PANA - Even if the walls weren't talking, it mattered little.

The homeowners, Darren and Deb Burris of Pana, were talking and smiling enough to suit the television crew from High Noon Entertainment. They filled multiple high-definition videotapes Monday of stories about the home where the couple live and the finds they've made there.

"The sun, it's teasing us," said Corina Robbins, as the sun darted behind and out of the clouds when filming began outside the house, which is more than 125 years old. Robbins is a field producer for High Noon.

Robbins, along with Dean Eastman on camera and Hayden Jackson on audio, was at the Burris home to tape a segment of "If Walls Could Talk," a show on Home & Garden Television. They filmed Sunday in Effingham, Robbins said, at the home of Dominique and Craig Mueller, which is known as the Austin Mansion. That home was built in 1892, she said.

"Debbie saw an ad in the online Taylorville paper," said Darren Burris, about the possibility of a crew in the area filming for a show the couple frequently watches.

He called, left a message and got an almost immediate return call for a visit to the house Darren Burris said was built by James W. Cox about 1880. After Cox's first wife's death, he married Ella Rutledge. Following his death, then hers, the house was vacant for a while before being purchased by Pana physician Dr. Dana Littlejohn, he continued. The Burrises purchased the house from the late Ethel Gard Littlejohn seven years ago.

And that's when they began to make even more discoveries about the house through its contents. It turns out Littlejohn wasn't the first physician to live there, since Ella Rutledge apparently was an early female pioneer in medicine. Burris found her framed certificate of graduation from Cincinnati College dated 1889, though Deb Burris said Rutledge didn't appear to practice medicine for long after her marriage to Cox.

When the Burrises moved into the house, they immediately began restoring, not remodeling, Darren Burris emphasized.

"In the first two weeks, I had gutted the kitchen and the bathrooms," Darren Burris said. "I hired the best help I could afford," he added with a laugh, "Me."

The couple found surprises in the attic and basement, including some furniture they know was original to the house since it bears the Cox name.

"This still happens today," Deb Burris said. "After seven years, we are still finding things.

"It's like a treasure hunt that all ties together."

Part of the filming for the show included furniture appraisals by Kurt Aumann of Aumann Auctions Inc. in Nokomis. The appraisal portion of the show was to be kept under wraps until the show airs. Robbins said each show usually features three homes, but just one has items appraised.

Tapes made Monday will be mailed immediately for editing, said Robbins, though the air date for the Burris segment has not been set. Sara Adams, researcher for "If Walls Could Talk," said the Burris home footage most likely will be aired during season nine of the show, probably next year.

"If Walls Could Talk" will be filming Wednesday at the Clinton home owned by C.H. Moore before he moved into the home that now houses the DeWitt County Museum.

One of the finds in that house, said Joey Woolridge of the Lincoln Heritage Committee of DeWitt County, was a portrait of Moore believed to have been painted by P.O. Jenkins, also thought to be the first artist for whom Abraham Lincoln sat for a portrait.

Arlene Mannlein can be reached at amannlein@herald-review.com or at 421-6976.