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Do you have tips on restoring an old house?
Question by justaskme: Do you have tips on restoring an old house?
I’m looking for tips on restoring a early 1800′s brick farm house. The old owners did all of the “gutting” & left it. I want to keep as much of the Victorian look as I can but there are somethings that I feel would be better if brought up to date. I know that the point of restoring is to keep as much of the old, old when ever you can but…
1.)I want to keep the old window frames but have the glass repaired? Or should I buy all new windows? Most of the old frames are broken & I can’t find anyone who makes antique replica frames.
2.) The house has all old plaster (horse hair junk) with little or no electric so the house has to be all rewired. Is it OK to take down the old plaster, rewire & then put up drywall? Or will the ruin the Victorian feel?
3.) This old house has way too many doorways for me. Should they stay or should they go. We wanted to patch a few up & then just reuse the wood trim in other areas as needed?
Best answer:
Answer by Ashley H
Your best bet is to look in your local phone book for contractors who specialize in restoring old, historic homes and see what they suggest. Just going at it blindly could seriously devalue your home. A professional can guide you in the right direction.
Good luck!
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
 | US $4.46 End Date: Saturday Jun-02-2012 15:30:04 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $4.46 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
1870 Dore Bible Cyrus Restoring Vessels Temple Fine Art
- Genuine Historic Print as history was recorded
- Original old antique print, not a modern reproduction
- Size and details in description below
- Choose from the selection available
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Price: {price-updating}
Published in: Victorian Articles and QA
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The question is do you want the house to “be original”, “look original” or “look kind of original and still be modern and comfortable.”
The practical thing to do with the plaster is to redo it with drywall since is sounds like a good bit of the original plaster is gone anyway.
Eliminating doors is also a practical thing to do. It would be a good idea to do a bit of research to see how similar homes were with regard to door placement.
You might check with this web site for windows:
http://www.traditional-building.com/3-woodwd.htm
I suspect there are others out there specially in the northeast.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh
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Hey tigger, I hope I can help
1. I would definitely price out both options on the windows. New windows in old houses are nice just for efficiency. You can buy old looking windows. Try Pella and Anderson for wood ones, but they’re pricey.
2. I’d get rid of the old plaster! It’s a mildew breeding ground behind them. As long as preserve or add moldings, Crown rail,chair, and high baseboards..etc..
3.Don’t stress on the doorways. They have to be covered up for our plasmas, king size beds,ya know.
With this investment I’d invest in some Victorian magazines and stay focused on your vision.. Sounds nice so far. Good luck
Check with window/door specialty stores. We have one (I’m sure many more in city) that I know that can make to order your windows for you. If you go new, will have to find contractor that will make window fit into house which would be closing up more space – - now have outside repair also.
Eliminate plaster & go with sheetrock. The decoration is to be Victorian style – - don’t have to be totally authentic unless restoring a historical home to be original.
Enclosing doors can be done with no problem. Opening new areas will have to consider where main wall support would be prior to opening an area.
It all depends on if you are going for historical accuracy or comfort. If you are going to live in the house, then I highly recommend drywall instead of plaster. Plaster cracks, crumbles and cracks more every time the house shifts. As far as the doors go, I wouldn’t take any of them apart, but would just drywall over those areas, using furring strips to attach the drywall to the plaster walls. Once you open up walls in an old house, you never know what you are getting into.
With the windows, if you are really really handy and can replicate the old window frames, that would be nice, but I feel there are several new windows manufactured with an old style look that would be just as suitable and probably keep you a lot warmer.
As long as you are putting up drywall, you might want to consider insullation as well. We did an old house…not as old as this one and nothing was insulated. We went directly over the plaster with insulation and then drywall. Everything underneath was left in tact in case some future ambitious owner wanted to tear it down and refurbish the old stuff.
Keep in mind that no matter what you do its going to cost about twice as much as you figure the first time around. Good luck!