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arisonn_gw

Building a new house with an old house feel

arisonn
15 years ago

IÂd love to build a "new old house" because I want the beauty, coziness and careful design/craftsmanship of an old house paired with the conveniences and efficiency of modern houses. Plus I want to put it outside of the city/town, where itÂs hard to find nice old houses in my area. I spend a good deal of my free time reading building/remodeling magazines and library books and websites about construction and my favorite house style: Arts and Crafts/Craftsman/Bungalows. However it doesnÂt seem popular to try to re-create an old house feel so IÂm looking for inspiration.

Have any of you built a new house with an old house feel? If so, can you share your experience? On the recent "trendy building" thread I noticed some discussion about faking traditional styles like "Tuscan" or French which just come off looking superficial. IÂd like to avoid anything like "Craftsman light" so even if you donÂt have any experience with building new-old yourself, please feel free to chime in with any advice or ideas for how to achieve an old house feel without breaking the bank. Everything I see that is similar to what IÂm thinking about is architect designed million dollar type homes, and thatÂs not a possibility for me.

Comments (23)

  • mightyanvil
    15 years ago

    What part of the country are you in?

    I think the "Craftsman Bungalow" is the most difficult style to adapt for modern life styles. But if you are in a warm climate the original California "craftsman" style works well if you can afford the custom work. I would recommend the Shingle Style for a more user friendly and easily adapted historic style.

  • sierraeast
    15 years ago

    We are building a "1940's cottage" and are implementing materials such as all wood windows, got some old western cedar doors from an older home in pasadena,ca, and are milling all our inside trims to have an older feel,(with the exception of the stair components). The facia Is hem fir with pine tongue and groove soffits and the siding is an old world textured stucco. The only drawback to this is that some of these materials mean maintenance. You are not going to want to put vinyl, fiber cement, or azek type trims when trying to achieve the old look so this means attention will need to be paid to the upkeep of the home concerning maintenace. Most of our trims will be stained, but as far as painting trims, i feel the best way to achieve "old" is to brush the trims rather than the smooth, polished look of sprayed. Our roof shingles somewhat resemble slate, wish we could have gone with the real deal, but all flashings are copper that was used more frequently in the old days compared to the present.

  • allison0704
    15 years ago

    Hope this link works for you:

    Here is a link that might be useful: Mt Laurel Listings

  • ashevilleian
    15 years ago

    I'm building a modification of many types of house that is leaning towards a craftsman/farmhouse hybrid. The basic design is very similar to many houses here in Asheville that were built in the 1910s-1930s. I did, however, add and change a few features. As of right now, my house is the only with the exact combination of materials and design, but ever since the paint started to go on, people have been taking numerous pictures so I assume more will be coming.

    Like mightyanvil said, it is very difficult to re-create the true craftsman bungalow look without spending all your money on the exterior

    here are some pics of our house so far:
    This is of the front while we were painting

    here is that back of the house. The HVAC people screwed the vents up so we need to get them fixed.

    another shot of the front

    and here is one within the front porch

    as you can see, we've got a lot of work to do, but we are getting there

  • worthy
    15 years ago

    Whatever the style, except for "modern", I think architectural salvage helps with the illusion--fireplaces, floors, stairs, trim, doors, lock hardware and brick, stone veneers are all widely available.

  • gary1227
    15 years ago

    We're building a "new" 1890s Italianate Farm House in southwest Michigan out in the county. We must be doing something right as several passerbys have stopped and asked where we had moved the house from. We designed this home ourselves after doing extensive research of historic homes. We wanted to build a home that would be appropriate for our building site and look like it had been there forever. We are about 2 months away from moving in.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Our New Farm House

  • arleneb
    15 years ago

    Depending on where you are, you might consider a farmhouse with a wrap porch . . . I'm from Northern Indiana, and friends built one a few years ago that almost could pass for an old one -- except that the paint was still bright looking!

  • lsst
    15 years ago

    We built a replica of a 1830's Southern Colonial Plantation home.
    We spent several years collecting photos of historical homes we liked.
    Quite a bit of the architectural features on our home are from salvage places.
    In every town we visited , we took historical home tours to get ideas.
    We did do modern things such as Hardi, Fiberglass columns, etc. to make maintenance easier.

