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LIFE: HOMES
Daily run leads couple down path to dream home
The Perry family, (left to right), Jennifer, Julia and Greg, pose in front of their Huntington home.
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HUNTINGTON -- Greg Perry laughs when he says that he sometimes feels like the "gypsy in the palace" as he walks through his 4,219-square-foot house.
Greg and Jennifer Perry are runners, and every day as they went on their jaunt they would pass their dream house with a for sale sign in the yard.
"We lived in a small Southside house and it was just out of our price range, so we let it pass, but we loved the house," Greg Perry said. "One day the price suddenly dropped into our price range and we took a look."
What the Perrys found was a spacious three-bedroom house in need of some TLC, especially in the kitchen area because there was none. That's right -- the kitchen had been removed and there was nothing but bare walls. This didn't deter the industrious couple. After some soul searching and creative financing, they rolled up their sleeves and took the leap. They bought the house and went to work.
Of course before they moved in they had to have a kitchen, so Greg did part of the work, and what he couldn't do he found contractors who could. Now the upscale kitchen sports granite countertops, maple cabinets and stainless steel appliances.
"I love having a big, eat-in kitchen open to our living room," Jennifer Perry said. "Our youngest daughter, Julie turned 2 just weeks after we moved in, and its been wonderful to supervise her play while preparing food and cleaning up."
The house has a wonderful floor plan the Perrys enjoy, but after putting in the kitchen they dug in to get rid of the 1970s décor that was pervasive. That meant taking down metallic wallpaper in the dining room that they are convinced was applied with super glue, replacing 70's avant-garde light fixtures and trading out linoleum for ceramic tile.
"We updated the bathrooms with the same granite used in the kitchen and installed such things as vessel sinks to rid the bath of the 70s look," Greg Perry said.
He related that the house had once been a one-story, cedar-sided dwelling with a flat roof; however, a previous owner changed all that.
"He wanted a Tai Chi room, so he took the roof off and added an entire upstairs that is now one big room with hardwood floors and lots of storage," Greg Perry said. "In his renovation he also bricked the entire outside of the house. We now use the Tai Chi room as a home theater room, plus it gives me lots of space to display my photographs."
Greg Perry is the publisher of the Herd Insider Magazine and has been covering Marshall sports since 1998. Always the photographer, he started his career at The Herald-Dispatch where he did his internship before moving on to The Lexington Herald-Leader and then on to his magazine venture.
Both Perrys and their daughter Julie enjoy the exterior of the home as well. Jennifer Perry, who is a guidance councilor at an elementary school in Kentucky, enjoys the animals they see in their backyard.
"We see squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and deer," she said. "We enjoy all kinds of wildlife but we are also just minutes from downtown and all its amenities."
The Perry family obviously enjoys its home and has transformed it into the 21st century with elbow grease and loving care. The Perrys still run, but now they end their jaunts in their dream house instead of passing it by.
