a new old house

 Half of our house was built in 1909, the other half my husband built in 2002. Our goal has always been to have this house protected by the Local Historic Register in our town. When we were adding on to the house, we tried our very best to duplicate all of the details that would have been present when our house was built. My hard-working hubby hand cut every single rafter tail to match the curvaceous design of the originals.

{this is where the old house meets new, see the matching eaves}

I looked for an entire year on ebay to find a matching lockset for the master bedroom door. The chandelier in our diningroom was also purchased on ebay. It was half gas/half electrical and I had to completely rewire it for use. All of the original locksets, window hardware, and lighting fixtures were an unusual finish called a Japanned finish. It is hard to explain and hard to find. It's a mottled darkened finish with coppery stripes showing through.

{the original fir floors have a lot of charater}

We were very fortunate to have so much of the original workwork present when we bought the house. We were able to copy the tall baseboards and come very close to matching the top moldings. We remodeled the main bathroom and used beadboard and tiny hexagon tiles.
In the end, the landmark preservation board in our town was impressed by the effort and sensitivity we put forth in adding onto and remodeling our home. We were granted local historic status in 2010.

It's a wonderful honor, and made our hard worth it. I love old houses.

Have a blessed day, Tami