In its heyday, the John Dalton house was one of Ogden's finest. It sheltered a bustling young family made up of Dalton, two wives and a dozen children.
But a century of use and gradual deterioration left the old home on Madison Avenue in disrepair, even-tually reducing the dwelling to a four-unit, low-income apartment and finally a boarded-up haven for vagrants and derelicts.Ogden City rescued the home from the bulldozer several years ago, buying the property and getting the home placed on the National Register of Historic Places to assure its preservation and eventual restoration.
The only problem was finding someone with enough money, skill and commitment to tackle a massive preservation project that would require a complete internal restoration of the home.
That painstaking restoration began this summer and it turned out to be a labor of Love - James Love, that is.
A 57-year-old rocket engineer with a penchant for remodeling, Love purchased the home for $1 from the Ogden Neighborhood Development Corp. and moved his motor home onto the property.
As a condition of purchase, Love agreed to have the home ready for occupancy within six months and made a commitment to live there for at least three years.
Then he rolled up his sleeves, fired up his collection of saws and Love's labor began.
"Every door and window was boarded up," Love said. "Vagrants knocked out all of the windows."
Any artifacts and other valuables had been removed or looted, leaving almost nothing usable.
The house also had sheltered cats that staked out their odious territory on the home's tattered carpet.
Spending every night and weekend working on the home, he installed new plumbing and electrical wiring while removing putrid carpeting and multiple layers of old wallpaper.
Love also reinforced the rear addition structures and has been restoring some of the interior that had been altered when the house was converted to an apartment.
Except for hiring subcontractors to repair the footings and foundation of the home and do some brick work, Love has done all the restoration work himself.
"It was a major project," said Ward Ogden, senior project coordinator for the city's community development department. "The home was at a point where it was going to be torn down because it wasn't economically feasible to restore it."
When the city purchased the house, workers had reroofed it, fixed gutter systems, repaired cornices and did enough repair work to stabilize the exterior until a buyer could be located.
But the major work remained inside the home, where the only interior improvement done by the city was on a stairwell.
After an open house, the city received several offers on the home and screened them for commitment to preservation as well as financial ability to do the job.
Love's name came up.
"All I've done this summer is work on this place," Love said. "I have a 20-foot boat, and I've never even put it in the water. When you're a bachelor, that's hard on your social life.
"Something like this has to be a hobby," he said.