158 Buttles Ave

Owners: Paul Feeney and Chad Braun

This American Foursquare style home, built pre-1900, features nine finished rooms and two hallways above an unfinished basement.

In 2013, the couple purchased the residence, which contains 3 ½ bathrooms and 4 bedrooms (though one is used as an office), and hired Ketron Custom Builder to manage two major renovations. The first renovation happened in 2014, when the couple removed the back stairway, doubled the size of the kitchen and renovated the guest bathroom on the second floor. A previous renovation had left the house with structural issues and uneven floors; as a result, this extensive project required new beams and joists for most of the back of the house. Additionally, the couple replaced the roof, installed French doors off the kitchen, and moved a kitchen window.

Five years later, the third floor of the house, which used to be a separate apartment, was renovated. This project included leveling the floors, removing a peninsula bar and a closet, box gutter repairs, installation of a wet bar, and bathroom renovations. They also installed central HVAC, a media room, and replaced all nine vinyl-frame windows with new wood-frame windows.

The couple also employ decorator Shane Spencer, arborist Nathan Ames, and landscape designer Josh Coltman.

The house is well-stocked with art from local galleries, including art from Craig Carlisle, Sarah Fairchild, Kirsten Swanson Bowen, Amanda Hope Cook, Corbett Reynolds, Adam Brouillette, Rick Akers, Malcolm Baroway, and many others. Take a look in the dining room and you’ll find a 360º room-sized mural painted by Steve Galgas and Mike Altman, the same duo who painted the well-known “American Gothic” mural on East Lincoln Street in the Short North. In the main stairway, a chandelier hangs which was salvaged from the former Deshler Hotel that used to stand at the corner of Broad and High.

The most interesting find during the 2014 renovation was the discovery of a decomposed half of a cat in a closed-off section of the basement. Paul is offering a handsome reward to any visitor who finds the other half of the dead cat, as reuniting the two offers a great power, like what would happen if you reunited the Koreas or if you were the parents of the Olsen twins in the early 1990s.