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"Strong at the broken places"
voices of illness, a chorus of hope
Daily Journal
March 22-23, 2003
B&B will offer R&R
by Annette Jone
Daily Journal Features Editor
Staff Photos by Tracy T. Mendez
Sometimes the best things in life just take time and, sometimes, more time. Ask Craig
and Kim Smith. The couple is turning a Franklin Queen Ann/Carpenter Builder-style house into a bed and breakfast, and
the renovation is taking much longer than expected.
But the wait will be worth it for Franklin and for visitors to local antique shops, the fine
art gallery and Franklin College.
Rob Shilts, executive director of Franklin Heritage, says he frequently gets call from people
inquiring about antique shops, restaurants, and bed and breakfasts, he says.
"It's what the commercial area needed," he says of the Smiths' renovation on Jefferson Street.
"We have some nice hotels, but many ofthe people I'm talking to want the full experience."
The Smiths saw the house's potential as a bed and breakfast two years ago but didn't have an
opportunity to buy it until late last year. So anxious were they to get the project started, they began work on the
outside of the house before the loan went through in October.
They painted the front of the house and replaced the porch railing to match their own Queen
Ann home, built in Franklin around 1902.
Then Kim placed a welcoming, lighted candlelight in the front window,letting the neighborhod
know what to expect.
The Smiths planned to paint the woodworka dn have the house fininshed by May until they discovered
oak trim and paneling hidden by two coats of paint.
"This house is taking longer than anything I've ever seen," says Craig, who spent 150 house
sanding the stairway alone.
The couple spends every Saturday and Sunday and two hours nearly every weekday evening working
on the house. They hope to finish the project this summer.
Layers of paint have been removed from woodwork and paneling. Carpet padding was heated and
peeled away from wooden floors because it had been glued down. Some woodwork and broken windows will be replaced,
and the outside will be painted. The sitting room is nearly finished, needing only a coat of paint and the Victorian
settee and chairs stroed upstairs. An armoir is already in place.
A downstairs bedroom, enclosed with thick double doors, is off the dining room. Upstairs
are three more bedrooms, each with a private bath.
The kitchen will be the easiest to finish, Craig says. "Just move in the cabinets," he
say.
A game room with plenty of books adjoins the dining room, and a large screened porch will overlook
the back gardens.
A carport behind the house will be torn down.
A garden with masses of flowers and ponds will replicate the Smith's own garden.
Most of the furniture, except for two beds and dressers, has ben purchased from antique shops
in Indiana and Ohio.
"It has to be something we would put in our own house," Kim says.
Craig says, "I want this to feel like I felt when I satyed at my grandparents house."
The house will be called Ashley Drake Historic Inn and Gardens, after the Smiths' daughter,
Linden Ashley,5 and son, Cameron Drake, 7.
Craig says he sees tremendous potential for the restoriation of homes on Jefferson Street
from U.S. 31 to Forsythe Street.
"I would love to save Jefferson Street," Craig says. "There are so many fine homes
that could be saved on this street. The hardest thing about restoring a house is that you have to be dedicated."
Several homes are for sale, but people don't bother to see what's inside, he says. Many
historical treasures are hidden by aluminum siding or lack of a paint job.
"It's a sense of place," he says. "We can walk to breakfast, walk to the Artcraft (Theatre),
walk to the park, and Iknow my neighbors by name.
Indianapolis Star
October 30, 2004
Transformation Complete
Couple turns house next door into bed-and-breakfast
By William J. Booher
photos by Gary Moore
A new owner's project to put bright yellow siding onto a late-19th century white wood-frame Queen Anne house
was the last straw for Kim Smith, who lives next door.
"It made Kim so sick," recalled her husband, Craig.
The Smiths already had been upset for more than two years as they watched the house deteriorate as rental property.
Kim Smith rushed next door as the siding project began. "I said, 'Please stop.' "
The work stopped, and the Smiths bought the two-story house at 668 E. Jefferson St. a short time later in October
2002.
That started a two-year project by the Smiths to create the Ashley-Drake Historic Inn and Gardens.
Now it's completed, and the Smiths are ready to welcome visitors from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today to an open house
at Franklin's only bed-and-breakfast.
The inn, which opened informally on Labor Day, bears the names of the Smiths' children, Linden Ashley, 7, and
Cameron Drake, 8.
The Smiths used some of their collection of antiques to decorate the interior.
