01/11/2001

By Beatriz Terrazas / The Dallas Morning News

Clarissa is working on a wall along the staircase – she's applying a coat of mud with a trowel. "We just finished Sheetrocking everything upstairs, and this wall down here," she says.

 

By Cheryl Diaz Meyer / DMN Sisters Sharron Sadacca and Stephanie Stanley, left and right, discuss a restoration problem with a contractor as they work on a house.

Her sister Stephanie is shrugging into her coat. She's got to get to Home Depot for supplies to fix her mother's toilet.

And in a corner of the kitchen, their oldest sister, Sharron, is brushing primer onto wooden cabinets. She's wearing jeans and a red sweater spotted with paint. "Everything I own has paint on it," she says. Today, even her glasses are smudged, and there's dirt and primer under her nails.

The 90-year-old house is pretty on the outside – blue with cream-colored pillars and window trim. But the inside has been completely gutted – all 3,000 square feet of it. Pieces of crown molding are piled in one room, and the smell of the newly stained floor hangs heavily in the air.

It's not a place one expects to find three red-haired sisters, all over 40, at work. But then again, the Stanley sisters aren't ordinary women. Neither is their mother, Mable, who can often be found working alongside them.

Home restoration is a labor of love that these four women began eight years ago out of necessity. But their labor – painting, hammering, sanding – has roots in a deeply ingrained philosophy that keeping busy is good for the soul.

Restoring houses is about appreciating all that is old and unique, the sisters say. It's about seeing the beauty of a piece of molding even if it's covered with six layers of paint. It's about breathing life into old floors and doors and windows. And it's about refreshing their spirits in the process.

"It's knowing that our accomplishments are collective and we're with one another," says Sharron. "... We're all going to get it done and we're going to be really proud of ourselves when it's finished."

Digging a hole

Mable Rae Stanley's mother used to tell her that when confronted with a problem, the best thing she could do was keep busy – even if she had to "go out in the back yard and dig a hole and fill it in."

The lesson came in handy 16 years ago when her husband of 43 years died. "We had a good life and a good marriage, but Ed didn't believe in women [working]," says Mable. So he worked and took care of the yard and their expenses, while she took care of their son and three daughters.

When her husband died, Mable realized there was a lot she didn't know how to do. "I had never balanced a checkbook, and I had never participated in the business of taking care of us."

A week after burying her husband, Mable decided to leave Dallas and live in a family homestead in Brownwood. The place needed work, so she got busy. When friends phoned to offer Mable condolences, one of her daughters would answer, "Just a minute – Mother's on a ladder. She's painting the house."

Mable also started repairing a duplex and garage apartment that the family owned in Brownwood so she could lease them.

Watching and learning

"When I called these people to come and do the work, I watched them do it," she says. "When they would do a commode or fix a little something, when there was a sink dripping. ... Then I decided, 'I'm as smart as these people. All I have to do is watch and learn.'"

It got to where Mable could fix those leaky faucets and diagnose just about any other plumbing problem. Given the right tools, she could fix them, too.

In 1992, Mable's oldest daughter, Sharron Sadacca, divorced her second husband. The settlement left her with an old house on Worth Street in East Dallas.

When the couple had forked over $20,000, they didn't know they had bought a crack house – a six-plex that had deteriorated and was being used by pimps, prostitutes and drug addicts. The property was red-tagged by the city and slotted to be demolished.

"It was in desperate, desperate shape," says Sharron, 54. "The Sheetrock, all the plaster ... it was all cracked. It had been painted over. It was just wretched.

"I walked from the marriage with that property," she says. "I was so devastated at losing this second husband. ... I don't know what would have happened to me if there hadn't been this project [to work on]."

The sisters live by a strong family code, says Stephanie Stanley, 48: "That if one is in trouble, then we're all in trouble. No one should have to face it by themselves."

So when Sharron began the mammoth task of bringing the house up to code in 90 days, the three sisters and their mother went to work. They contracted professionals to do the things that required a master, such as electrical wiring. But Sharron also hired people off the street to pull nails out of walls – sometimes in exchange for a meal for the day.

