From Old House to Old House

[mkiehn20]

Hi, everyone! It’s been quite a while since I was active in the forums, but here I am! We bought our 1916 bungalow in 2016, and have done extensive work to bring her back to life. Last summer (thanks to a massive hailstorm), we were finally able to remove the old aluminum siding and restore the original clapboards, window trim, and decorative brackets on the house. Here’s what she looked like when we bought her four years ago:


And here she is now:


Of course, now that we’ve done all this work, we’re looking at saying goodbye to this giant sprawl of an old house and saying hello to a new one. We’re hoping to move within the next few months to the town where I work, and we have our eye on a 1900 folk Victorian that we viewed this week. Can’t wait to show you pics of that one!

[phil]

what a difference removing the siding made. I like the color too. Thanks for sharing. It must be difficult to sell it after so much work.

[mkiehn20]

Thanks, Phil! It was a labor of love, that’s for sure, but it never has felt like a “forever home.” Hopefully another family will move in and love it.

Looking forward, here’s the house we have our eye on:


Folk Victorian maybe isn’t quite right. More like a vernacular farmhouse with some Victorian details. It was apparently built in 1900, but I haven’t gone to the courthouse records yet to verify. It would be a really nice little gem to fix up. Look at the center hall:

[Gothichome]

Wow, what a difference removing the siding made on your bungalow, it really moved it up scale and shows off the original look. I certainly hope the new owners will maintain your efforts and continue with the restoration. Maybe they will join our small group of old home folks here In The District.
Your hopefully new home looks to have most of the interior still intact, like the floor, have all the floors been restored? The exterior still has most of the original Queen Anne details still intact, all it would take to bring it back is a couple of colours of paint and removal of what looks like aluminum or vinyl siding, maybe another hail storm will be needed.

[mkiehn20]

The new (old) house seems to have most of its original woodwork in place, and unpainted, to boot. The floors are all hidden under carpeting right now, but I feel positive we’ll find wood that matches the hallway when we pull it up. The room that’s seen the biggest alteration is the kitchen. And there’s an office on the ground floor with beautiful French doors, but the built in cabinetry in it is circumspect to me. I’m wondering if it wasn’t moved in from somewhere else.



The exterior was just (and I mean JUST—like within the last few months) covered in vinyl. The owner was so proud to tell us about it. He covered it because he hates painting. I’m just like... But he did leave the original fish scales and other decorative trim exposed.

[Manalto]

Proud of vinyl - sigh - what a world, what a world...

[1918ColonialRevival]

The prospective new place is interesting. It looks like a very late 19th Century farmhouse. Hopefully they were lazy when they installed the vinyl and left all the original siding in place. Also, the interior trim and the Queen Anne door look to be 10-15 years older than the stated 1900 date. Though with "folk Victorians" it's hard to tell. I've seen a couple, especially in rural areas of the Southeast, that were built as late as the mid to late 1910s that still had a lot of the Queen Anne and Eastlake-inspired trim that had gone out of style a decade or two earlier.

By the way - your current house looks ten times better than it did when you started. Nice work!

[mkiehn20]

Okay, it’s interesting you say that, because I had my own suspicions that the house may have been built earlier, and then hodgepodged together through the years. One of the things that made me wonder is another house for sale in the same town. It’s listed as being built in 1853, which I completely believe based on the style and the town history. It happens to have the same lintel shape above the doors as the “Victorian.”





I guess they could have both been changed over the years, but that seems unlikely...

[1918ColonialRevival]

The brick one is interesting. Hard to say if it's 1850s - it sort of resembles a "working man's" Italianate of the post-Civil War era, though that could be the result of renovations. The symmetry on the front evokes a sense of Federal era styling that was well into its waning years by 1850 and was seldom seen again until the Revival styles went mainstream in the 1890s. This house would have to be closely examined to get a good idea of its age.

As for the molding, I believe it's a regional thing. I've seen similar moldings in houses in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that were built in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. I believe it was something that was done on less ornate houses to make the lintel molding a little less boring than just a flat piece of rectangular wood. I haven't seen it in any catalogs, possibly because it would have been very easy to make on the job site.

Forgot to mention, I could be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet those built-ins in the farmhouse were done in the 1950s or 1960s. That room reminds me a lot of Ward Cleaver's study in Leave It To Beaver. I'm still thinking that house is 1890-ish.

[mkiehn20]

Well, as it turned out, we found a different old house that we loved even more. It’s a later build date and doesn’t have the same fancy details as the first one, but we love it. The owners accepted our offer last night!



I’ve been trying to narrow down its exact age, but it’s been a difficult task. No helpful documents at the courthouse, no knowledge from previous owners. It appears on a 1921 Sanborn map, but the earlier maps cut off right at the block where the house would be. An identical house up the street appears on the 1910 map...my next step is looking at census records.