Craig Smith, 36, who works in Beech Grove for Acterna, a manufacturer of test equipment for cable providers,
estimated he and his wife spent 50 hours a week over two years to restore the house.
"Our favorite joke was 'two more weeks,' " he said about the project that wound up taking more than 100 weeks.
Besides painting the exterior a light tan, with green trim, they also painted interior walls. Stripping paint
to restore the original pine flooring upstairs and the early 20th century oak flooring on the main floor proved to be a major
time-consuming project.
They installed a pond, now home to goldfish and Japanese fish called koi, and hauled in tons of dirt to create
a garden in the back yard that for years renters used for parking cars and running karts.
They created four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and antique-style tubs and fixtures.
Each bedroom is decorated in a theme:
• Liberty Room, the lone main floor bedroom, features an antique double bed and Americana memorabilia.
• The Depot has a railroad crossing sign on a wall and train memorabilia, plus an antique brass double
bed.
• Garden Room features a queen-size bed and garden touches, including dried flowers on a wood ladder in
a corner.
• Heritage Room contains an antique iron double bed and soon will have pictures reflecting Franklin and
Johnson County history on its walls.
"We'd always thought we should be shop owners," said Kim Smith, 39, who operates the bed-and-breakfast while
she and her husband also home-school their children.
Kim Smith didn't just envision becoming a business owner in desperation to save the integrity of an architecturally
significant house. Now, she keeps up with all the daily chores of running a bed-and-breakfast.
The duties include cooking breakfast, with guests placing orders the night before from an extensive menu that
includes eggs, meats, cereal, pancakes and waffles.
She does get some help from her son and daughter, confirmed Cameron, who said, "We do the serving."
Most guests have been people from out of state who came to Franklin to attend weddings, said Kim Smith. The
bed-and-breakfast also is well situated for visitors to Franklin College, which is a block south of the inn.
The Smiths have lived for 10 years in the late-19th century two-story, gray with green trim wood-frame Queen
Anne house at 670 E. Jefferson St., next door to the bed and breakfast.
Both houses reflect their interest in historic preservation. Kim Smith is a former Franklin Heritage Inc. administrative
assistant, and her husband is a former member of Franklin Heritage's board of directors.
"They've changed the environment there," said Rob Shilts, executive director of Franklin Heritage.
He said the restoration of a house can be a catalyst for neighbors to also improve their property.
Franklin Heritage, he said, can help people who don't have the knowledge to undertake a restoration or who don't
know how to find those with the skills to do the work.
As for the Smiths, he said in recognition of their knowledge and skills, "They did the majority of the work
themselves."
Call Star reporter William Booher at (317) 444-2706.
What: Open House
When: 10a.m. to 3 p.m. today
Where: 668 E. Jefferson St. Franklin
How much: Room rates are $75.00 and $85.00 per night for regular nights, $85.00 and $95.00 per
night for special occasions and holidays.
Phone: (317) 736-0199
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Spring 2008
Bed And A Breakfast
Ashley-Drake
Historic Inn and Garden
Franklin
You meet the most surprising people when you're running a bed-and-breakfast
inn.
Take, for instance, the producers of NBC's "Today," in town to shoot a segment in Franklin. Or author Richard
Cohen, the husband of anchor Meredith Vieria of "Today." An English composer. A harpist. A Lithuanian educator.
Such
is the life of Kim and Craig Smith, Franklin, and their children, Cameron Drake, 12, and Linden Ashley, 10. The family owns
the Ashley-Drake Historic Inn and Garden (yes, named after the kids) at 668 E. Jefferson St. in Franklin, and has run the
facility for 3½ years.
You don't have to be famous to be treated like a celebrity at the Ashley-Drake Inn.
"We
try to make everyone feel special," Kim said. She welcomes each visitor by putting their name on a white board posted on the
front porch and carries in their luggage. When bad weather threatens, she meets them at their car with an umbrella.
Once
inside the door, guests come face to face with history - high ceilings, crown moldings, and walls full of the most lustrous
oak woodwork imaginable. Kim actually shudders when she thinks of the potential fate of the structure before she and Craig
snapped it up. As she tells it, they watched in horror from their home next door as workers carted in cheap vinyl siding to
replace the perfectly sound (and historically appropriate) wood siding on the house. As the workers began to destroy the home's
original exterior, Kim interrupted them and asked the reason. When told they were "improving" the house for sale, the Smiths
immediately bought it and restored the wooden siding that had been pulled off.
