Slateberry, what a great link! I'm a moderate with conservative leanings. I love the idea of bringing a house back to as original as it can get, with a nod to modern conveniences. The Victorian era, for example, was all about their modernizations, you can say that about most eras. It makes the most sense to utilize the important advancements of our time, for convenience, but most importantly, safety. On the other hand, there were many things that are difficult to reproduce in our time, those should be cherished and protected. The character of old homes should also be appreciated.

We have a sleeping porch, which I love. We aren't in the sleeping on it stage yet, but I hope we will be. It sounds like yours would be not really used if restored. I think your major deciding factor should be external. Would it look a lot better for the exterior of your house to have your porch restored? If the answer is yes, I would go with that. If it would make no difference, and you can do it, go for the bathroom. Good luck!

Good point. I think if I restore a porch it should be the front wrap-around. It covered almost half the house. I met the p.o. who took it off in the sixties. I said to her "what a shame the original porch rotted and you had to replace it (with this excr******--no I didn't say that part)." Her response: "Oh, no, it wasn't rotted." Then why isn't it still here!? Never mind. My blue prints show the house even had a piazza. They tore off a piazza.

So, I sacrifice a sleeping porch for a master bath and restore the piazza? Seems like a fair trade to me. Maybe my husband will flirt with me on the piazza someday. Or my daughters' boyfriends. Isn't that what a piazza is for?

I think, going back to my other post about a trunk room, that if I could be the wealthy mill owner that built this house, and have a trunk room full of trunks with stamps from around the world, servants in my dark northwest-oriented kitchen, and bathe only once a week, then yeah, a sleeping porch would be fine. But I am not a wealthy world traveler with a part-time business empire that delivers maximum money for minimal input, I bathe more than once a week (and sometimes it seems like I sleep less), so yeah, I'm leaning toward a bathroom. If I can't be a world traveler, I want a loo of my own!

Slateberry, your writing is inspiring. And thanks for the link. I enjoyed reading it and laughed at the names on the blogroll - "This Old Crack House" indeed!

I live in Houston now and know many old homes with sleeping porches. However, aside from the 20 or so days that Houston weather would allow outdoor sleeping, there's no way I'd focus on that for renovation. I'm guessing you no longer live in Houston.

I like your idea of getting the wrap-around porch back!

Oh, and I guess I'm a moderate. We loved our 1920 bungalow and made our kitchen update fit the period of the house, but we still hung cabinets on the wall and put in a formica countertop with a nice ell.

Right now we're in the midst of a remodel of a 1956 ranch. While our home was custom-built, it ain't no Eichler either. KWIM? We're putting our ceilings as high as they can go w/o making the roof much taller than it was. And we made sure that our new windows, while not steel casements, will keep the horizontal lines that the house came with.

Hey Karen,

Thanks! No, I don't live in Houston anymore; I'm in the Boston area now. On the solstice the sun sets at 4:09 in the afternoon. Ouch! I am amused by the weather here to no end. We get enough snow that my kids can build igloos in the front yard. Sometimes the river freezes sufficiently for safe skating. In Houston, when it freezes, everyone is scrambling trying to keep their pipes from bursting. In the summer, which lasts about a week by my estimation, you barely need an air conditioner. That's why we don't have ac in our house. The rest of what they call summer here consists of what you or I would call warm spring days.

Oh yeah, and basements. If you buy a house here, there is the giant secret space underneath where you can stick all your junk and projects you didn't get around to yet. HOW did we ever get by without a basement? I guess you just don't need deep footings where the ground doesn't freeze, not to mention Houston is on a floodplain.

I miss Houston terribly, although I finally found one place where I can get a decent tres leches cake, and even some really good barbecue. But when I come down, I take I-45 from the airport, and hit James Coney Island for a chili cheese dog. No one makes them like that. And a Shipleys donut hot off the press. For a while we had Crispy Creme up here, and that was a decent approximation, but they went under. If I lived in Houston, I'd weigh a ton!

I think that 50 or 60 years ago, when the population of Houston was much smaller, you did not have such an urban heat island effect. Sure, it got hot, but now I think it's 5-10 degrees hotter. Plus, if you look at those old houses in the Heights with their big windows, designs for cross-ventilation, and strategically placed oaks, you can see how it was almost livable.

Don't get me wrong, I love air conditioning, but I think houses were designed in much more interesting ways when they had the constraint of no AC. My mil lives in Phoenix and for a while we considered relocating there. I won't live in a house under 100 years old (or as close as I can get). Phoenix has burned to the ground several times, so there are not a lot of older buildings. So, we looked at a lot of newer buildings, then finally found some old construction. What a difference! The new houses, except for the stucco and tile roofs, could have been anywhere. The old houses: thick walls, high ceilings, strategic windows, cool tile floors, and courtyards. I even found one with a fountain in the courtyard. Now honestly, when you think of houses in the desert, don't you automatically assume every one has a high-walled courtyard to block the sun with a cooling fountain in the middle? Ya'd think.

But I digress. Thanks for your response--I think it's gonna be a bathroom. But I wish someone would come on here and talk me into a sleeping porch. It would be a lot cheaper than a master bath; all I'd have to do is demo the walls they built onto it. Instead, I'll be taking all the porch railings, carvings, and gingerbread (they better be under the crappy 60's avocado paneling or I'm gonna be really cheesed), and using them as templates and parts for the restoration of the original front porch. And the piazza.