Phoenix couple Thomas Lopez, a commercial pool contractor, and Michelle “Mitch” Phillips, an interior designer, are renovating an historic 1914 United Verde Extension Mining Company miner’s home on Lower Hogback Road off State Route 89A in Jerome and uncovering local history in the process.
They purchased the three-bedroom, two-bathroom 2,040-square-foot property in May 2021 after a conversation with the previous owner, who had just put out a “For Sale” sign.
“We had an appointment, and I called him and I said, ‘You’re running late, are you on your way back?’ and all [Lopez] said to me is, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make the appointment. I just bought a house,’” Phillips said. “He came home, I asked him, ‘What’s it look like? How many bedrooms or baths?’ And he couldn’t remember. But he was super excited about it. But I love the history, and I knew we could make it into our own. So it was kind of meant to be, or fate, whatever you want to call it. I think we’re supposed to be in Jerome.”
“Jerome has always been a place that I’ve wanted to own a property at and spend time at,” Lopez said. “I grew up in an underground music culture here in the valley, and used to go up there.” He remembered one band in particular that he heard play there: “They were called Insurrection, oddly, but they were called the Disinfectants originally and that tribe of people kind of steered me into Jerome in the early 80s.”
Most of the old Jerome mining homes were built directly into the earth, including Lopez’s. At some point, a porch was added above a rock retaining wall. The home had begun to sag about six inches down the cliffside and was also experiencing some basement flooding from water runoff.
“The house is only 30 feet wide, but we had to dig out 10 feet by 34 feet and dig it out eight foot high, all with a bucket and jackhammer. It took on mountain stranded time. It was like a year of digging,” Lopez said Today, the house rests on five 26-foot, 3-inch by- 9-inch beams and6-inch-by-6-inch posts, secured on a permanent foundation with a 34-yard concrete slab. While much work remains to restore the home, securing the foundation was the crucial first step after they poured concrete in early summer 2024.
The interior also has had its own challenges and discoveries. While removing an interior wall, Lopez and his son discovered copies of paper theatre programs from The Ritz and old newspapers that had been used to seal wall cracks. They later learned that D.W. Trisko, the owner of The Ritz Theatre, had lived in the home from the early 1940s until the 1950s.
“We took all those flyers and I saved them all, and a lot of people in Jerome had never seen those,” Lopez said. “It’s also fun for us, because it’s part of the experience of taking something apart and rebuilding it because you’re finding the wreckage of the past.” Phillips relocated to Arizona in 2001, leaving behind a career in real estate in Minnesota after she entered a contest in “Phoenix Home & Garden ” magazine for non-professional designers.
“I met Thomas in a parking lot, it was really random,” Phillips said. “I was going to get a coffee, and he’s coming out of lunch with a friend and. We saw each other and long story short, I thought [because] I was going in to get a coffee that he might follow me in just to say hi. He didn’t. And I was like, ‘That’s too bad, I would like to have met him.’ And I came back to my car and he left his business card on my windshield, and I think we’re on 18 years together.”
Phillips has worked primarily on residential projects; her commercial projects have included Grand Canyon University and retail stores in Phoenix, the original Jerome Winery and Cellar 433 in Cottonwood and styling UFC fighter Sugar Sean O’Malley.
The couple also bought the historic Gramma’s House Antiques building in Miami, Arizona, in 2024, which they are converting into a wine bar and lounge namedThe Wilton Lounge. The building was constructed in 1912 by Miami’s first mayor, John T. Lewis, to house his paint and wallpaper store, and Lopez first came across the property while he was restoring the town’s Hostetler Pool. He also plans to restore another 1914 home in Jerome across from the old high school.
“That was acquired from a family who had it since 1956,” Lopez said. “We started on it, but that one is kind of like a triplex, and it’s a bigger home … but our heart was already in this one.”
The couple plan to split their time between Phoenix and Jerome. They plan to install the kitchen in March and have the upper floor finished by spring, with the lower floor to be completed later.
“There’s a lot of punk ethos still in Sedona and Jerome and that’s partially why I chose to be up there, because we align with that,” Lopez said. “They say the West died here. Well, I hope this punk ethos never dies. I hope the punk culture and the DIY ethos and the free thinkers of the world continue on.”