Once inside their new house, they began
stripping woodwork to repaint.
"We had decided to open it as a bed and breakfast inn, and we were going to open in
six months," she laughed.
But when she discovered handsome oak woodwork under the layers of paint, she knew she had
a project ahead of her.
"It took more than two years (to restore the house)," she said.
Adding to their woes
was the fact that the house had been partially burned (arson is suspected) several years back.
The care the Smiths
put into the restoration details leaps out at visitors when they first walk in the door. Genuinely old pedestal sinks and
claw foot bathtubs in the bathrooms. Antique trunks that surely contained someone's worldly possessions from the Old World.
Beautifully detailed crown molding and hardwood floors.
Peppered throughout the house are framed photographs of various
Franklin sites from the horse-and-buggy era. Books with publication dates before 1900 lie casually about, as if waiting for
a Victorian-era guest to resume reading. Antique furniture lends a feeling of truly having stepped back in time.
Marching
up the staircase wall are framed pictures of every family who has lived in the house since it was built in 1897. A few former
residents of the house have stopped in, to the Smiths' delight. Other long-timers in the area have contributed nuggets of
information that add to the history of the place. Each piece of history is cherished - framed or placed in a scrapbook available
for viewing.
Each of the Ashley-Drake's four guest rooms is decorated in a different motif. The downstairs Liberty
Room, which has a patriotic cast, features framed pictures of Smith family ancestors. The flag of the original 13 American
colonies hangs above the red, white and blue-bedecked bed. This room is the most accessible for those in wheelchairs and features
a shower.
Upstairs is the Depot Room, personally decorated by Cameron. At various auctions and flea markets, this train
buff has collected items such as lanterns and railroad crossing signs. There's a genuine railroad clock on the wall and a
similarly themed watercolor painted by Kim hanging above the bed. The adjoining bath is fitted with fixtures from the early
1900s.
The Garden Room is Linden's territory. She chose the framed prints of princesses, which compete with the room's
many windows for a lighter feel. Decorated in florals, this room features a spacious bathroom and garden-related touches such
as an antique watering can, dried flowers draped over an old wooden ladder, and a framed swatch of the room's original wallpaper
- floral, of course.
The Heritage Room offers the largest space for a family - in addition to the bed, there's a pull-out
sofa. The enormous adjoining bathroom was once a lady's parlor, Kim said, and now is refreshingly sprinkled with greenery.
Gleaming wood floors contribute to the colonial feel of this roomy suite.
Coming downstairs for breakfasts, guests
will find a collection of restaurant-style tables, rather than the one long table most associated with bed-and-breakfast inns.
"Not
everyone feels comfortable eating breakfast with people they don't know," Kim pointed out. "If they want to sit together they
can, but they don't have to."
Cameron and Linden serve as wait staff, bringing home-cooked omelets and pancakes out
to the guests and occasionally garnering a much-appreciated tip. The Ashley-Drake offers a bevy of public areas for guests.
There's a reading room with novels and other books ranging from Civil War to Indiana trivia. A former woodshed has been connected
to the rest of the house and is now a media room, where a selection of movies, music and more books awaits. The former screened-in
back porch, now enclosed with windows on two walls, serves as an additional TV room, and offers a 180-degree view of the outdoors,
as well. The Ashley-Drake even features a gift shop full of candles, antiques and the inn's signature mug.
The grounds
are worth exploring, too. This is Craig's domain, and he has created an idyllic English-style garden, complete with koi pond
and bubbling fountain. An ancient crabapple tree overlooks the luxurious garden, around which several benches offer a shady
reprieve. For the more active in nature, the Smiths have purchased antique-looking bicycles (although they're reproductions),
so visitors can cycle down the quiet streets of Franklin.
When business quiets down a bit, the Smiths are planning
to complete the paperwork necessary to have the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Was all the restoration
work worth it? Undoubtedly, emphasized Kim.
"If nothing else, we saved the house from being destroyed."
Prices
range from $75 to $95 per night. For more information on the Ashley-Drake Historic Inn and Garden (including directions),
visit http://www.Ashleydrakeinn.com/
Western Omelet½ cup white onion, diced
½ cup purple onion, diced
½ cup green pepper, diced
½
cup red pepper, diced
½ cup orange pepper, diced
½ cup yellow pepper, diced
2 slices thick ham, diced
¼ slab ground
medium sausage
3 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
dash salt
dash pepper
¾ cup grated fiesta cheese
Oil or spray oil
In
a medium-sized saucepan, sauté onions and peppers.
