The Kaiser house in Rocky River was home to Kaiser's Greenhouse for decades.

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio – When we moved to Rocky River and I met people, they asked me where I lived. “On the way to Target” was one answer. But usually I’d describe our forever home, a century-old white farmhouse with a big porch.

“Oh, you live in Mrs. Kaiser’s house,” they said.

Now we’re adding on to Mrs. Kaiser’s house by finishing the attic, a construction project I’ve dreamed about for years and planned for the last 10 months.

Dorothy Kaiser lived in this 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, one-bathroom house for most of her 93 years. People knew the property because of her family business, Kaiser’s Greenhouse, where for years residents bought their Homecoming corsages and wedding flowers.

I had always wanted an old house, and this one dropped onto the Multiple Listing Service on St. Patrick’s Day 2016, after my husband and I had bid – and lost out – on four other listings. I saw it online at noon, in one of my frantic Zillow binges. By 5, we had submitted an offer, over asking price. By 10 p.m., we had a deal, even though my husband hadn’t had a chance to walk through it.

It didn’t matter that I’d wanted four bedrooms and two baths. Or that the yard was way bigger than I wanted to mow. I was sold on the wide wooden porch, the stained glass window, the high school down the block.

The house was built even before the town’s first high school. For decades, it was surrounded by acres of open space and greenhouses that grew snapdragons and geraniums, part of Cleveland’s thriving greenhouse industry.

Dorothy Kaiser was a member of the Horton family who founded the nursery, where Westwood Town Center is now. The Hortons moved into our house after Dorothy was grown. After she married Eugene Kaiser, they bought the house from her parents, changed the name of the business and raised their three daughters here. In the mid-1960s, the house gained neighbors to the north: bungalows displaced by the construction of nearby Interstate 90. Eventually, in the early 2000s, the business closed, the greenhouses were razed and replaced with a cul-de-sac of cluster homes.

Mrs. Kaiser sold the house in 2013 to a young couple who made the space modern; they tore out the green wall-to-wall carpet, transformed the kitchen and painted the trim a crisp white. On the day we got the keys from them, when I was sweaty and dirty and overwhelmed at the thought of transporting the life we’d accumulated over nine years in University Heights, I was already dreaming bigger.

We could gut the pink-and-black tile bathroom, which we deduced must have once been a bedroom, since it was massive and had a door to a second-story porch. We could finish the attic to create our own bedroom suite. We could add built-ins in the mudroom and bookshelves in the office. And paint and paint and paint.

I say “we,” but my husband and I are less than handy. So while I painted and landscaped, we hired professionals to make the rest of my vision reality. Each year, we saved and used our tax returns for one project.

First the paint (three bedrooms, the dining room, the office, the porch, the doors). Then the mudroom and bookshelves. Then the built-ins. Then the bathroom, which we made smaller, to create a hallway that would lead to our final project: a two-story bump out for a second-floor laundry room and attic bedroom suite.

That’s as far as we’d gotten when the COVID pandemic shut down the world. We might have been cooped up, but I was so grateful to be confined here – where I could lounge on big porch with a book and hear the sounds of the marching band from the high school on Friday nights. Where our next-door neighbors in the cluster homes had become some of our dearest friends. Where I could spend my event-free days ripping up carpet and my stimulus check on new stained glass windows.

Now, thanks in part to stimulus checks, we are embarking on an addition to Mrs. Kaiser’s beloved house. Originally, I was hoping for more: a new driveway to replace the crumbling asphalt, a new garage, a brick patio. But stimulus money and savings will only get you so far.

We’ve passed the gauntlet of the Design and Construction Board of Review and gotten a zoning variance for the height of our addition (the same height the original house has been for 109 years). We’ve secured a loan. We’ve signed a contract. I have a Pinterest board full of cottage-inspired ideas. And we’ve gotten a big load of lumber, and a Dumpster, deposited on our driveway.

By mid-summer, we could have a dreamy attic bedroom suite, floating above the demands of the kitchen and home office and kids room. Follow along with updates every other week about our progress.

Content director Laura Johnston writes occasionally about modern life with kids.

The day of our home inspection, 2016.

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