May 2004 - 845 Mississippi

This 1925 home is the pride of Karen Seggerman and Jim Malless. We have lived in the house for 3 years. We had finished restoring our home on New York Ave. and we wanted an historic home with more space. Karen loved this house and knew that at some point she would own this house. She lived on Mississippi and spent time in the house when Susan Wright owned the house. We loved size of the house with 2,411 square feet of air-conditioned space and 3,276 under roof and the wonderful porch. This house has seen many changes. The original house was a three bedroom with one bath. Sometime after 1947, the owner added the three rooms on the south side of the house and made it into a five bedroom 2 ? bath with a screen porch. The owner changed the roofline to make it look like the additional rooms were always part of the house. We focused on the outside of the house when we bought the house. We put a new roof on the house to fix the multiple roof leaks and removed the 4-foot picket fence in the front yard. We then started on the pool area. We replaced the old wood fence, the pool liner and totally changed the landscaping to a tropical theme. The seven queen palms planted along the alley and the heavy planting on the south side of the fence are the highlights of the theme. One of the fun projects was repairing the front column of the porch. Recently, we have focused on the inside. We re-decorated the living room with new paint and window treatments to be compatible with the age of the house. We built a custom craftsman-style fireplace surround and mantle to replace the formal classic mantle. We removed white bathroom tile from the fireplace and replaced it with black board slate from a 1908 Tampa school. Our collection of vintage art and crafts furniture and pottery grace the living room. We have been planning the new kitchen. We will be gutting the old kitchen, raising the ceiling to the original height, removing a wall and creating a door to the pool from the kitchen. The kitchen will have cherry cabinets, new lighting, a big island and state of the art appliances. We are still working on some of the details, but it will be a great addition to a great house. Look for us resting on the porch after a hard day of working on our new kitchen.