The house location is 21 Main Street South in the former Village of Chesterville, Ontario. Immediately to the south is St Mary's School with the Chesterville Park south of the school. To the east (behind the house) is the original Chesterville cemetery with the South Nation River bounding the cemetery. To the west (across Main Street) is St Mary's Catholic Church, a fine grey stone steepled church built in 1851. Just south of the church is the presbytery, a beautiful large brick house built in 1883. To the north are two houses then the Main Street bridge over the Nation leading to the downtown shopping district. To summarize, the site is prime.
The house is a single family house of approximately 3000 square feet, built in 1902, before central heating, indoor plumbing, electricity or automobiles. This means that the door on the right of the picture does not lead to a separate apartment but does lead through the dining room to the back stairs. The heating ducts were grafted onto walls and not built into them as with modern construction so the inside is not as pretty as it could be. The ducts leading upstairs are few and small so the bedrooms are cool in the winter. The bathrooms (one and a half baths) were built into existing space at the end of hallways and were not well designed into the original structure. Electrical outlets are not as plentiful as required and especially upstairs, are sparse. There is no garage but a wood frame addition housing the kitchen and back kitchen was added long ago.
The house is a center hall plan with the living room to the right as you enter the front door and the dining room behind it. On the left is the chapel with what is now a den behind it. The kitchen occupies most of the addition at the back of the house. Upstairs are 4 bedrooms and a small bathroom. The attic is large with full walking headroom. The basement is small and wet. The house was built to last - 3 layers of brick atop a thick stone foundation with plastered walls inside and NO insulation in the walls.
The first floor in the main house has 10 foot ceilings and the upstairs floor has 9 foot ceilings. The house originally had 3 chimneys but is now down to one. There never was a fireplace in the house but it now has a wood stove in the kitchen and a very modern high efficiency gas furnace. The house has 36 windows and is now down to 5 exterior doors from 7 when the Pitruniak family moved in.
Much of the interior is as the nuns left it especially the main hall carpeting and the dining room linoleum. Unfortunately, the interior suffered while the nuns were in residence and lost most of its hardwood floors, the pocket doors to the chapel and half the main stairway banister posts.
Prominent features of the house include the design of the front windows which allow one to look up or down Main Street from inside the house and the elaborate carved woodwork in the gables over the top front bedroom windows.
