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^ Great staircase!!! It would be a huge task, but imagine what it would look like unpainted!
There are many features I like about my house. But, one feature I think is pretty unique; I have wooden "portieres" at a couple of the openings between rooms on the first floor.
When I have nothing left to do I hope to scroll similar pieces for our house. Or...you could just send us yours. LOL.
We moved into our dream house last year just about this time, so i must say there are lots of features we love about our house, but the three i like the most are the
Yard/Landscaping/Privacy
The fireplace hearth which we just had a wood stove installed.
And the colonial style architecture
Very nice deck. And the lot/setting looks so peaceful.
Sometimes houses designed to be painted are unsuitable for stripping. IN one houe we stripped a staircase just to find the wood was not suitable for staining. It was meant to be painted. Not to mention Calcimine paint (or however you spell it) cannot be fully removed if the wood was not varnished first. The paint sinks into and colors the grain.
Those two houses from earlier are stunning.
Our house is too old to have neat fatures like that. It was an 1836 pioneer farm house and added on to in 1850 and 1868. It is hard to tell what was put in when.
The neatest feautre to me is the history. It was used to trade sugar, flour, gunpowder and manufactured goods from the east with Indians for furs, pottery, and the like. It was the first postmaster house in our area, so I guess you could call it the post office (no post office back then). It was used as a blind pig during prohibition.
Probably the next neatest thing is the framing in the old part of the house It is brace framed using beams roughly 12" x 12" THey vary in size and you cna see the axe marks in them from final shaping. The whole thing is pegged together with wooden pegs.
The other thing that is neat is the warren of hallways, doors and porches resulting fomr the varios additions over the years. There are 8 exterior doors, about 90' of frint/side porch, two stairways. . . When our kids were little, it was perfect for crazy chase games, nerf gun battles, hide and seek and the like. You can go up one stair down anohter, out a side door onto the porch and around to the front door. All of the rooms connect, every room leads to some other room. THe basement also has an old fashioned exterior stairway and a later added interior stairway, so you cna go down the basmenet stairs and come back up outside and then in through another door.
Most of the neat features were added when we restored the house (secret room int he kitchen, hand crafted tile on the fireplace, etc.
I will try to figure out how to post some photos later. However we have nothing as ornate as the pictures above. Still it is pretty neat.
I love houses that encourage one to explore it...even better if one can lose their bearings going through it. A "story of history" is also fantastic. When an owner cares about the history of their home (no matter what it is) it says they've bonded with it in some way and have a sense of pride with being it's temporary caretakers.
My home is undistinguished except for two items-
It is magnificently sunny everywhere in the house. This makes a dark winter much easier to get through.
And the living and dining rooms, kitchen, and upper hallway are all paneled in sold tongue and groove redwood. All the ceilings in these areas have big solid solid fir ceiling rafters with the ceilings also constructed with solid fir boards.
My home is undistinguished except for two items-
It is magnificently sunny everywhere in the house. This makes a dark winter much easier to get through.
And the living and dining rooms, kitchen, and upper hallway are all paneled in sold tongue and groove redwood. All the ceilings in these areas have big solid solid fir ceiling rafters with the ceilings also constructed with solid fir boards.
So it's very cozy and well as sunny.
Great light and beautiful, natural materials used to finish a house are amongst the very best qualities any house can posses.
My home is undistinguished except for two items-
It is magnificently sunny everywhere in the house. This makes a dark winter much easier to get through.
And the living and dining rooms, kitchen, and upper hallway are all paneled in sold tongue and groove redwood. All the ceilings in these areas have big solid solid fir ceiling rafters with the ceilings also constructed with solid fir boards.
So it's very cozy and well as sunny.
Those two items are *very* distinguishable from most homes.
Everyone missed the correct answer: "The People who live in it"
LOL. "I think all of us can find at least one special architectural detail about our home which we consider special." I'm not sure under what circumstances people become an "architectural detail"?
Well, apart from the beautifully designed and well ventilated home, I believe it is the people who live there with love and care that make a home truly special.
Last edited by nei; 09-19-2012 at 10:42 AM..
Reason: off topic
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