hi everyone my name is ken welcome to this house
today we are exploring a gothic revival style house in belleville illinois
this house was built in 1866 and is currently listed for 125 thousand dollars
so before we go inside i want to take a moment to give a huge shout out to sheila mcallister
of property peddler inc for opening the doors to this listing it's currently listed for 125 000
and you can find a link in the description with more details let's go check it out
as we walk inside of this house there are some really beautiful details to just notice
right off the bat the screen door over here has a lot of really intricate filling on it
there are also these crystal doorknobs on either side of the door so this is not something that
we see too commonly having crystal knobs both on the exterior and the interior and above the
front door is this beautiful transom and we can see that there's leaded glass on the other side
and if we look over here we can see one of those pointed arch windows that is so iconoclastic
to the gothic revival style so let's go start exploring the rest of this house
come on through here and first we're going to come to the parlor and we can see another one
of these transoms above these double doors here and this also has a pointed archway and this is
a theme that we're going to be seeing a lot as we kind of travel throughout this house
so entering the parlor the first thing that really grabs us is the leaded stained glass
window up here and this is from when the house was originally built so we can actually see some
of the warping that has happened to the glass as it is sagged over time as glass does as it ages
so looking around this room a bit more there is this beautiful fireplace mantle
that was brought into this house by the previous owners so this is not original
to the house but it is period accurate and they even use old tile along the bottom here
as we keep looking around this room there are these three symmetrically placed windows
each with their pointed rounded arches once again very common with the gothic revival style
but very rare to find the style of house with so many pointed rounded arches so moving out of
this space will pass through this store and it looks like it used to have a transom window up
here but it looks like that has been boarded over now we are going to walk into the dining room and
this room is really spacious it runs the entire width of the house and even further because it has
this outcropping here with this big window to allow more light to come in
this dining room table was crafted by the previous owners who actually restored this house to its
former glory and left for survivors of hurricane katrina who would occupy the house after them
this house was also a framery at one point so we can see the entrance to that business over
here in the bay window we can also see and i'm not sure if this is original or not let me know
but we've got some really fun wallpaper patterns here that are also period accurate there is a
painted radiator over here in this corner and there is even a little corner shelf over here
and these are just some of those fun little details that we find throughout this house
before we go deeper into the house let's cut back through the stair hall
and we'll notice that there's this pocket door that's kind of wedged in the wall here
so underneath the stairs right here is the bathroom and there's a crystal doorknob as
well as a skeleton key to unlock this so that's just one of those really fun details so let's
take a peek in here there's some old historical photographs so let's just kind of look around
okay so the bathroom was beautiful so cutting through the dining room now
we are going to go over here to the kitchen and the kitchen
looks really old i'm just going to say that but it has actually been updated by previous owners
to have that kind of feel about it so let's just take a moment to look around the space
i do want to walk everyone through this kitchen because it's a lot of fun there's this old round
oak stove door that's just being used as like a bread cabinet so that's a lot of fun
adds function while still kind of maintaining that historic charm we can see that these cabinets all
have chicken wire on the inside and then there are these doily frills that run here as well
once again just to give it kind of like that farmhouse shabby chic look and i think it's
really pulled off well in here the cabinets down here they have coffee beans and rice and
other dry goods just kind of stored in the front but if we open that up we can
see that's just a small glass panel to give the illusion that these are full of dry goods
so what a fun detail that is and then there's also a porcelain sink no cabinets here so we
could imagine hanging a piece of fabric down here to really give it that old-timey feel
there's also a majestic stove over here and of course this is still functional
and you can cook amazing meals on it and these types of appliances have been going strong for
over 100 years and they're probably not going to break down anytime soon but just in case you
want something a little bit more modern there is a double oven over here to the side and over here is
a door that runs out to the side of the house and we can see that there's a transom window above it
but there's also this old telephone box that sits here and this is just really fun it doesn't
look like it's still wired to function but it's just a really neat piece to have in the house
so passing off the kitchen we now come to another space
and you can imagine this is like a breakfast room or a butler's pantry
really kind of any purpose that you can think of there is a radiator over here
there are these checkered floors a tin ceiling and a window that sits higher than any of the
other windows that we've seen in this house so far so it gives a little bit more privacy to the space
