Last week Dave Muylle, owner of Muylle Enterprises, joined with 115 Eastside residents and the Allen Neighborhood Center to welcome a very modern, innovative renovation of a 1915 Eastside Lansing home.
Muylle spent two years renovating the 1,800 square foot house at 139 Leslie Street. His idea was to create a “green” home while showing Eastside residents how they can drive up the energy, aesthetic and overall quality of their home.
Muylle’s renovations truly are indescribable. The home is green in every sense of the word, as Muylle chose to update and expand the living space of an existing home rather than build a brand new home on the lot.
“People see something like this and it changes their perception,” Muylle says. “To be able to offer something like that is a real privilege.”
Muylle used every scrap of space in the home, carving out pantries and cabinets in thick walls, creating overhead storage, vaulting ceilings to open up the floor plan, creating lofts and completely refinishing the basement for an additional 600 square feet of living space.
The house also has a central vacuum that will allow the homeowner to vacuum the entire house, room-by-room, without lugging around an entire vacuum.
The Allen Neighborhood Center hosted a fundraiser at the Leslie house last week to give neighbors a glimpse into their future. The event brought a $2,352 profit to the center. Muylle says he hopes the house will show neighbors what they can do with their older homes.
“His house could really be the Eastside demonstration and education house as well as an inspiration for anyone who wants to improve their old house,” says Joan Nelson with the Allen Neighborhood Center.
“Given the amount of old housing stock this city has, we need to be looking at how to restore these beautiful old homes to their original beauty," she says.
Muylle owns the house next door (141 Leslie) as well, and plans to do something similar with it. The two homes were originally designed as mirror images of each other, but now they’re worlds apart. The rundown 141 address represents what’s happened to many beautiful Eastside homes, but the 139 address represents the neighborhoods’ possibilities.
Source: Joan Nelson, Allen Neighborhood Center
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie
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