Go to tinypic.com and browse til you find your JPG photo file, then click "download", then click once on the top address box, then paste that into the message at the forum and preview. If it's too big you need to reduce the size of the file.

The Shingle Style was popular in the late Victorian period but since it was contemporary with the ornate Queen Anne Style and was a reaction against that late Victorian style and the earlier Victorian Stick Style, it is usually considered a separate category from the Victorian styles and is often considered a transition to the hugely popular Colonial Revival Style that followed. Vincent Scully of Yale is credited with identifying and classifying the Shingle Style.

Ooooh, Alexia! You have a terrific home. It looks spacious and it has so much character. I particularly love the porch. It also looks to be in very good condition. You are fortunate to have such a delightful old girl!

It IS lovely. Maybe at the end of your restoration you can get some typical Victorian colors on there.

Colonial became such a catch-all description that it lost any and all meaning. I fear the same thing is happening with "foursquare". A real pet peeve of mine is the misapplications of specific classifications; the end result is dumbing-down and misunderstanding.
As to the last statement above about maybe being able to someday paint it an appropriate shingle color, well, Mee-ow!
Casey

The Issac Bell house (Newport, RI) was designed by McKim Mead & White in 1881. "Of all the summer houses that ushered in the Shingle Style, the finest surviving example of this free-spirited and festive architecture is the Issac Bell house...("Shingle Styles" by Bret Morgan & Leland M. Roth)

Yours is a very special house from a unique American design tradition. Please do not try to paint it to look like the Queen Anne and Stick Style Victorian houses that it's proponents so passionately rebelled against.

The typical finish of a Shingle Style house is unfinished red cedar shingles (or sometimes white cedar with a bleaching stain on the eastern coast) and dark green trim (sometimes white on the coast).

In it's later more suburban form the style used stained white cedar shingles and green seems to have been a favorite color (it's my favorite).

Please add some better photos of it. Now would be a good time to take some while the leaves are down.

Here is a link that might be useful: Shingle Style book

Alexia, your house is very pretty. I hope that it will be everything you want.

Our county has the property records on its website. Worth a try to see if you can find yours.

The proto-Arts & Crafts, proto-Queen Anne, and proto-Shingle house all roll'd into one is William Morris's "Red House". It is the wellspring for all of the most widely-accepted domestic architectural concepts from 1876 to the present. It's a wonder. How can a building be both self-consciously backward-looking and yet so far ahead of its time?

Casey

Here is a link that might be useful: Morris Society

The house is NOT in great shape, never been worked before. It will take us all we have just to make it up to code and livable. Our hope is that at least we will preserve it. On the other hand because it was never been worked before it it pretty original. Still has all wood paneling intact, pantries and kitchen the way it meant to be, original bathtub in the bathroom etc.

The original color of the house is green and it will stay green for as long as we own it.

Unfortunately, some of the trees are gone.

Our county has records on line only for the last 50 years. Anything before you have to go over there and dig. I am planing to do it eventually.

It's a beautiful house & you're very lucky that it's had no work done to it before - that's usually where the problems are, LOL. We purposely bought a house that was near condemnation but it had good bones & most of the original parts; after 21 years, we've never regretted it.

'Colonial' is realtor-speak for older homes that don't fit into a neat MLS category. Most realtors are sadly lacking in architectural knowledge & historic buildings are a complete mystery.

Very cool house :) I love that it feels so right in the setting (color, texture, it all feels yummy).

On the colonial...antique silver called it well :) We looked at several homes before buying our queen anne. One that was italian revival, one craftsman, two queen anne (to the T including turrets etc). All described as "colonial". heh heh So enjoy your "colonial" LOL We sure love ours :oP

My house was advertised for sale as a "white Victorian". It's a textbook example of a Colonial Revival from 1891 that had been painted white. You are very fortunate that so little has been done to your house. We are the third owners of ours and the middle owner did virtually nothing to it. It's slow and expensive to update it but well worth it IMHO.

There are not a lot of RE agents versed in actual house styles.

And while rim and decor can be useful, there are plenty of places built in one style but decorated in another, especially around periods with significant changes.

"A Field Guide to American Houses" by McAlester is a good reference.

Well I learned a lot about shingle style colors, thanks!

Here's a funny story about our old house - we bought an "airplane bungalow" in 1992 - it was built in 1920 by a Huffington and was only partly remuddled. We didn't know anything about bungalows then and asked our realtor why it was called an "airplane bungalow."

Her response: "There used to be a landing strip around here and this was probably a hangar or tower or something." O.M.G. Even I knew that was total "cow pie." I enjoyed learning about bungalow styles and we still laugh about the "old airstrip" that must have been built in my realtor's imaginary downtown Houston c. 1920.

For anyone not familiar with the term "airplane bungalow" it's a Craftsman with a small pop-up second story.

Macy, Thanks for the explanation of airplane bungalow as i thought it looked just like Craftsman bungalows all around our area of L.A. except they added the neat "carport" Across the street from church is a Craftsmen houose & it was getting weedy & in such disrepair & windows got broken. Then about 3 mos. ago painting company had trucks on both sides of street, wondered about that as didn't see anything happening(maybe doing inside 1st) but the house started getting redone & I think it will be beautiful, hope he does the yard, too. I love that when I am weeding(I volunteer) the blvd, I can look across & see such a great house, up until now I've always had to drive around the streets in San Fernando to see all those wonderful houses. Enjoyed reading the experiences of all you folks & your old homes turned treasures!