  • emmachas_gw Shaffer
    15 years ago

    arisonn, don't you love the way an old house wraps its arms around you? The Versaci book lorraineal recommended is great. Also, old,out of print books on period architecture are wonderful resources for detailed drawings.
    Incorporate some period appropriate architectural salvage. And find a talented, and patient finsh carpenter.
    allison's #2 wood flooring,rather than perfect #1, adds character. And so does sierra's painting.
    Old houses are not perfect. They carry the scars of their history. I think that's why we love them so!

  • gala522
    15 years ago

    We've just moved into our new, relatively low budget, Craftsman bungalow. The details that make Craftsman homes so appealing are EXPENSIVE. We had to cut out a lot of what we wanted in order to bring the home into our price range. The result can probably be be called 'Craftsman light', but the home suits us right down to our toes. Even without the rafter tails, stained interior trim, solid wood doors, etc, we still find our 'Craftsman influenced' home to be very warm and welcoming.

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  • gala522
    15 years ago

    ashevilleian - I love the picture of your front porch. The elevation gives it the feel of a tree house!

  • jaymielo
    15 years ago

    We built a "new old" craftsman style home. We were not strict in our implementation, but we drew our inspiration from remodeling books and older homes in our area and are very happy with how it turned out. I really liked the book lorraineal mentions above, Creating a New Old House - Yesterday's Character for Today's Home and the No So Big House by Sarah Susanka. gala522 is right that all the little touches cost money, so we found we really had to balance our desires with our budget. We splurged on things that were priorities with us. The cabinetry in the house ended up being a big thing for us. We also did things like a clawfoot tub in the master, subway tile, hardwood floors, reproduction door hardware, vintage looking light fixtures and wood garage and front doors. I've posted lots of pictures here before, so I won't post them again, but if you are interested, here is a link to the thread I started when we were finally done, and here is a link to our blog which I actively kept up when we were building. The best advice I can give on controlling costs is to be actively involved in the "shopping" and well informed. This was the first time we built and it was a learning experience, but I learned so much here that saved us tens of thousands of dollars and paid for some of the upgrades. I hope it is a little bit helpful and good luck!

  • ponydoc
    15 years ago
  • ponydoc
    15 years ago

    I don't know why my pics posted this way! If you click on the highligted text you can see the pic.

    I would also search this forum for "new old house". You should get some great reading.

  • brutuses
    15 years ago

    I think trying to recreate an old house in a new one can be costly depending on how authentic you want the house to be.

    Since I'm not rich and can't afford to recreate my entire house into a 1800's true Southern Acadian, I'm implementing some things that give the feel of that style, i.e., bringing in old piecs of furniture and antique decor.

    My pride and joy is this dresser that DH turned into our guest bathroom vanity. A bit of that type of furniture will be throughout the house.

    When we first planned on building the house and had finished our design, this is the first piece of furniture I wanted to inspire me for the rest of the house.

  • gary1227
    15 years ago

    Here's some photos of our partially completed Italainate Style Farm House. We're trying to keep the formal areas of the house as true to the period as possible. The kitchens and baths are more modern but blend with the period feel.

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  • chisue
    15 years ago

    gary 1227 -- I can see why people ask if you moved an old house onto your property. It's perfect!

  • brutuses
    15 years ago

    gary, your house is perfect.

  • ashevilleian
    15 years ago

    gala522-I really like your house. its got the craftsman look with modern amenities. Our budget was/is so small that most builders laughed at us (we've got the finial number down to a little less than $124 a sqft including the land). We really wanted to buy an old house for the charm, but you can't buy one for less than around $230k here in Asheville and then they need to be updated with all new wiring, plumbing, HVAC, etc. Luckily with us doing all the finish work on it, we were able to splurge a little and some of the areas we were able to convince the builder that it really wasn't any more work to achieve a certain look.

    We did go with exposed rafter tails and they look great, but they are a pain in the butt to paint (as you can see, i am the one painting them in the first picture i posted).

  • flgargoyle
    15 years ago

    I've often wondered what would happen if you intentionally built a house a little crooked- say with a slight sag to the ridgeline or something. Would it even pass inspection? If you did it yourself, it would be easy to build in a little 'age'. Just one of my wacky ideas....

  • sierraeast
    15 years ago

    Just frame it to code minimums and give it a decade or two and that will happen anyhow!

  • teresa_b
    15 years ago

    Depending upon the style you want I found the following features helped to age a house: porches, random width hardwood flooring, stained trim (1 x 4 and 1 x 6), tall ceilings, tall wood doors (we went with 8 ft interior doors as we have 10 foot ceilings), subway tile, stone features (using local stone) and over-sized rustic brick.

    Teresa