How common is trim that was originally painted?

[1918ColonialRevival]

The crown molding definitely doesn't look original. It's been there a while (probably at least 30-40 years or longer), but as others have pointed out the installation has a very amateurish look to it. I wouldn't have any reservations about taking it down.

As for the paneled solarium, do you think it may have started life as a porch and was enclosed sometime later? It's hard to see from the pictures, but the paneling looks like juniper instead of pine and is very similar to that used inside a lot of coastal houses in the Southeast in the 1950s and 1960s.

[GinaC]

Funny that you mention the 50's and 60's. I'm thinking a major overhaul was done in the 60's. Maybe that was when the house was jacked up and the current concrete foundation was put in. What I was told was the original owner was a partner of a local candy manufacturing company and the house is within city limits in a small area the locals call "snob hill" (there are definitely some wealthy folks further on down the road). So I'm guessing the family was fairly middle-class.

- the crown moldings, as you mentioned
- the paneling in the solarium, as you mentioned
- the downstairs toilet is from 1964
- aluminum storm windows -- I'm wondering now if the exterior wood siding is original
- all the walls are drywall, not plaster, but it is old drywall
- the slate front on the fireplace has a 60's vibe to me (just a gut feeling)

I'd really like to take it back to its 1940 Tudor Revival roots, but it's hard because whoever redid this house in the 60's seems like they really tried to do the same.

[1918ColonialRevival]

The older drywall could be original. Also called "plasterboard", it has been around since about 1906 or so. Its popularity surged in the Depression years.

[phil]

really early drywall might not be 4x8?
the picture rails and crown molding and how much you try to revert to original is of course up to you. One school of thought is that one doesn't want to undo all the updates necessarily unless you have something that is really historic. often it becomes a balance of cost. I'd like to do a shake roof but the insurance doesn't like it and it's double the cost for example but I wouldn't get rid of my wood windows and I want o restore any trim I can to reveal original woodwork because it makes me smile.

when I tore into my living room I could tel by the drywal that run up to eye height on all the living room walls and then changes to plaster above that showed me that it was originally wainscot below eye level. with the wallpaper and painted trim , it had a mix of drywall and plaster that was feathered into one and I couldn't tell until I ripped it open.

Id like to restore that back to the way it was but I opted to just re-drywall and focus on the trim and stuff to save time and expense. It can be covered over in wainscot and nice fir trim once I win the lottery ! maybe before that? I haven't decided.. I got really good insulation in there and that made a huge difference in heat loss but more importantly for me with the sound from the street. sometimes the things are best done in stages or it's easy to go ripping into everything at once and underestimate your time and costs. for now I stil have lots of trim out so I will replace that but in the meantime I finished the drywall everywhere even where the baseboards will go and I can live with it like that until there is time to complete.
my fireplace was covered in 70's tile , I removed it and not it's even more ugly but that will get worked on, at least the garbage is out. what I found there is that they had built the fireplace out , probably to convert from coal to wood, but I like it because I burn wood not coal so the extra brick is staying even though non original. I'll laminate it with some nice stone or something like that.

[jharkin]

Painted trim was the norm in the Colonial and Federal eras. It fell out of favor in the Victorian years. When the Revival architectures went mainstream in the 1890s, painted woodwork began to re-appear. All the trim in my house was originally pained, though most of the doors were originally finished in shellac. In the 1900s through the 1920s, you saw everything from woodwork that was finished, to a combination (like mine), to everything originally painted.

An easy way to tell if trim was supposed to be painted is to strip a section and see what kind of wood is underneath. If it's pine, it was almost definitely intended to be painted.

+1. And in fact they went so far as to do faux wood gaining on painted trim and doors in higher end houses.

Sometimes you would see bare wood paneling (not even varnished) in the work areas of a pre-civil war house - like a summer kitchen, etc. But never in the formal areas. They didn't even leave beams exposed past the year 1700 or so, they would be boxed in with ornamental trim and painted. "Exposed beams" is purely an HGTV phenomenon.

[Manalto]

"Exposed beams" is purely an HGTV phenomenon.

It was also a fad in the 1970s. You could buy thick, dark, "hand-hewn" faux beams for your ceiling made out of styrofoam.

[GinaC]

Very old Tudor homes and churches in England would also like a word with you about exposed beams.

[Gothichome]

"Exposed beams" is purely an HGTV phenomenon.

It was also a fad in the 1970s. You could buy thick, dark, "hand-hewn" faux beams for your ceiling made out of styrofoam.

Funny you should mention that, my parents did exactly that in the mid 70’s. I grew up in an little 1840’ish gothic cottage. But to my parents it was just an old house.

[jharkin]

Very old Tudor homes and churches in England would also like a word with you about exposed beams.

Certainly, as they where exposed here in first period American houses of the 1600s. In that time period diamond pane leaded casement windows where also the standard. But there are very few houses of that period still lived in as residential homes today. Even here in Massachusetts Ive only ever been in a few museum homes that age, and the only ones I've seen restored all the way down to the appropriate diamond pane windows is Paul Revere's house in Boston and the Sherburne house at Strawberry Banke museum in NH.


WHen I say exposed wood is not authentic - I'm talking post 1700, Georgian / colonial/ federal architecture. All the framing got boxed in, woodwork became painted in most areas, and the diamond casement windows gave way to single/double hung wood sash windows.

[Manalto]

Diamond-pane casement windows reappeared in Tudor-revival houses in the late 19th - early 20th. I love 'em, particularly the ones with the bubbles, waves, off colors and occasional "repaired" broken pane.

Here in Connecticut, we have the Henry Whitfield house (1639) in Guilford. It has diamond-pane casements. I visited it and took many photos but they're 35mm Kodachrome, which suggests how long ago that was.