"There was this one fellow driving down the street in this pickup, and he had this cast-iron sink," recalls Sharron. "He pulled it off the truck and I gave him $20 for it. It was going in the kitchen upstairs. The kitchen was built around the sink."

'Be diversified'

When it came to the cabinets for that kitchen, she turned to her youngest sister, Clarissa, and said, "You studied architecture. I know you can do this."

But it had been decades since Clarissa's college days. And after college, she had made a living modeling lingerie and swimwear. But she recalled something her father used to tell her. "In life, if you're going to be one thing, be diversified."

"My father was an antique collector and a diamond broker," says Clarissa Stanley, 45. "He had an insurance company, a truck stop." If her father could do all that, she could certainly make a few cabinets.

With Stephanie's help, she constructed cabinets from wainscoting. She took some old desk drawers and used them for kitchen drawers. She found she had a knack for hanging wallpaper.

The fireplace in one of the apartments was more difficult. "The brick had been painted a zillion colors," says Stephanie. "We decided to paint it the green that was in the kitchen."

They had scraped the crown molding clean of paint and discovered a beautiful egg-and-dart pattern underneath. They brought in a mantle salvaged from another house – it matched the molding perfectly.

When they were almost finished working, they held a small ceremony. They filled a jar with their father's favorite snack – jelly beans – and pennies from one another's birth years. They also put in a list with the name of everybody who had worked on the house. And they prayed for their father to watch over that house. Then they sealed the jar inside the mantle.

They met the 90-day deadline with no time to spare. When the inspector came to examine the house, they still had old lumber piled up in the yard.

"I thought it could be done for about $50,000," says Sharron of the project. "I spent my $50,000 and borrowed $42,000 from my mom. And so, 90 days and $92,000 later, I had green tags."

As relieved as she was to finish the job, she also felt something else. "That six-plex was awful. The city was on our case, tools getting stolen, streetwalkers. ... You think, 'Just get me through this. And there's this really horrible thing that happens after: You see what you've accomplished and ... you have this yearning to try it again."

So they did. Since that first house on Worth Street, they have bought eight other homes in historic East Dallas. Six have been restored and two are in progress, including the one on Gaston Avenue.

Restoration hasn't been a financial windfall for the women. They combine all their incomes to get by and fund the work they love.

Sharron makes a living from her small company, Texas Heritage Real Estate, which isn't involved in the restoration work, she says. Clarissa has savings from her modeling days and makes some money from hanging wallpaper and creating faux-finishes. Mable has her husband's retirement funds and a few lease properties in Brownwood. Stephanie is recovering from cancer, so she works only with her sisters.

Honing talents

Despite the few monetary rewards, restoring homes has helped the women discover and develop their own unique talents. When put together, they fit like four pieces of a complete pie, says Stephanie.

"Sharron has great vision," she says. "Sharron can look at a stump and see a sculpture. I marvel at Clar's artistic talent. We've replastered the walls, jacked up the floor, and here comes Clarissa with this incredible wallpaper job."

Stephanie oversees the money and reins in contractors who overstep their bounds – "I'm the mean one," she says. But like her sisters, she steps in wherever she's needed, "whether it be laying tile and grouting or preparing a floor for whatever application you're going to do. I'm not afraid to level a porch, [or to crawl] under a porch."

The matriarch, Mable, is the plumber, and she has provided funding for each project.

"It's not a business," says Sharron of their work. After all, it's hard to put a price on their emotional investment. The women have sold only two of the eight homes they've restored. They live in two others and are leasing the rest.

"It's more of an endeavor," says Sharron. "When you're earning money, is it to be able to count it and have it in the bank, or..."

"Or does it provide you with the vehicle for doing what you like to do?" says Stephanie.

"We've never known anything else except to appreciate the old – our elders," says Sharron. "I think realizing what it took to build the place in the first place ... it took a true craftsman. The restoring is just an appreciation for what has come before."

And working together is a bonus, says Clarissa. "This is what makes it satisfying."