The Orchard House was built around 1838 in a combination Italianate/Greek Revival style. For the Millers, refurbishing the Orchard House has been a labor of love. Even they aren’t sure exactly how many rooms are in this three-story home (Paula Miller thinks its around 20 after a quick count) or how long they’ve been working on the home.
Tom Miller bought the house in 1987, as a single father. By that point, the house had been divided into seven small apartments. He planned to restore the house to its former glory, but said raising children slowed him down.
“There are skid marks in the music room from when we built an electric cart for Odyssey of the Mind,” Miller said. “All the boys learned to ride their bikes in the house because there was a loop all the way around.”
“We’re always working on it,” said Paula Miller, who married him in 1998. “We have three rooms to go.”
Today, as the Miller’s children have grown up, the home is more orderly. The Miller’s have attempted to restore the home to its look at around the turn of the century. They’ve found pieces of moldings and lumber to use as guideposts, not to mention the building’s solid brick walls. Still, their main goal for the house is that it remain their home.
“This hasn’t been a house we look at as a museum,” Tom Miller said. “This is our home. We use all the rooms. We have seen our kids grow up here.”
The Orchard House was built as a single family home in 1838 by Alex Wright, the auditor for Warren County. J.P. Gilchrist, a Lebanon merchant, purchased the home in 1881 for $10,000.
To initially clear out the house, Miller, who is an engineer, and some friends hauled 17 dump truck loads of garbage and he entered into a self-described “crash course” in refurbishing.
Today, while the family has worked to restore the home to a turn of the 20th century look, modern touches and their own mementos fill the building to make it the Miller’s home, not a museum. A two-story mural in the entry way depicts a 19th century Lebanon landscape, but the Miller’s had the artist include their children and secret messages throughout.
One of the front rooms is devoted to souvenirs the Millers have picked up from a lifetime of travel. Beyond that is Miller’s prized library with several shelves of books.
Living in a historic house has not always been easy. For example, the solid brick walls make trying to run any sort of wire through the house nearly impossible. Instead, the Millers have had to improvise, utilizing old pipe chases or surface mounting the wires.
In the front Music room, Miller removed a faux ceiling to discover a portion of intricate three-dimensional crown molding that once ran around the entire ceiling’s perimeter. After searching around the country to find someone who could recreate such unique molding, the Millers were pleasantly surprised to find the answer in their own backyard. A firm in Dayton who were third generation Italian carpenters were able to complete the task.
Drapes have been hand sewn by Paula Miller and her mother, while several items were gifts of Tom Miller’s uncle, Jerry Miller, who is an antiques dealer.
This story is part of an ongoing series about Lebanon’s historic homes. If you know of a historic home in Lebanon you would like to see profiled contact this reporter at (513) 696-4544 or jmcclelland@coxohio.com.
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