A gloomy historic cottage becomes a charming Uptown home. The porch and kitchen are its stars.

When Jennifer John and Jake Springfield bought their house in Faubourg Avart, it must have taken the vision of a soothsayer to imagine its transformation.

The home predates the Civil War. Neighbors with generational ties to where the four-bay cottage is located say it is one of the oldest structures in the neighborhood. It was built around 1850 as a blacksmith’s shop that may have also doubled as a livery stable, as well as housing for men working both professions.

When the couple purchased it in 2012, there was evidence that a concrete porch, trimmed inexplicably in wooden dentils, had been tacked on to what must have started as a Creole cottage.

Two front doors were accessed by a central set of concrete steps rising from a concrete pad in lieu of a lawn. A single, oversized dormer win