Areas where originality in a historic home is a feature, and not a flaw

[ocnjgirl]

Originally Posted by JR_C

I don't plan on moving anytime soon. But I am curious whether anyone here has experience with a place where original features in a historic home are seen as a feature, and not a flaw.

My house was built in 1902, and I consider myself lucky that is it mostly original, or at least vintage. I still have most of my original windows. The kitchen was updated, but in the 1940s, so it has a vintage feel that I like. None of the woodwork, outside of the kitchen, has been painted. My bedrooms have art-deco wall sconces, instead of overhead lights. (the style doesn't match the age of the house because, I think the original electrical system was upgraded/expanded in the 30s)

Generally, in this area, houses that retain these kinds of original features are in neighborhoods that were historically poor, or had become poor before the era of HGTV, when it was expected that houses had to continually be updated. If I ever decide to sell my house, I know that many of the features I like about it, are going to be perceived as negatives to most of the potential buyers. (although there are a few people like me around, even here) And, if I ever sell my house, I'd consider moving to an area where a house like mine wouldn't be so hard to find, outside of a neighborhood that is considered "bad."

I am aware of this in Cape May. It is known for the many Victorian homes, all of them historically accurate. You can't so much as buy a new doorknob without getting approval to make sure it is Victorian.

[MidValleyDad]

Originally Posted by ukiyo-e

One of my friends lived in a house in Harper's Ferry WV in which they were limited into what kinds of remodeling they were allowed to do, even down to replacement windows. I don't know if the house was in a historic district or was on some register of historic houses, but there was some kind of official design review board they had to get permission from to do certain modifications.

Harper's Ferry is a somewhat unique situation. Part of the town is an actual National Park and most (if not all of the rest) falls under a Historic District. It is about 20 miles from where I live and I have been there many times. Sometimes people from outside the area (usually coming up from DC) buy property expecting to do things 'to make it theirs' not realizing the steps you have to go through to make changes in property that has been a 'History Tourism' destination for several generations.



Historic District Commissions can be a blessing or a nightmare. One around here is known to be very strict and unbending. Others will work with owners to get to a good resolution for everyone. Depending on local laws they varying amounts of power.

[JR_C]

Thanks for the additional replies. It looks like there might be a couple options out there, at least.

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

A historic house is an evolving animal. It is hard to say this or that does not belong. What year is our house? 1836, 1850, 1868, 1898, 1901, 1912, 1932, 1946, 1984, and 2006-2007. How do you figure out what does and does not belong? When our house was built, kitchens were not normally attached buildings, they were separate to keep the heat and smell our of the house and mostly because kitchens burned down frequently and they did not want to lose the house too. However originally they probably cooked over the fireplace. The house certainly had no wiring, light fixtures, plumbing, bathrooms, closets, insulation, stairway handrails, heat (other than the fireplaces) AC, doorbell, locks, or many other things that were added over the centuries. Do we remove all of that?

So what should be kept as a feature, and what is just poor remodeling/renovating?

One of the worst looking things I have seen in charming vintage or historic homes is a modern subdivision kitchen (which quickly becomes a dated subdivision kitchen). Stainless steel and granite counter tops or whatever the then current fad was. Another is replacing all the vintage light fixtures with home depot ceiling boooobs.

It is hard to draw the line. We replaced the modernized light fixtures with restored fixtures from the early 1900s and even a few older gas or whale oil light fixtures that were electrified in the 1900s or 1920s. Still none of them belong in the original configuration of the house. We gutted the 1970s bathroom and replace everything with antique, vintage or reproduction items, but kept the 1930s art deco bathroom essentially as it was. We removed the bathroom and doctors office area that were added in 1946 and converted the space to a library. While the house probably never had a library (books were scare in Michigan in 1836) it will as least look like a library that could have been in the house if it has been someplace less raw (except the computers, kind hard to make them look vintage or historic). The fireplace in the 1868 addition had ugly blocks of plain white marble glued onto ti int he 1970s. When we removed it, some of the brick underneath was damaged, so we re-tield it with reproduction atristic tile set that, while age appropriate, was far too fancy for an 1868 farmhouse.