coming through this space now we enter into another room and we can see that there are
exposed brick walls there are tin ceilings and something really interesting is there's an old
seller entrance now we're not going to go down inside of this cellar today but it's just fun
to see that there's like this trapdoor that blends in with the painted wood floors and interestingly
enough there's two cellars in this house so there's another one on the exterior over here
on the side yard but they are separate spaces so you have two completely different sellers
so we've seen the first floor who's ready to go upstairs let's go check it out as we make
our way back to the stair hall i want to tell you all a little bit about the history here
so charles monk was the first owner of this house and he had it built in 1866 as i mentioned earlier
so he owned a little business on main street and he was actually pretty successful with it so by
1909 he built a house for him to retire in and that's when the house took on its second owner
so now we are back in the stair hall and let's go see what's up here coming up the stairs before we
even get to the top we noticed that overhead was this beautiful old chandelier and this really
deeply encased gothic pointed arch window that's right here and then over here at the end of the
landing this is really special um and i just i've been so excited to show this all off to you guys
so come on over here we can see that there is the original hardware that is on the outside
of this window here so you can imagine that this would have been opened in the spring to
let in a cool summer breeze and this is just not something that we really see on houses these days
so passing out of the vaulted ceiling area we're now going to cut back through the stair landing
and we're going to start off with the master bedroom so the master bedroom is through here
and it has this giant bay window to allow in a lot of natural light
and this is actually really spacious so let's just take a moment to kind of look around here
something really fun about the space that i want to show you are these doors so there's
like this crackled finish on the doorknobs this really old hardware and there's even a
transom window up above the double closet and we can take a peek inside of here
so there's actually a lot of space we can see the really deep baseboards and the closet kind of
extends into the wall on either direction here and then off to the side of this closet is another one
of these radiators and this one has been painted as well so now we can move this way and off of the
master bedroom is the master bathroom so come on in here so this space is absolutely massive
so first things first we notice that the ceiling starts to taper up and it gets really large in
here so there's a radiator over here and then over here there's another one of these amazing
pointed arch windows and we can see really clearly here the old latches that would
allow these individual panes to open up so once again that's just something that can't really
be replicated today because of the intricate work that goes into it and then over here is
what is believed to have been an old dumb waiter so this could have brought supplies up from the
first floor to the second floor and then there's this really amazing old soap dish right here so
let's just focus on these really fun details in this room leaving the master bedroom we're now
going to go back out into the stair hall and we will start checking out the rest of the bedrooms
so come on out here and this we're going to make a whole bunch of little turns real fast so come
on through the hallway and we'll go explore this bedroom too so this bedroom is really nice it's
got a lot of space it has a lot of natural light that comes in and something really fun is once
again it's got these big radiators with a steam vent right here and if we look out this window
we can see the original roof that's behind the new roof so let's take a peek at that
so how cool is that let's go deeper into this house and explore more of it so come back out here
into the hallway and now we are heading into what was an addition into the house so watch your step
there's a bit of a step down right here there's a smaller more compact radiator here in the hallway
and off to the side here there's a pocket door that lets us into
a newer bathroom in the house now this bathroom is probably still about 100 years old and let's
take a second to look at all of the intricate tile work in here looking around in this bathroom we
can see these beautiful porcelain details that are kind of embossed so this is very three-dimensional
and everything is like lined up perfectly so that's just one of those things that once
again isn't really replicated in modern time so coming out of the bathroom we're now walking into
what was in addition to the house and this now has hardwood floors it has a crystal chandelier
it has windows on both sides of the room and it also has this beautiful closet over here and we
can see that there are oversized baseboards that run along the footing of this room so
off in the corner of this bedroom is the second kitchen and the house
so once again this was added at a later date so watch our step um there's a lot of steps
that come down here so the ceiling opens back up there are newer cabinets a newer sink refrigerator
there's another compact radiator over there and then there's actually a deck that comes
off of the back of here so opening this door we can now get a really good shot of the backyard
so there is the old carriage house back here and that is actually a two-car garage today
all right everybody thank you so much for coming on this tour with us it has been so much fun to
explore this house make sure to like comment share and subscribe i'll see you next time on this house