November 2013

Image courtesy of John Poole at A Preservationist's Technical Notebook.   I've got a Black Friday deal for you: Buy the house of your dreams, and we'll toss in some local hero worship for free! There's a 1789 house in Milford, Connecticut, in desperate need of love right now, and time is ticking! After the owners put forward a plan to demolish the building, the Milford Preservation Trust reached an...

I nearly fell over when I saw this listing. How adorable! A one-room schoolhouse with roots on the Oregon Trail? Get out your #2 pencils, everyone, and let your imaginations run wild! Realtor Carole Benson of Coldwell Banker Chandler Real Estate gets an A++ for this absolutely charming schoolhouse-turned-home in Vinton, California. With three slate backboards, the school bell, and many more original...

526 Union St in 1999, before the current owners began the restoration.   I've hopped over the rainbow to Kansas today, where something tells me there's no place like this 1894 home. Today’s Queen Anne fixer-upper is in the city of Emporia, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes as I looked through one mind-blowing photo after another. Really, it just keeps going! This is a case of owners pouring...

Mid-century fans: You're in for a serious treat! I am absolutely thrilled to share with you today an authentic 1941 apartment restoration by Steven Keylon and John Delarosa, residents of the National Register-listed Village Green complex in Los Angeles. Steven has been very involved in the preservation of the Village Green (more on this in the coming weeks!) and he was kind enough to share some photos with...

I'm staying close to home with today's Historic House Heroes post, as I have a serious soft spot for the neighborhood of Greenpoint in North Brooklyn. My husband's office is in an old rope factory there, and when we moved in we found handwriting on an interior column that read: "Last bale in this house: August 31, 1928. 2:25 p.m. Billy, Freddy, Henry." It is hard to be in Greenpoint and not feel a...

I was head-over-heels smitten as soon as I saw the incredible house at 291 Bentley Avenue in Poultney, Vermont, for sale via Julianne McCarthy of NorthLand Real Estate (p.s. We love Julianne)! I decided to make it this week's featured house because, well, I just can't resist a big old Victorian house, especially one in small-town Vermont. I grew up within short driving distance of the state border, and...

As a child, I loved crafting -- making jewelry, painting pottery, scrapbooking. And while I do still enjoy breaking out the ol’ glue gun in my adult life, my interests have turned to a very different type of Arts and Crafts -- the architectural style made popular by the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright.   Last summer, I was fortunate enough to visit Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, where Mr....

Welcome to "You Should Move To...", in which Lindsay travels the country scoping out beautiful, under-the-radar old house towns where big charm can be had for little cost. Have a city, town or neighborhood to recommend? Send it along to [email protected]!   When I think of "opportunity cities," some of first places that come to mind are those infamous Rust Belt cities in the Great Lakes region....

Joe Brasil inside his most recent project. Image by Lisa James of the Napa Valley Register.   Realtor Joe Brasil describes the newly-restored c. 1868 cottage at 523 Brown Street, in Old Town Napa Valley, as his "beauty." I'm sure that most realtors feel a certain pride in their listings, but if you spend more than two minutes with Joe, you'll see that he takes that pride to an entirely unmatched...

How adorable is today’s 1835 Federal fixer-upper?! At first I thought it was a tiny house, but then I took a look around and noticed that there’s actually over 6,000 square feet to play with here. You can find it sittin’ pretty on historic West 6th Street in Columbia, Tennessee. Less than an hour’s drive from Nashville, this town boasts James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, as one...

Don't you just LOVE seeing work-in-progress photos? I could really look at this stuff all day long. Today's before-and-after comes to us from Bootheel of Missouri in the small town of Naylor. Kudos to Barco Construction on this fabulous exterior renovation. Love it! Read on for lots of yummy photos.  ...

Most of us who live in New York City dream of one day owning a luxurious, spacious home filled with all of life's luxuries. I'm talking about the little things: an extra closet, a spare room, or an eat-in kitchen. To us space-deprived urbanites, an extra few square feet seems palatial. So, you can imagine my shock and awe when I saw that a castle -- yes, an actual castle! -- is for sale in The Bronx....