Photos by REX C. CURRY/DMN

Yolanda Lawson's restored Victorian home in the State-Thomas area of uptown is typical of the late 19th-century style.

The home was owned by a woman known as Ms. Willie, who had grown up in the neighborhood and attended Booker T. Washington. Ms. Willie had made the Victorian into a boardinghouse where she, her son and two boarders lived, making the parlor off the main entrance into a separate bedroom and adding a rickety little house in the back yard for extra space.Dr. Lawson's friend decided the home was simply too old, too rundown and too much work for any one person to take on.

But something about the house stayed with Dr. Lawson. She lived just down the street in a leased condo and would pass it often. There was something about the mucked-up floor plan; the vinyl floors; the thick, painted walls of forest green and white; the mismatched windows; and the small, pink kitchen that Dr. Lawson saw as beautiful, and she decided it had to be hers.

"My realtor thought I was crazy, and he tried to talk me out of it," she says.

When Dr. Lawson bought it, she ended up keeping some of Ms. Willie's original furniture, such as the guest beds and nightstands, along with the dining room chairs, but everything else left behind she threw away, which was no small feat.

''My realtor thought I was crazy, and he tried to talk me out of it,'' says Yolanda Lawson. But she decided it had to be hers.

"Imagine living somewhere for 56 years and never throwing anything away," Dr. Lawson says of the condition the house was in when she bought it. "That's how this house was."

So Dr. Lawson called in architect Daron Tapscott to sort through the muddled architecture and multiple layers of junk and dust and find the gem of a house she knew was underneath.

Mr. Tapscott, a former member of the Dallas Landmark Commission, is known for his archaeological skills. He's refurbished and rehabbed some of the city's most distinguished residences including four on Swiss Avenue, three on Gaston Avenue and – early in his career, when he still worked for a firm and was not yet independent – work on NorthPark Center and the Dallas Convention Center.

He likes to research and document the history of a structure before he begins to renovate, and Dr. Lawson's house was no different. Located in one of Dallas' 15 historic districts, Mr. Tapscott had actually studied the house before. In the early '80s, he was tasked with sketching the house and researching the exterior's paint colors for a client.

"When Yolanda initially called me, she said, 'You can start now,' with the goal to be finished as fast as possible," Mr. Tapscott remembers.

Even with those marching orders, it would be 13 months before Dr. Lawson could move into her house and another five months before the renovation was complete.

Dr. Lawson and architect Daron Tapscott hit local salvage yards to find wood and fixtures appropriate to the style of the home's original appearance.

"This was a very expensive house when it was built," Mr. Tapscott says of Dr. Lawson's home. "One-inch plaster walls, leaded glass windows ... this was a prominent Victorian for the city."

The problem was that the condition the house was in when Dr. Lawson bought it was far from ideal. It turned out there were not one, not two, but three layers of vinyl on top of the original, slow-growth pine floors. In some places the wood was too badly damaged to save, so salvaged old wood was added to keep the historic look intact. Some of the bead board on the walls was missing, so she also used salvaged materials to match the original.

But the biggest problem was just deciphering how the home was originally laid out.

The oversize windows in Dr. Lawson's master bedroom give the modern room a Victorian feel.

The converted parlor now has two antique wooden doors separating it from the kitchen-living area, which has a more modern open floor plan to fit Dr. Lawson's lifestyle, but that wasn't always the case. Mr. Tapscott says he had a hunch that doors – or, in this case, the doorjambs – should be there, so he told the contractor to knock down the wall and look.

"That was just instinct after doing old house restoration for 20-plus years," Mr. Tapscott says.

The contractor at first balked but, "sure enough, the doors were there," Mr. Tapscott says. With the door frame back in place, he and Dr. Lawson once again hit the salvage yards to find authentic wood pocket doors to restore the room to its original grandeur.

To add space, Mr. Tapscott cut out one floor joist from the second floor to allow for light to diffuse through the staircase to the first floor, and Dr. Lawson had him open up the landing to make it the perfect spot for her home office. But it was the kitchen that saw the biggest makeover. The 8-foot-by-11-foot room was, Mr. Tapscott says, used only by servants when the home was originally built, so there was no need to have the large kitchen spaces demanded today. A back staircase that descended into the tiny room was removed, and a French door was added for access to the back garden and to add more light. Custom cabinets replaced what Dr. Lawson calls " '70s Home Depot cabinets." Blue soapstone was chosen for the countertops and, for the backsplash, soft blue Ann Sacks tile.

In fact, Dr. Lawson's entire home is dressed in soft colors with punches of bright orange, yellow and black for accents.

Dr. Lawson says it's actually the outside that is her favorite part of her home. The rickety little house in the back yard was torn down in favor of a carport; there was no space for a full garage.

During the day, she sits on her wrap-around porch and swings while watching the comings and goings of the active State-Thomas area. At night, she sits in her landscaped back yard listening to music and the bubbling fountain.

"Honestly? My location is fabulous," she says. "And my porches, I love the downtown views from my porches."