Architectural heritage
Building histories, restoration guidance, and careful notes on the craft of old houses, written for owners and for anyone who stops to look twice at a cornice.
Read the house historiesOne house, six lives
Hand-hewn oak sills and posts, pegged mortise-and-tenon joints, and a massive center chimney that heats every room.
A new front with flat pilasters, a wider entry with sidelights, and six-over-six sash windows in wavy cylinder glass.
A bay window, a porch with turned posts and sawn brackets, and a slate roof replacing the original cedar shingles.
Knob-and-tube wiring and the first indoor plumbing are threaded through plaster and lath, room by room.
Siding over clapboards, dropped ceilings, an enclosed porch. Most of the original fabric survives, hidden rather than lost.
Layers are documented before anything is removed. Windows are reglazed, plaster is reattached, and the frame is left to speak.
From the archive
Старая ферма или усадьба — это не просто дом с характером. Это накопленный слой решений, материалов и компромиссов, которые принимались десятилетиями, а иногда и веками. Покупатель, который смотрит только на обаяние потрескавшейся штукатурки и вековых балок, рискует пропустить то, что действительно определяет судьбу такой собственности: скрытые инженерные системы, юридические обременения и график будущих ремонтов, не имеющий […]
A historic property earns its case for preservation when it still holds the physical evidence, the hand of the maker, and the story that root it firmly in a particular time and place. After fifteen years of walking through old buildings—some barely standing, others meticulously kept—I’ve learned that the strongest candidates are never just old. […]
Every old house is a document. Before you repair it, learn to read it, because the most valuable thing a restoration can keep is the evidence of how the house was made.
Catalogue of subjects
