1. BRINGING NEW LIFE TO THE FLOYD NICHOLS HOUSE
Jeff and Lisa Rehbine had two requirements when they were looking for a new home in the fall
of 1996: 1) the house needed to be at least 100 years old and 2) it needed to have a rentable
apartment. While driving down Grand River Avenue on the way to look for houses in South
Lyon, they found both in a Queen Anne style house built in 1900 in downtown Farmington. The
house was a diamond in the rough with peeling paint, ugly shutters and overgrown landscaping.
Lisa’s 100-year-old grandfather called it a “cudya house”, according to the winning article Jeff
wrote for the Lee Peel Writing Contest in 2006, “the outside definitely had a ‘cudya house’
potential: ‘Honey, could ya’ live here and still love me?’”
FLOYD NICHOLS WAS A FRIEND OF GOVERNOR FRED WARNER
Jeff started researching the house’s history soon after they moved into their new home. He found
that a local man, Floyd Nichols, had built the house. Floyd was born and raised in the
Farmington area where his parents had a 180-acre farm. At 26 years of age, Floyd was planning
to marry and built the beautiful Queen Anne home on Grand River for his intended bride.
Floyd began his association with Fred Warner as a young man, delivering campaign letters for
the Governor’s second term campaign. Soon Fred Nichols was working for Governor Warner at
his large dairy farm. Eventually, Nichols became secretary and treasurer of the Warner Dairy
Company. He was a long-term friend of Fred Warner, living across the street from him and
serving as pall-bearer for the three-term Governor Fred Warner’s funeral.
In 1901, Floyd Nichols married Grace P. Voorhies. At the same time, he was starting his long
career at the Warner Dairy Farm. Grace and Floyd had one child, a boy named Hinman. Rehbine
suspects the boy was the owner of a vintage 1914 Daisy No. 25 BB air rifle he found one day
tucked above a basement wall. Nichols was an active and popular member of the Farmington
community, serving on the school board for 25 years and city council for 15 years. He was a
charter member of the Farmington State Bank Board of Directors, where he became Vice-
President later in his career.
The Nichols remained in the house on Grand River until approximately 1945, when he moved to
33718 Oakland. This was the original home of Governor Warner’s daughter, Edessa, who sold
the house to the Nichols. In 1952, Floyd Nichol’s wife, Grace, died. He soon remarried to a
woman with grown children, Alice Macksey. He stayed in the house on Oakland Street until his
death in 1958.
FRUGALITY AND SMART PLANNING REIGNS

2. When Jeff and Lisa purchased their home at 33728 Grand River Avenue, all of the original
woodwork had been stripped from the home. What remained was narrow trim and baseboards
that were completely inappropriate to the home’s period of construction. Although this had been
a deterrent to the purchase of the house in the beginning, the Rehbines had resolved to restore the
original beauty of the home at some point in the future.
The original single family dwelling had been turned into a duplex in 1969 by Lawrence Mayer, a
local florist who owned the home and the two neighboring houses on Grand River. All three
homes were converted to multi-family dwellings by Mayer. The Rehbines had purchased a single
family dwelling converted to a duplex for a reason: income.
Years of thoughtful trash picking of discarded antique treasures and purchases at garage sales
had left Jeff and Lisa with an accumulation of furniture and architectural elements for the nearly
century-old house they would be calling home. They continued to rent out the upper level
apartment of their home for ten years, allowing them to finance the rehabilitation of their home
on Jeff’s teacher’s salary as their family grew by three.
Because there were no pictures of the interior of their home, the new millwork for the interior of
the home had to be designed by the Rehbines themselves. They toured every Queen Anne home
they could, whether it was high style or a middle class family Queen Anne. From these tours, the
Rehbines gathered a collection of pictures and profiles to reference for their own use. Jeff
selected and installed all of the millwork in their home himself- from baseboards to door trim,
spindles to porch railings. He has now been enlisted by neighbors for projects on their homes.
As Jeff and Lisa started the rehabilitation of their home, neighbors, friends and coworkers grew
interested in their project and started giving them architectural elements and furnishings to add to
their collection. As one tours the home, they share stories of furnishings, chandeliers, windows
and even a large column in their kitchen. Each item has a story, tied to a person, a building or a
place, many pieces coming from Farmington area homes. Or in the case of some of the rear
porch spindles, the story is tied to the inside of a wall! The end result is a beautiful home with
the character of a century-old Victorian era home that has been rehabilitated with great care and
consideration.
Early projects included completely stripping the clapboards of peeling exterior paint and
repainting. At the same time, Jeff created the gable and dormer peak details: sunburst pattern
with center drop pendant at the gable peak and fretwork with center drop pendant in the dormer
peak. The sunburst design is carried over to the front gate at Grand River. A year later, he rebuilt
the front porch with a hipped roof instead of the original flat roof which had created water
damage for years. He created the spindlework, gable pediment and porch balcony himself.
The backyard was completely overgrown. Since the former owner, florist Lawrence Mayer had
designed the landscaping with special attention to the trees thirty years earlier, Jeff and Lisa
Rehbine decided to restore original landscaping early on. In the process, they found more

3. treasures that had been buried by years of neglect, including the privy of a nearby house. The
beautiful gardens created by Mayer have been restored. The privy is now a Queen Anne style
playhouse, built with left over architectural artifacts not used in the house, including leaded glass
windows and a Dutch door.
Later projects included a rear addition to the home which created a library with a barrel vaulted
ceiling framed by Jeff Rehbine. The addition also added a needed second full bath to the circa
1900 Queen Anne house. The final major project was to convert the duplex back into a single
family home. The house layout had already been completely changed during the 1969 split into a
duplex. So Rehbine needed to rearrange the floor plan of the existing rooms on the main floor
and create the room layout from scratch on the second floor. He was able to create three
bedrooms as well as a sitting room, rear balcony and full master bath. The conversion took a full
year of Jeff working full-time as a teacher and nearly full-time as a carpenter at night and on the
weekends.
After nearly 17 years of hard work, TLC and dedication, Jeff and Lisa Rehbine now have a
beautiful, noteworthy single-family home which stands prominently and gracefully in the center
of the Farmington Historic District.
Written by Jena Stacey, Farmington Historical Commission.