Our esteemed Virginia Searl gave a presentation at the Landmark Society’s Preservation Conference last weekend titled “Restoring Your House: A Practical Guide (Where To Start)”. She presented advice from her experience restoring the 1912 Art’s and Crafts home that her family has lived in since her childhood.
All buildings experience change and modification as time moves on. Specific needs and aesthetic choices drive us to both take parts of them away, and to add parts to them. Sometimes we just rearrange them, covering up one part, or revealing another. Sometimes our buildings need repair, and how we provide the maintenance affects the appearance, performance, and the experience of our homes.
Then, inevitably, we move on, and share that building with someone else. I say “share” because, in the case of homes especially, we always retain some kind of ownership of it, whether we still live there or not. When my wife and I moved into our new home a year ago, it took a while for the neighborhood to begin referring to the house with our name attached, instead of referring to it by the surname of the previous owners. (Which I consider fair since they lived there for 45 years.)
We all have experience watching buildings change. Sometimes we witness it as we drive to work, measuring progress at construction and renovation sites. Other times we visit our old neighborhoods after many years of being away and discover how different they are from when we were last there. Sometimes they improve, sometimes they go the other way. Of course, both directions are a matter of our own opinion. And sometimes, we are the cause of change. We want a new space, we have one more kid than we have bedrooms, and we’re tired of painting the siding.
Sometimes we don’t understand the decisions of those before us. We can’t imagine why a wall now divides a huge living room into two smaller and less useful rooms, or why windows were removed from the south wall. (Or why pink and green tile was used so liberally in the bathroom!) These opinions lead us to modify a building for ourselves, to make our nest the way we like it. Some begin this project by conceiving what is popular now and in the future, some begin by trying to figure out what the place was like in the past. Again, both methods are a matter of our own opinion.
Virginia’s restoration of the house towards it’s past incarnation is guided by memories of growing up in the house and by the photographic record found in old family photos when the memories aren’t so detailed. Design pattern books that document the styles’ heyday, architectural style guides, and modern nostalgic magazines also help inform the restoration. She is lucky the people who changed the house previously saved the parts they took off, and stored them in the basement. Sometimes it’s obvious where they came from, and sometimes it is a puzzle to figure out where pieces should go.
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