Show us your vintage home!

[dh66]

Everything's looking great, FF! I especially love the black line in the tile. Classic indeed! It's your eye for the small details that really shows you know what's up.

 

[Fading Fast]

Everything's looking great, FF! I especially love the black line in the tile. Classic indeed! It's your eye for the small details that really shows you know what's up.

Thank you so much. We just love the style, so we've been absorbing it for decades. But we also spent a lot of time - and I mean a lot of time - doing research. We own a stupid number of architecture books, design books, etc. (some that are new but focus on the period and some that are from the period itself) so that - to your point - we could get the details (or at least a lot of them) right. And we spent a lot of time finding the right vendors, manufacturers, etc. who really understand and care about the period aesthetic (they are not easy to find as a lot say they do, but then you see their work or products, and the number who really get it and care shrinks dramatically).

 

[Bamaboots]

FF, looking great. I know you must be getting excited.

 

[Fading Fast]

FF, looking great. I know you must be getting excited.

It's funny, as we have been so busy working on the problems that come up (and a lot do - as in everyone's renovation / restoration) and managing all the logistics while keeping the rest of life going, that we haven't really had time to think - "gee, this will be nice." Instead, we are focused on trying to track down the heating guy who never called back and didn't answer our emails or the tile company that sent the wrong piece or...well you get it. No complaints, we are very fortunate to be able to do this and have, overall, some great people helping us, but it really is controlled chaos, so there is very little reflection time. But once in awhile, we will have a moment (like this weekend, after we spent several hours doing inventory for our contractor - we've been very hands on to save on expenses) to just enjoying some of the work that's been done. And we've enjoyed sharing the progress with our FL friends and the feedback from you and others has been helpful and encouraging.

 

[1mach1]

Its looking really nice FF! I am sure you are ready.

 

[Caleb Bogart]

This is the house I was in for the first three years of my life. built in 1907 in a small hamlet called petroleum. (because it used to be an oil field. It was the town "bordello" for a while. it has walk in closets so if the fuzz pulled a raid, the "customer and server" could hide in the closet. It is also haunted by and old lady ghost named Mrs. Lockwood. She wrote on the wall that she was 97 years old when she died and her son died in ww1, and that she paid $2000 for the house. She like to steal blue items, keeps children covered up and night, and played the piano on one occasion. She never made a move after my uncle brought in a tombstone he found across the way. I guess she moved into the stone. dad dug a grave in a nearby woods and buried it, said the lords prayer over it and she disappeared. I guess he put her to rest.

 

[Big Man]

We're finishing up with the Christmas decorations in the "front room" of the old house.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ My girlfriend and I are simple white-lights on the tree family as well. And, I love, absolutely love, your wood floors.

 

[Big Man]

^^^ My girlfriend and I are simple white-lights on the tree family as well. And, I love, absolutely love, your wood floors.

Thanks. The floor in the "front room" (a term that this room has always been called) is the original floor with the original finish from when the house was built in 1907. I'm sure it has darkened with age, but it has never been refinished, at least not since 1917 when the family bought the house and moved in here. The floor has always been waxed, and my Dad used to tell how, as a boy, he and his friends would tie brown paper on the cat's feet and put it on the polished floor. He said the cat would slip and slide like crazy on that floor. Stories like that make living in the old family homeplace fun.

 

[dh66]

We're finishing up with the Christmas decorations in the "front room" of the old house.

What an inviting looking holiday setting, Big Man. It looks great. Reminds me a lot of Christmas at my grandparents house in the country when I was a kid. I hope you and yours had a nice Thanksgiving, and a good Christmas coming up.

 

[Fading Fast]

1928 NYC Coop Apartment Restoration Update:

We refinished the floors. We weren't going to, but a series of issues (some damage where previous owners had put down carpet or built in some modern furniture) all but forced our hands. We went with a very of-the-period stain (which the floor professional custom mixed for us) which shows the variations in the individual planks' color and much of the grain. The floors are oak (we've been told "red oak" by one floor expert and another said its "just oak") and are original to the apartment. The offering prospectus form 1928 (yup, we found a copy) says the "front rooms" meaning the living room, dinning area and foyer will be red oak and the "private rooms" the bedrooms will be white oak. They definitely are slightly different woods.

When we purchased the apartment, the kitchen, however, had some modern stone put down by a previous owner that we took up and installed reclaimed oak from a house from the early 1900s.

This is the living room. The floor guy said that they would never use boards with so much variation in color and grain as people want a more "****genized" look today


This is the kitchen (reclaimed wood):


And here is where the kitchen (reclaimed wood) and foyer (original-to-the-apartment wood) meet. The kitchen is in the foreground side of the doorway and the foyer is on the other side. Owing to some very hard work by the contractor, we were able to get the kitchen level to the foyer and avoid having a saddle between the two. And we think they floor guys did impressive work "matching" the woods' finish


And finally, just a close-in shot of the some of the original floor's border (love details like this)

 

[Big Man]

Looks good! It's hard to beat oak floors in the front room.

 

[RJR]

Those floors are beautiful,congrats.

 

[Bamaboots]

FF, very nice.

 

[dh66]

Beautiful floors! Great job on the matching, and the border is sublime.

 

[Stearmen]

It's funny your floor guy said people don't like the variation in the floor these days! As you have read here, and as I've herd from countless people looking at my floors, they all seem to wish modern floors look like yours and mine!

 

[Fading Fast]

It's funny your floor guy said people don't like the variation in the floor these days! As you have read here, and as I've herd from countless people looking at my floors, they all seem to wish modern floors look like yours and mine!

I don't understand that either. People seem to love the old floors - the variation, the grain, etc. - when they see them, but when they choose for their own homes, they don't want it. I asked the floor guy about this and he said people want their homes to look "perfect," "smooth" today. Our contractor has told me the same thing that everyone wants "perfect, shinny, new."

Our contractor pushed to take on our project (and he really did, both in aggressive pricing and in his pro-active selling of his desire to do the job) because he couldn't wait to "do something different." He couldn't believe that we wanted our kitchen cabinets and bookshelves hand painted so that you could see the brush strokes (subtly, if you get real close and look) as everyone wants their paint finish to look "glossy perfect." We felt that brush painted - as it was done back in the '20s - would give the woodwork a more authentic-to-the-period feel in a way that you don't know why, but it feels "older" and "not like the stuff done today."

I could go on with more examples, but the punch line is always the same, people might say they like the old look (and maybe they do), but for their own homes "smooth," "shinny," "new," "perfect" is what they want.

And a sincere thank you to everyone for your kind comments on our floors.

 

[Papperskatt]

I really enjoy reading your updates. The living room floor is truly amazing (the "new" kitchen floor, too, of course)!

 

[SteveS]

Hello everyone,

I'll play This is a pic of my 1915 four-square house. The house has retained many of the original features: Front door, original staircase with banister and railings and posts, French doors separating the hallway and front room, 5 panel doors throughout the house with all original hardware, built-in cabinet with original hardware in the dining room, windows (these may have been updated in the 40's/50's). The kitchen unfortunately has been majorly renovated by the previous owners, but I hope to restore to a more period (40's/50's) look in the future.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Fading Fast]

SteveS, your home looks beautiful (including the very nice landscaping). If you are ever so inclined and because you told us so many wonderful things about it, I'd love to see some pictures of the inside. It's great that you have the original french doors - we had one built to separate our kitchen from the foyer in our 1928 coop apartment as the original french door had long since been removed. And while the mill worker did a really nice job (you can see pictures of it in prior posts), it still doesn't have the feel of a hundred year old door.