The Historic District

Most historic photos I've seen from the late 19th century showed exterior shutters. The earliest U.S. examples of the Mansard roofed French Second Empire date from the 1850's but the heyday of the style was between 1865 and 1875. (sometimes referred to as the "General Grant Style") By the ...

Oddly, the master bedroom in our 1889 Ft. Worth home did not have closets. We did as they did originally and placed two antique wardrobes in different corners. A second bedroom has a "closet" if you can charitably call it that as it is about 18 inches deep by four feet wide with an upper s...

We've come a long ways from the 1980's when building a replica Victorian would be deemed not feasible because "they don't make things like that anymore". The KC Victorian inspiring this replica was part of a regular feature of house plans (most often from Munn & Co. the magazine's New ...

I love what you folks are doing to the house. When I visited Eureka a few years ago, the house was boarded up and crying out for someone to rescue it-a photo I took back then: m Looks immeasurably better now. Eric Hollenbeck with his Blue Ox Millworks in Eureka has done much to bring traditional Vic...

Re: the Charles Anderson house, you might look through deed records and see if an original mechanics lien copy remains on file. We were lucky to find such a document in the county deed records that showed a mechanics lien was written and filed dated Oct. 15, 1888 and the cost of our home was a modes...

Pine is a soft wood so big drum sanders are dangerous to use especially if the handler is not very experienced in floor sanding. Orbital sanders can also cause damage. The guys who bought the oldest house in our neighborhood-an Italianate from the 1870's-went to town on the floors with large orbital...

I replaced the entire decking on one of our porches about 12-15 years ago with best available grade Southern Yellow Pine (Texas) and made sure it was oil based primed on all four sides then used polyurethane deck paint and thought it would hold up forever. Was I ever wrong! It started going downhill...

After looking at your FB interior photos I concur with your 1880's assessment. The stained glass bordered windows belong to the Queen Anne style and the occasional bulls eye corner blocks and wide milled trim boards are also consistent with the era. I'm wondering what's going on with the big white &...

The house has already been through changes as the porch has no stylistic clues in its current configuration. The massing of the house is consistent with late Victorian. Assuming the entry is original it provides the only stylistic clues with its Colonial Revival style fanlight transom and sidelights...

The problem here is not with the house, its with the changes that have been made to it since it was built. That big divided pane window in the front is more modern, probably from after the 1930's and even later if aluminum. Same for the divided pane window upstairs toward the back-almost certainly a...