A New Year: Things to be Thankful for

	Above, following Charlie McVay's mantra of "slow but sure," the McVay mansion at the end of Armstrong is being returned to its former glory.

With the new year comes new things to be thankful for, and we at Old North News would like to say thank you to all who volunteered their time, talents, and homes to make Old North Knoxville's 14th Annual Victorian Holiday Home Tour the best yet. Everybody from the tour chairwoman to the tour committee to the homeowners to all the volunteers who worked the tour deserves a hearty thank you. The volunteer spirit is alive and well in Old North Knoxville.

Thank you, as well, to our sponsors and to all who attended. Without you the tour would not have been the success it was.

On a more individual level, Ernie Roberts deserves a thank you for buying the house at 405 W. Glenwood. He is working to repair it, restore it, and hopefully sell it to somebody who will finish the work and be an asset to the neighborhood. This is the second time he's done this. He says it's his way of making sure he gets good neighbors (note from webmaster: and Kim and Fred think Ernie is a good neighbor, too!). 

Thank you to Kathryn and Mary Waggoner for buying the house at 1120 Kenyon, repainting and restoring it. It is now up for sale. These two ladies have done much of the work themselves. For years the house, nestled into a little section of Kenyon, was an almost overlooked rental house. Now it looks like it's about to have a coming out party.

Speaking of coming out parties, thank you also to Charlie and Juliet McVay for their work on the McVay Mansion at the end of Armstrong. If you haven't seen it, you should go take a look. While not complete, it is certainly much improved over what it was only a short time ago. They have taken a very large house, formerly known as the Dunn Mansion, which had been chopped up into apartments and have returned it to a single-family dwelling. They, too, have done much of the work themselves. Charlie says his restoration mantra is "Slow but sure. Slow but sure." If we were all so "slow" and so "sure," we soon wouldn't have any homes in Old North that needed restoring.

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