AAUW offers a little of everything on Home Tour

To say that Dr. Dawn Green’s house was a fixer-upper, when she bought it in 1980, may be a bit of an understatement.

Even then the house was more than 50 years old and was built during the construction of Hoover Dam. And, it showed.

“The house was built in 1934 and it was all leftover stuff from the dam,” she said. “This wasn’t one of the executive homes. This was something they put up to simply live in.”

As to how her home, at 705 Utah St., was chosen for this year’s AAUW Home Tour, Green said she volunteered after having recently joined the organization.

“They were looking for homes,” she said. “Initially, it was a historic home but I’ve done a lot of work over the years. Even though I’m a member, they still had to do an interview and they came and saw the house to see if it’s along the lines of what they wanted. I was excited when they said I was chosen but I knew I had to do a lot of little things around the house to get it ready.”

This year’s event is from 1-4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7.

“Local homeowners volunteer their homes for the tour,” said AAUW Home Tour co-chair Kathi Dew. “Dawn Green’s house was chosen for the tour because it has a unique style and an interesting history.”

While the specific addresses won’t be given out until the day of the event, the other four homes on this year’s tour include:

• A house with Lake Mead views that features an eclectic collection of paintings, sculpture and furniture gathered by the owner on her travels around the world.

• A home that was completely remodeled in the past year, blending its classic character with Western design inspired by the owner’s cowboy relatives.

• A golf course home with a stunning chef’s kitchen and temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar.

• A house that was built in 1941 with a Sears and Roebuck mail-order home kit. Over the years it housed professional offices, and it’s now home to Utopia, a pinball lounge.

Green said she chose the Utah Street house for one simple reason; she could afford it.

“It was $42,000 in a neighborhood that was safe,” the recently-retired dentist said.

The old saying, “You get what you pay for,” could apply to her home. The interior had dark wood paneling, the ceiling had to be removed and the exterior door stood at just 5-foot-8. And the back door was three inches shorter than the front.

“At that point it was a safe place to live and I wanted to move in as soon as I could,” she said, despite the needed improvements. “When my dad first saw it, he laughed and said it was definitely a fixer-upper and he was right.”

What’s now her spare bedroom had walls made of cardboard paneling. When the walls were removed, it was filled with newspapers from 1944, which acted as insulation. Where the kitchen now sits was a porch that housed a swamp cooler and washer and dryer. The house had no interior heating. The floor had no foundation other than wooden pallets. As for the electrical wiring, that’s another story.

“How it never burned down is a mystery to me,” Green said. “These were basically just temporary shacks put up. They never thought they’d be in use for 90 years.”

She said there been a few renovations made by owners, over the years prior to her purchase, but just a few. A second bedroom had been added.

In the 1990s, after she graduated from dental school, Green began the majority of the renovations one sees today. The biggest of which was adding a second story, that now houses her bedroom, bathroom and a large, semi-enclosed balcony. This required raising the ceiling on the bottom floor. Thanks to all the renovations, the house went from 852 square feet to now more than 1,200 square feet. The last renovation made was in 1992.

For those who have lived in Boulder City for a while, Green’s physical address may not register with most. But what does is when she says it’s the house with the pink cinderblock wall.

“One Sunday night around 10 p.m. I decided to paint it,” she said. “My neighbors woke up the next morning to a pink fence. There was no building code or HOA. A friend of mine joked and said, ‘You’re reason we have HOAs.’”

Tickets for the Home Tour are $20 per person and allow participants to take a self-guided tour of five homes in different neighborhoods of Boulder City.

Tickets can be purchased through the day of the tour at the front desk of the Boulder Dam Hotel. Attendees are given a wristband to wear along with a brochure giving addresses, directions to the homes, and descriptions of the homes’ interesting features. AAUW members and other volunteers serve as guides inside the homes. The tour is designed for those ages 13 and up.

The Home Tour and the Wine and Chocolate Tasting in April are the two major fundraisers for the local AAUW branch. Last year the branch awarded 18 scholarships totaling $13,000 to local college students and contributed $1,225 to Emergency Aid’s backpack and school supply drive.