A dream restored

Not many people fulfill their childhood dreams, but one Augusta native is.

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Annette M. Drowlette/Staff

Brad Cunningham scrapes very old paint off a kitchen window from his house at 1223 Greene St. He is restoring the home, which was built in 1901.

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Annette M. Drowlette/Staff

Homeowner Brad Cunningham shows a nail he struggled to pull loose from a window frame. After purchasing the home nearly two years ago, he has decided to do a lot of the work himself.

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Annette M. Drowlette/Staff

Mr. Cunningham works on a window in the back of his house at 1223 Greene St. The 2,900-square-foot house was built in 1901 by Robert Benjamin Heath and has been in severe disrepair.

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Annette M. Drowlette/Staff

Carpenter Michael Peavy works on restoring the windows and puts new ropes and pulleys in them.

Brad Cunningham bought a historic home downtown and is doing about 40 percent of the restoration work himself.

"Growing up in Augusta, I was always downtown and these great, big, old houses used to fascinate me," he said.

Through Historic Augusta Inc. Mr. Cunningham looked at many downtown homes. He chose this house over the others because it had the most original footprint.

He purchased the 1901 house on Greene Street in February 2007 while living in Atlanta. He moved back to Augusta in November 2007.

He worked on the roof, foundation, siding and now is finishing the exterior windows.

"Once these houses are torn down, you can never get them back. You can't recapture what was here. A city is no good if it doesn't have people to live in it," he said.

Mr. Cunningham has no time frame for finishing.

"I'm on the who-knows-when plan," he said. "I'm doing it the way I want to do it. It's important for me to do it right, with the highest quality of materials. I'm not renovating the home - I'm restoring it."

He will live in the single-family home once he's done.