" The house that we are about to visit is privately owned and it was built in the 1830's but its referred to as the Robert Barnwell Rhett house, named after it's most famous owner back before the Civil War. He was a rabid secessionist. And many folks think the civil war actually began here. When his son went off to battle, Mrs. Rhett vowed that these gates would never be opened until he returned. It hasn't been opened since. Right now let's meet with Betsy Jenrette, the owner. And of course Richard Marx, our restoration contractor who's first project this was."

" That's right."

" Hi, How are you?"

" How you do?"

" Betsy, thank you for welcoming us. Tell me a little bit about the history of the house Richard."

" Well, the house, as you've said, was built in the 1830's. We, we feel certain it was built by Robert Mills who is a, the most famous South Carolina architect------"

" Yes."

" that did projects throughout the, the state as well as the Washington Monument when he was architect to the Capital after Latrobe ."

" Really?"

" And it's a classical Greek revival. You see the different columns, the orders of columns on each porch level."

" But, it's not at all the, the, the common garden variety Greek revival that we see very often all over the country with the little temple fronts. This is a special house."

" And you'll see inside the octagon base are very special."

" May we go inside?"

" Yes, please do."

" Thanks!"

" You know, I've got to admit. This is the first antique house I've visited that has no grand set of steps leading up to it. It's just one step up from grain [unk] and, you're in."

" Yes! Well, it's a more of an urban setting."

" Yes."

" In the city, and the front hall is about maybe 30 or 40 feet?"

" About 40 feet long."

" Yes."

" About 10 feet wide."

" And so you've got this as the main floor of the house the minute you walk in or is the next floor the more-------"

" I think this is the main floor of the house and-------"

" Yes."

" you're received here and then you're taken upstairs."

" Yes."

" And then of course upstairs you've got your twin parlor."

" Exactly!"

" What condition was the house when you bought it?"

" When we, when we, when we bought this house 11 years ago, there were 3 apartments downstairs, so [unk] to put it back to the way it should be and this room had a wall, a, a wall right cutting, cutting the room. This hall had 3 bathrooms and 2 bedrooms -----"

" Really?"

" and it was just. No staircase."

" And it was your first restoration project -----"

" My first and last I hope, I'll, I'll never do this again."

" So you had to build the staircase?"

" Right! The staircase wasn't here. We had evidence of it inside the framing and the floor systems and [unk] -----"

" It's pretty remarkable affairs. It's got this very, very slender profile."

" It is, [unk] of course, it's a great place to store the kid's bikes."

" A nice big toy box."

" Yes, Yes!"

" It's nice that a historic house is lived in."

" Tell me about how you worry about figuring out how to build this?"

" Well, we, we had the staircase above to go by, but there's nothing stock about it. Everything had to be made and the returns on all the stair treads, all made individually to the curves of the------"

" Yes."

" stairs and this volute was hand carved out of mahogany. And It was actually wreath and wreath [unk] sections. That's how they called carving stairwell sections."

" The, the, the ascent is very comfortable though, you know, when you look at it, you'll say, you think you're like you're gonna climb up a ladder, but in fact, you go up very comfortably."

" Well, It's steep on the outside and less steep on the inside. And it's more comfortable to walk right down the middle."

" Yes. Well, Tell me about these parlors of yours?"

" Double octagonal [unk] , Please come see."

" Richard, A minute ago you used the term retting when talking about how you build the handrails."

" Yes, wreathing is just a, a term used for carving handrail sections out of solid wood, so that these were all carved out of solid mahogany. "

" With a drawknife for an edge [unk] ."

" Right!"

" Great! Hey, this is a beautiful floor. Now, how do you use this level?"

" We live up here."

" The kitchen's here."

" We cook here, we eat here, we read here every night."

" So, it's a nice comfortable kitchen and-"

" Yes"

" I like the floor, it's kinda got a formal feel to it."

" And then the twin octagonal parlors. How, how do you use them?"

" We read in here every night, we entertain here. This is our dining room, the identical room."

" Over there, Yes! Hey! What size is this octagon?"

" This is------"

" I think its 25 feet, from wall to wall."

" From any facet of the octagon is gonna be 25 feet across?"

" Right!"

" And the ceiling height?"

" 14 feet?"

" Yes, I think it's 14 feet."

" Magnificent! And I think that the fireplace is certainly an unusual one. I've never seen one quite like this."

" They're beautiful marble fireplaces that were falling away from the wall when we bought the house and they had to be taken down and put back up piece by piece as you can see there are a zillion pieces."

" Were they painted or were they?"

" No, these were not painted. The ones downstairs are painted, these were not. This is just a wonderful marble. Again, it's a matching."

" Black Belgian marble."

" Yes."

" This is great! So you've actually got a doorway here that you can slide out------"

" Yes."

" and close one room off from the other."

" Yes."

" Giant sliding doors. And the paint job in here is pretty remarkable. Tell me about it?"

" It's marbleized and we had 3 wonderful artists from New York come do it and what they do is score each box first. So somebody spent a day making all these boxes and each one is an individual painting as he described to me."

" Sure, the idea being that each one represents a, a separate piece of marble stone in a stone wall. And so they all have to have different grain direction and patterns."

" You think it's, be cold when you touch it."

" Yes"

" It's always a shock that its not."

" It's pretty complicated job. This is a wonderful dining room."

" Thank you!"

" I bet this table opens up to seat 20, right?"

" But it does. As a matter of fact, there are lots of leads [unk] downstairs. So------"

" Yes, Yes. And the chairs are really remarkable."

" Big."

" Very huge."

" Heavy, yes."

" Well, it's a wonderful room."

" Thank you very much."

" Thank you for letting us in."