Some people buy a house. Glen and Nancy Clayton bought a dining room.

“We love the neighborhood, but the truth is that when we started looking all over for a house, we just needed one with a dining room that could accommodate this table,” says Nancy, walking down the length of a mahogany setting for 12.

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“I was teaching in Carrollton and getting ready to retire… and Glen was getting tired of commuting to Eastfield. So we decided to move back into town, and then we discovered Munger Place. And this dining.”

Both are career-long English teachers, although Glen, for his part, has no plans to retire: “I want to keep teaching as many years as I can.”

With the purchase of the Victor Street residence in February 1999, both also became overnight historic renovators.

“All the woodwork in here was painted ketchup red,” sighs Glen, craning his neck up to indicate the massive coffered ceilings, window seats, baseboards and doorways throughout the downstairs. “Yes, they used really good paint. It took us months and months to strip everything… we did it ourselves.”

Nancy says: “I spent almost a month on that window seat alone. I couldn’t believe after we got it all off that anyone would cover this up.”

The couple says that in other ways, the house was historically intact, somehow having escaped the ’70s trend in the neighborhood to reconfigure large, Prairie-style homes into apartments; the only areas the Claytons felt had to be gutted were the kitchen and the upstairs master bath.

Although the home’s original hardware and light fixtures had been removed, with some creativity and determination the Claytons tracked down suitable period replacements. A little over a year after acquiring “their dining room,” Glen and Nancy had the house ready.

Ready?

“We had to be finished by April,” he says. “Our daughter was married on that spot. It was a thrill to get the house to the point where we could have the wedding here.”

Nancy says: “We were definitely on a schedule. The week before we were planting the garden outside the back door.”

The Claytons also were supposed to be on the Munger Place Home Tour about that time last year, but the event turned out to be the same weekend as the nuptials. So they agreed to participate in the 2002 (May 5-6) tour instead.

“But we sure did appreciate everyone cleaning up the neighborhood and getting everything looking nice for Becky’s wedding,” Glen chuckles.

The house also had to be made ready for another family member – the one who played a part in Nancy’s decision to retire from teaching in the first place.

“I keep my grandson, Jacob, three days a week,” Nancy says. “I guess I couldn’t stand the idea of him in daycare… he is my delight.”

Jacob’s mom, Cindy, a nurse at Baylor, and the Clayton’s son, Jon, live nearby in Merriman Park. Jon, an architectural engineer, designed the couple’s new/old kitchen.

Now that the wedding is over and the home tour will shortly pass as well, what will the Claytons do next?

“We like just living here,” Glen says.

Nancy laughs: “We’re all in the same boat here, living in these wonderful old houses. You never get through working on one of these I guess. But you get to enjoy the area, the diversity.

“I wouldn’t care to live anywhere else.”