the eggplant, painted it, and then cooked it for her family,” Anne says with a laugh.
Another interesting touch was added by her grandmother; rather than just knocking before entering a bedroom, her grandmother placed door knockers on each door. The house also has a working elevator, installed in the 1950s after her grandfather suffered a heart attack. “It still has the original motor in it!” Anne says.
Anne, who is deeply rooted in her faith, is grateful that her church, Church of the Apostles, held its first meetings in her living room, where she continues to host Bible study and prayer groups.
“God has taken care of my family ever since my grandparents first built this house when the stock market was crashing,” she says. “God has gone before my family and protected us.”
Anne’s greatest wish is that the house and all its memories remain in the family, as her grandsons have shared their own recollections of time spent in the “Big T,” the family name for the house.
“Tuller, my oldest grandson, has said for years that he would love to live in the Big T one day. By virtue of the fact that we want it to stay in the family, and that he said that to me, I have done what I could to ensure that,” she says with a smile.