The Historic District

I am sure all of us have quite a collection of books related to living in & restoring old houses. How about a thread to share recommendations?


Here is mine:



It may take some time but Ill try and update this post with links to what I have found.

General old house restoration books:
Nash - Renovating Old Houses
Labine/Flaherty - The Old-House Journal Compendium
Basically anyone who lives in an old house needs these two as a starting point, IMHO.

Techniques in detail:
Leeke - Save Americas Windows - Need I say more?
Meany - Working Windows
Sobon/Schroeder - Timber Frame Construction
Fields - The Forgotten Art of Building a Stone Wall
Orton - The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace

Books specific to restoration of early houses (up to 1850):
Friedeland - Antique Houses: Their Construction and Restoration - This is another must have for owners of pre-1850. Out of print but available used @ Amazon.
Kirk - The Impecunious House Restorer
Williams - Old American Houses and How to restore Them

Period texts:
Benjamin - The American Builders Companion

Books covering the history of construction methods, dating techniques, etc:
Garvin - A Building History of Northern New England
Hubka - Big House, Back House, Little House, Barn
Wilbur - Home Building and Woodworking in Colonial America
Isham - Early American Houses (& Glossary of Colonial Architecture Terms)
These are all very useful for owners of pre-1850 in New England for dating original features.


General interests:


The basement bookshelf (not shown above):

Holohan - The Lost Art of Steam Heat - http://store.heatinghelp.com/The-Lost-A ... -p/101.htm
You must get this and/or his homeowner focused volume if you own a house with steam heat.
Cauldwell - Wiring a House (Build like a pro series)
Black and Decker wiring Guide
Black and Decker - Building Codes for Homeowners
Harley - Insulate and Weatherize (Build like a pro series) - Very useful if you want to insulate an old house, written by one of the people at CSG that develop various state and utility sponsored energy efficiency programs
Readers Digest Do It Yourself Manual - Sure its not going to cover many of the techniques we need but this is great to have on hand for looking up guidance on random jobs.
And a lot of carpentry books...



Some of them are out of print, but any can be found with some hunting through a good used book dealer or the amazon marketplace.

Nice list! Impressive collection.

The only three I own/can recommend so far are:

Jane Powell - Bungalow Kitchens
Jane Powell - Bungalow Bathrooms
J. Harmon - The Guide to Home Remodeling (published 1966)

Hubbard Cobb; Home Handyman's Guide, The c.1950

I wouldn't have bought this based on the author or title, but it was recommended to me and it turned out to be quite good:

Martha Stewart's New Old House

She details the process of restoring/renovating a house with lots of photos and its very interesting. She definitely makes some choices that are not HA, but still, a good read.

One of my many Victorian catalogue books

Some of the pages in this one


Also, have many style books from the period. Not many 'how to' books though.

Great thread idea!

My latest addition to the bookshelves:


Ⓒ1961 Scribners

I haven't had much time yet to read it thoroughly, but I've been happy with what I've seen so far. One neat section is for building things like a workbench, screen/sash storage rack, et al.

When I have more time, I'll try to add a few more of the ones I have on my "how to" shelf. Need to finally get our printer/scanner a permanent home in the office so I can pick out a few images from within the books as well.

Answering another post made me remember an online archive that has oodles of old house goodies. This particular one on the site is the Building Technology Heritage Library's section.

DESCRIPTION
The Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL) is primarily a collection of American and Canadian, pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books and technical building guides. Trade catalogs are an important primary source to document past design and construction practices. These materials can aid in the preservation and conservation of older structures as well as other research goals.

About the Building Technology Heritage Library

The BTHL contains materials from various private and institutional collections. These materials are rarely available in most architectural and professional libraries. The first major architectural trade catalog collection is that of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, which encompasses more that 4,000 catalogs from the early 19th century through 1963. In addition to the architectural trade catalogs, the initial contributions include a large number of house plan catalogs, which will be of great interest to owners of older homes. The future growth of the Building Technology Heritage Library will also include contemporary materials on building conservation.

The BTHL keywords include the standard subject headings used by the Library of Congress and an additional nomenclature used by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). The CSI Master Format 2004 Numbers and Titles have been used for most materials. This will allow contemporary practitioners to search through historic archives with a modern nomenclature.

You can read all the titles listed on the link below.

https://archive.org/details/buildingtechnologyheritagelibrary?&sort=-downloads&page=2

My latest read

Lots of pics of high end furnishings and decorative pieces, mostly museum quality or well above my means. But is still and interesting read, each image has a full page write up of the item. Well worth the time to read, all these designs worked there way down into items the masses (you and I) could afford. Well at least the upper middle class.
If you find it cheap, buy it, if nothing else it's a great place for setting your morning tea on.