Todd and Jill Johnson have been working, and waiting, for three years to restore and complete an addition to their historic Holly Avenue home in St. Paul, but recently they discovered a surprise that waited to be discovered for more than a century.
"I love the history and you just wish houses could talk," Todd Johnson said.
Lucky for him, he found the next best thing. While removing the old siding, he found hand-painted wood signs hidden beneath.
"I've never seen anything like it," Johnson said, pointing to the old wood-painted signs now covering the outside of his home. "The more and more you found, the more and more interesting it got."
Todd didn't know the significance of the signs until a neighborhood historian, Jim Sazevich, stopped by.
"By chance, he walked by about a week ago and I was working and he stopped me," Todd said. "He did some research into it. It's been so fun to learn more about it."
And it didn't take long for the real fun to begin. Sazevich told him most of the signs dated back to the late 1870's thanks to one particular name.
"You can kind of see that, like angled, 'Leslie,'" Todd said. "That was the graphic artist, painter, that was in town for a year that probably did all these signs."
Todd has removed a few of them but the rest will remain and will soon be concealed with new siding.
"Doesn't do me any good to tear it off and it takes away from the history of the house," he said.
His wife Jill agrees.
"It's pretty too I think. It's different," Jill said. "I guess we have to find a hand-painted artist to do the same thing right? I think it would be fun if we all signed this part of the house to make our mark like they did this part."