Home of the Week: Mary and Brian Plunkett
The home of Mary and Brian Plunkett may have been built in 1999, but it has the character and charm of a much earlier era.
That's in large part because Mary began collecting the materials needed before construction began.
"I love antiques," she explains. "When Joseph was about 2, I'd put him in a pack and take him to auctions," she says, referring to her oldest son.
Mary says buying vintage fixtures also helped the couple stretch their construction dollars.
Over the years, she amassed a cache of antiques that included pocket and other kinds of doors.
Many of the doors came with all of the hardware, including crystal knobs, which Mary points out would have been an additional expense.
"I believe I never paid more than $15 for a door," she says with a laugh.
She found a bunch of them at an architectural salvage company in Iowa. "There were doors stacked in a barn, and you flipped through them like a file," she says.
Upstairs, she points to the bedroom doors and says, "All five doors match, which is quite a feat when you're buying antique doors."
For the door trim, the Plunketts — whose family includes sons Joseph, 17, and Loren, 13 — looked no further than their property near Halfway. They harvested white oaks, had them dried at an Amish kiln and shared the expense of a planer with Mary's dad.
The house is filled with examples of the Plunketts' ingenuity and quest to reduce cost.
A claw-foot tub, for example, "was in a field in Iowa flipped upside down. The farmer found the legs in the field. The porcelain was in perfect condition," she says.
When it came to the décor, Mary naturally gravitated toward antiques. Some remain in original condition while others have been altered or given a facelift.
An old dresser, for example, found new life as a bathroom vanity. "The dresser was given to us because it had some wormholes or something in the top, so we cut a great big hole in the top and plumbed it," she says.
What isn't antique is likely from Ikea, her favorite home interiors store. A master of organization, Mary has used many items she found there to help in her quest to use her home's space to maximum efficiency.
Perhaps one of the best examples of her skills is the "go station." She explains: "When the kids were little, there were always certain things you needed before you left," she says. She still keeps items such as sunscreen and sunglasses neatly organized near the front door, ready to go.
Mary says the décor is constantly evolving, as friends and family continue to give her unwanted pieces from time to time.
"People find I am shameless about accepting things, and I'm impossible to offend, so they'll say, 'Maybe you can do something with this,' and I say, 'Maybe I can,' " Mary says, laughing.
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