POWERGRAMS

37 travel each year to an Alabama Crimson Tide football game, always staying in a chain motel. is year, however, they were alerted by a friend to Everhope, and saved $700 by staying 30 miles outside Tuscaloosa. ey are not the first to figure this out, as Everhope is booked up by UA fans throughout football season. e guest log lists recent entries from across Alabama, as well as St. Louis, Atlanta and one from Dublin, Ireland, who wrote, "Mile briochas, a thousand thanks, wonderful hospitality and company and conversations." e signatures are from some of the paying guests from 16 nations in 2018. Visitors are engaged by Smedberg's huge collection of sports memorabilia lining the walls from floor to ceiling of the former back porch, which now is an enclosed stairway leading to a modern one-story addition housing a large kitchen, screened porch and his private quarters. What they see inside the original house, with its 33-foot-tall square columns, are unique antique items countered by the owner's personal touches. e house built by Carpenter is a treasure recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. Smedberg marvels at the original attributes as he walks through. He notes that one guest said he built a house based on a career in carpentry, using the best materials available. "He said, 'After two years, my stairs are creaking, but yours were built in 1852 and they don't creak at all.'" e heart pine and other woods cut on the original Carpenter property are a prominent feature of Everhope. Most everything else, other than the front doorbell, has been replaced through the centuries. ere was no native mahogany here, so Carpenter hired artists using peacock feathers to paint the pine doors and doorframes to look like mahogany. Everhope's "9 by 9" double-hung windows – three rows of panes stacked three high on each section – are complemented by the original outside shutters, which Smedberg says are more difficult to maintain as the years go by, which is similar to the rest of the mansion. "It's always something with these old ladies," he says referring to his home. e first-time guests from Florida are mesmerized by their rooms and the overwhelming size of Everhope versus their modern homes. Each bedroom is about 400 square feet, 20 feet wide by 20 feet long with 12-foot-high ceilings. e chandeliers are not original, but to the period, as are most of the furnishings. Smedberg says he owes much to the prior owner, whose wife spent more than 1,000 hours at the state archives researching the mansion, finding old photographs of all but one room. ey had carpet made based on scraps of the original, which now covers three rooms of the first floor. Smedberg has added elements he found online, and people have sold him or contributed other antique items. e front men's parlor now has an 1835 land grant document signed by President Andrew Jackson, as well as a portrait of an unknown girl painted by Amanda Knott in the 1840s. "Every penny I make with this bed and breakfast goes back Smedberg with rescued dog, Fairway. Everhope hallway guest log has hundreds of signatures.

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