In a medium-sized saucepan, cook sausage. When cooked, add diced ham
and lower temperature to low. Beat eggs lightly. Add milk, salt and pepper. Beat mixture lightly.
In a large, round-bottomed
saucepan, spray oil to cover whole pan. Put pan on medium heat burner. Add egg mixture to pan. Let sit until egg is almost
cooked. Add onions, peppers and meats. Add grated cheese. Lift pan up and over plate. Slowly tip pan, sliding omelet onto
the plate about half-way out. Lift pan forward, folding omelet over on top of itself. Garnish with more cheese, if desired.
Daily Journal
This old house
Kim Smith shows off the dinging room at Ashley-Drake Historic Inn and Gardens
with her children, Cameron, left, and Linden.
Oct. 23, 2004
DAILY JOURNAL PHOTO
BY ANDY COSTELLO |
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This old house
By ANNETTE JONES
Daily
Journal features editor
ajones@thejournalnet.com
Oct. 23-24, 2004
Cozy and steeped in history, Franklin’s
first bed and breakfast is open after a lengthy renovation.
Work at Ashley-Drake Historic Inn and Gardens took more
than a year longer than owners Craig and Kim Smith anticipated.
“We thought it would take six months,”
Kim says.
But yes, she would do it again if it meant saving a piece of history.
The couple bought the Queen
Ann/Carpenter Builder-style house next door to their own renovated Jefferson Street home for fear it would be turned into
a rental.
A bed and breakfast sounded feasible: The house is a block from Franklin College and its cultural and sporting
events.
Within easy walking distance are antique and specialty stores and the recently renovated Johnson County museum
in downtown Franklin. Also close by are Edinburgh Premium Outlets, famed architecture in Columbus, picturesque Nashville and
nightlife in Indianapolis.
The six-month plan to make some repairs and add fresh paint was scuttled when the Smiths
discovered oak trim and paneling hidden by two coats of paint.
After hours of tearing out walls, closing off doors
and sanding, scraping and staining the woodwork to reveal the home’s original beauty, the house glows with its oak woodwork
and wood floors.
“Each door took 10 hours,” Kim says.
But it was a labor of love, she says.
The
bed and breakfast, named for their children — Linden Ashley and Cameron Drake Smith — offers the comforts of a
home away from home.
The public rooms — a formal living room with Victorian and Eastlake furniture, a dining
room and an informal parlor — open off the wide front porch that stretches across the front of the house. A game room
and screened-in porch look out over the backyard’s mature gardens, patio and koi pond.
For the cost of their
room, guests get a home-cooked breakfast they order from an extensive menu the night before.
Wander out the back gate,
and guests are steps away from the Franklin Historic Greenway Trail for a stroll, jog or bike ride. The Smiths provide bikes
and strollers.
The Smiths’ first guests, in town for a wedding, told Kim they had never stayed in a bed and breakfast
before. And they would never stay in a hotel again.
“I think once you stay in a bed and breakfast atmosphere,
you don’t want to go back to a hotel,” Kim says.
Rooms are painted a deep sage green that compliments the
shining oak woodwork.
The downstairs bedroom off the dining room, called the Liberty Room, features an antique double
bed and a private bath with a walk-in shower.
Upstairs, the Heritage Room overlooks historic Jefferson Street and Franklin
College. The room also features an antique iron double bed and an oversized chair with a sofa bed.
The Depot Room
is filled with train memorabilia and an antique brass double bed, and the Garden Room features a queen-size bed and overlooks
the innkeepers’ back yard.
Each of the upstairs bedrooms feature antiques and large bathrooms with claw-foot
tubs and a shower riser. Beds are all covered in quilts in keeping with the late 18th and early 19th century.
Despite
the expense, plus working nearly every night and weekend with only two weekends off for family trips in the past year, Craig
says he would take on a renovation project again.
“But not just yet,” he says.
He would do it differently,
too.
“I think I should have done the more difficult tasks, like plumbing, up front,” he says.
“You
get so excited about the visual part, but the mechanical part is more important,” Craig says. “It’s 90 percent
of the work.”
