The Historic District

Good morning! I haven’t been around here much for a while, due to other things taking up time. But I now have a major ‎house project that has just started.‎ A while back I posted about my roof dilemma — whether to replace the old roof with slate or some ‎cheaper material (see https://thehistoricdist...

Thank you, mjt -- that looks like a gorgeous house.

David, enjoy the flexibility that comes with living in an eclectic house. I do ‎–‎ I kind of stumbled into this approach when I started looking at historic wallpaper. I picked what I liked and thought would work well even though the rooms are in different styles. For instance, my parlor has a Willi...

Thanks, Manalto and 1918ColonialRevival -- your comments are helpful in understanding what's going on with houses like mine. I'm an academic and tend to focus on details and historical correctness, which is not what the late 19th century revivalists were about; as you say, anything pre-Victorian was...

I had some time today so I poked around online. Seems to be something like the following: American advocates of the Colonial Revival style in the late 1800s looked not only at vernacular colonial buildings but also at other antecedents, among which was the work of the Adam brothers. Their neoclassic...

Please help me out since I am confused. My Queen Anne house (1904 or earlier) has an oval window on the front. You can see it in my avatar (if your eyesight is good, anyway). Yesterday someone said to me that this is a colonial revival feature, and I recall someone here saying the same a while ago. ...

Lionel, thanks for the photo and measurements.

Mick, that was some serious linen storage -- wow! Shelves that breathe make sense, although I've never seen any in old homes in the northeastern US. But I have not inspected closets in all that many old houses so I'm dealing with a small sample size.

Thank you both! The 12" deep shelves mentioned by nhguy do not seem very deep to hold items like quilts and pillows -- interesting. Maybe that's all the space available, given the structural configuration of the house, since closets are often tucked in where they will fit. I just measured my cl...

I put up this post a couple of years ago. The time has finally come to put up shelves in this closet. I'd like them to be adjustable, at least to some extent. If anyone has original, adjustable shelves that survive, whether in a linen closet, pantry, or built-in bookshelves, I would much appreciate ...

Phil, thanks for the comments about using acetone. I hadn't thought of using a solvent after the TSP. I am just interested in changing the colors at this point. I think I will buy a couple of those angled paintbrushes they sell for radiators and see if they help in getting (somewhat, anyway) into th...