We also re-wired the whole house although that was really unnecessary, we did not like having only one outlet per room and one light switch per light. We also re-plumbed the entire house with PEX which was partly necessary, and reinsulated everywhere as well. However we let the original wood single pane windows with wavy glass as they were and decided to just buy interior storm windows to achieve basically the same benefit of modern windows without destroying the look of the house. We replaced the 1910s era single pipe cast iron radiators with 1930s vintage two pipe hot water radiators nad hid high velocity AC outlets underneath them (we could nto find a company that would connect a boiler to the existing steam set up for liability reasons.

The existing kitchen was a long very low structure covered with asbestos siding and employing metal cabinets, and one metal winnow in the entire structure.. It was impractical to move so we tore it down and built a "new" kitchen. Later we discovered the old kitchen was the former milking barn and it was pushed up against the back of the house and attached as a kitchen in 1868. It probably had one of those new fangled cast iron woodstoves installed at the time, or possibly even coal. So what do you do with that? We certainly did not want a modern commercial looking kitchen that would be glaringly out of place. We build a new kitchen but used almost entirely vintage materials inside and vintage style in th design and outside. Since it was impractical to rebuild an 1836 (detached) kitchen or even an 1868 kitchen (the year the house first got a kitchen), we chose to built the "new" kitchen in a style to match the year that it was last remodeled and what it displayed at the time we got the house. (i.e. late 1920s). We were able to find a 1930s sink, a 1927 refrigerator and a Beautiful Magic Chef 1000 stove from the early 1930s. All of these items work as well or better than their modern equivalents. We hid a dishwasher and a large stainless steel dish sink behind a secret door made out of a big two sided cabinet taken from an 1868 house that was torn down. We also re-used cabinets and some bi-fold double doors from that same house. We took flooring from a late 1800s masonic lodge that was torn down, a colored glass window from a convent built in the early 1900s, Surprisingly the late 1920s equipment works extremely well even by modern standards. There are six burners ont he stove, one of which is very high output - much like modern stoves. There are two or three ovens plus a warming oven at the top of the side stack that give us as much or more oven space as newer models. (You just need a thermometer inside the oven to set the temperature. Sure we will need to keep matches handy to light the stove but three of the bruners on the modern temporary stove we put in while resorting the Magic Chef also need to be hand lit because the ingnighters stopped working almost immediately.

So, I wonder how much of the restoration that we did would be considered a flaw by some and a feature by others?

Responding to the first part of this post: my "purist" boundaries blur as the build date gets older. As I said above, my house was built with most modern features. So, it can function today, with minimal modifications. But, no purist wants a house built in the 18th or early/mid 19th century to have its plumbing and electrical, kitchen and bathrooms removed, to be "pure" to its age. And, that's also true for a house with multiple large changes in its timeline, like Coldjensens', above. But, that's still not an excuse for remuddling your house to look like it came from a Home Depot showroom floor, or out of a TV show on HGTV. It doesn't have to be one or the other; see the rest of the post as an example of that. (OK, getting back off my soapbox, for now.)

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by JR_C

Thanks for the additional replies. It looks like there might be a couple options out there, at least.



Responding to the first part of this post: my "purist" boundaries blur as the build date gets older. As I said above, my house was built with most modern features. So, it can function today, with minimal modifications. But, no purist wants a house built in the 18th or early/mid 19th century to have its plumbing and electrical, kitchen and bathrooms removed, to be "pure" to its age. And, that's also true for a house with multiple large changes in its timeline, like Coldjensens', above. But, that's still not an excuse for remuddling your house to look like it came from a Home Depot showroom floor, or out of a TV show on HGTV. It doesn't have to be one or the other; see the rest of the post as an example of that. (OK, getting back off my soapbox, for now.)

Intact, restored original elements and features present, sensitive, period appropriate remodeling and renovations wins again!

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...40441518_zpid/

Sold in just days for almost $200k over an ambitious pricing for the area and property size.

Flippers and vintage house owners take heed when you are ready to tear down all the walls and rip out all original elements and details and slap on popular finishes of the moment to "open up" and "modernize" the place for the HGTV crowd. Not everybody appreciates taking away all semblance of the designer/builder's original intent as well as the era in which it was built.