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Times-Mail
Bedford, Indiana
March 24, 2007
Put that bottle of pop on my tab, please
By ROGER MOON,
roger@tmnews.com
It wasn’t possible to shake Kim Smith’s hand.
Not in a literal sense. She was a hundred miles away on the other end
of the telephone.
But that handshake did occur in a figurative way.
Kim told my wife, Valerie, that if we arrived at the door of her Ashley-Drake
Historic Inn in Franklin last weekend, prepared to pay for a night’s lodging, we would find there was a room waiting
for us.
No credit card. No written contract. No promise to give Kim our firstborn
if we didn’t show.
That pretty much amounted to a figurative handshake, the kind that seals
a deal. It was simple trust.
It’s a kind of trust that, too often, is spoken of in the past
tense, as a reference to “back in the time when a man’s word meant something.”
Kim Smith’s way of doing things hearkens back to the time when
I, as a kid, could walk into Smith’s Grocery in Orange County’s Valeene and walk out with a bottle of Big Red
even though I didn’t have a dime to my name. There, another Smith, Nellie, just wrote the amount of my purchase down
on a piece of paper (with that of about every other kid in town) confident I would pay it sometime. No credit checks. No collateral.
No interest fees. (Obviously, I didn’t even have a firstborn in those days.) Just simple trust.
Kim Smith’s way of doing things hearkens back to the time when
I could take my mom to a store in downtown Marengo and drive off with a car full of groceries. No sworn statements. No dotted
lines. No questions asked. Just an understanding that my dad would be there within a day or two to pay the bill. Just simple
trust.
Kim Smith’s way of doing things hearkens back to the time when
I could walk into a local bank and name the amount of money (within reason) that I needed and it was available to me. No reference
checks. No attorneys. No affidavits. No calling somebody in Chicago or Cincinnati or someplace far away to see if it was OK
to hand me the money. No giving up my firstborn. Just simple trust.
I decided I surely couldn’t be the only one who could recall a
time “when a man’s word meant something.” So, I placed calls to a couple of longtime merchants.
Joe Bradley has been associated with Kirby Hardware in Orleans since
the 1950s. He told me in-store credit would be much more difficult to collect on now than it was a few decades ago. “We
had a lot of people ... who would say they would come in at the end of the month or they would say, ‘We’ll pay
in a couple of weeks,’” he said. The money almost always came through the door.
The same applied at the grocery store that Joe’s parents and aunt
and uncle owned for many years on Vincennes Road in Orleans.
“They had a little book where they kept people’s names,”
Joe said. “The people would come in and buy their groceries and pay when they could. ... They had one or two that they
lost,” Joe said. But, that was in 30 years of selling groceries. Just simple trust.
At Mitchell’s Holmes Hardware, Don Caudell Jr. told me that customers
often would do what came to be called “buying on time.” He said, “There were no signed contracts. No agreements.
It was just your word.” Just simple trust.
That approach has changed largely because so many people began using
credit cards. But, refreshingly, Caudell told me, “We still have in-store credit.” He added, “Occasionally,
we’re willing to take a small amount of risk,” Caudell said.
He also told me, “We’ve got a couple of older gentlemen that
will still call this the ‘jot-’em-down’ store.” Just simple trust.
I started thinking about this notion of trust — a two-way street
— when Valerie and I were going through her parents’ personal effects after their deaths. We found a yellowed
piece of notebook paper whereon the now-deceased Bill Wyman, as salesman, had penned, “This washer model 11429597U is
unconditionally guaranteed for 1 year against all defects in workmanship and material. W.E. Jenner & Sons stand good for
repair (if there is a) failure to operate properly.” No complicated warranties to return to the manufacturer. No chance
Bill would ever deny the paper carried his handwriting. Just simple trust.
I stumbled onto an unidentified visitor to an Internet guest book who
wrote about that kind of trust. The baby boomer wrote that when he was born in 1954, “Trust was real ... trust was free.”
Many factors, the writer said, changed all that. Too many people. Not enough jobs. The cost of living always going up.
Even though few people have taken advantage of Kim Smith’s trust,
people like her no doubt will become rarer and rarer. And the “jot-’em-down” stores, I’m confident,
will surely become fewer.
Better make sure you get a tight grip on your firstborn.
{phpads12] Times-Mail Staff Writer Roger Moon can be reached at 277-7253 or by e-mail at roger@tmnews .com.
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