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Home gets its just deserts Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Medford builder Fred Barnum is doubling the size of the "carriage house" that sits alongside the historic Nunan House in Jacksonville. Owners Connie and Bob Seus will use the extra space to host gatherings for their five children and 25 grandchildren. Ice cream counter part of renovation at Nunan House By Melissa Martin JACKSONVILLE � Connie and Bob Seus needed a room big enough to host their five children and 25 grandchildren for Christmas dinner. Granted, their home is big � they live in the 5,000-square-foot Nunan House built in 1892 on what was known as Millionaires Avenue. But the mansion is also filled with enough breakable heirlooms to make the parents of an active child nervous. So the Seuses decided to double the size of what they call the "carriage house," which was added to the 3-acre estate 18 years ago by previous owners. Since Easter, Medford builder Fred Barnum has been creating a 1,600-square-foot banquet room with a kitchen and an old-fashioned soda fountain. There will be a 20-foot-long counter so the grandkids can sit on a stool eating an ice cream cone. "My husband has always wanted an ice cream soda bar," Connie Seus said. "Our grandchildren will think they are in heaven." The addition also will have 1,300 square feet upstairs for guest bedrooms. The exterior will match the craftsmanship of the Nunan House, including ornamental iron on the roof, fish scale siding and soffits, the undersides of eves. "They don�t even build houses like this anymore," Barnum said, admiring the $1 million edifice built by Jeremiah Nunan for his wife, Delia, 108 years ago. It�s a time-consuming job matching the details on the Nunan exterior, said Barnum, noting the addition�s 50-degree pitched roof is the steepest he�s ever worked on. He�s not as fast as the builders across the street putting up homes in the new subdivision called Nunan Square. "I look down below and tell myself I should be going faster," Barnum said with a smile. But he knows that copying the craftsmanship of the 1800s takes time. "I want to make sure 100 years from now people will look at this and say, �Somebody did a good job on this structure�." The Nunan House was designed by George Barber of Knoxville, Tenn., who sold his floor plans in a catalog. The home bears his trademark � a bull�s eye window on the south side. The Nunan House shouldn�t be confused with Sears and Roebuck pre-built catalog homes sold during the same era, according to Carol Harbison-Samuelson, Southern Oregon Historical Society library manager. The Nunan design may have arrived by mail and some materials by rail, but the builders were local, including mason J.H. Huffer, who also poured the stone walk leading from the Jackson County Courthouse to Oakdale Avenue. "It was a home so grand that the newspapers were keeping track of its progress as it was being built," she said. The $200,000 addition will have the same grand theme, said Seus, owner since 1988. The addition will boast a second cupola and eagle weather vane on top and crown molding � normally reserved for interiors � on the bottom. The exterior paint will be red, green and off-white, a pattern that local Nunan admirers have mimicked. The Seuses tell curious painters to check the computer at Hubbard�s Ace Hardware and Home Center, which is owned and operated by their five children, Bob, Mark, Dan, Paul and Leslie. "We�re very fortunate that we�ve been able to keep our children so close," said Connie Seus, who hopes to celebrate Thanksgiving in the new banquet hall. "It doesn�t happen to families very often." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA