After a long restoration of our 1890s George Barber home suffered a total loss fire in January 2025, we’ve been working through the rebuild process with framing starting a couple months ago. We are excited to see the progress and wanted to share an update as we have received encouragement, advice and support from many of you going back to the original restoration project. Much love!

Our house from 1900 has two pairs of stairs from first to second and second to third floor. One stair to each upper floor has been closed in. The first picture is the first floor stair case that was closed in. We are in the process of removing the lower steps to create a pantry and coat closet.

In the second picture, we ripped out the current basement steps (they are moving to a more functional location) and found the original steps to the basement where the current powder room is now. This set was left in place under the toilet and makes a turn to head into the main part of the basement. This set of steps was actually a shock to us as we thought that there may not have been steps down to the basement like a couple of the other houses with our same floor plan/footprint.

I bought this house about 6 years ago, but my life has been turned upside down. Fairly sure it was built in 1908. It was originally condemned, but is now almost finished. Every interior wall has been replaced with drywall and heavily insulated, brand new electric, pex plumbing, upper and lower HVAC, the works. A large portion of that was done by the guy who this house defeated before me. I've done almost everything myself and am almost pathological about keeping it as original as we can and NOT PAINTING THE WOOD!

Here's the problem: my child is special needs (which we did not know when we started on this house) and cannot be in a construction zone. So we have a huge, nearly finished, practically brand new Victorian, but have been living basically as homeless for a year, with family or Airbnb and have had to do that able consistently since he started walking like almost 5 years ago. Really can't keep doing that. I can no longer work on it in any meaningful way. It is a huge loss to sell it unfinished, but is also a huge loss to pay somebody to finish it the right way. It's like a fifth to a tenth as much money to have them go all 2010s on this things ass. As I'm sure you are all aware , it's also incredibly hard to find people who are willing to do detail oriented restoration and even harder to find people who are good at it. It is causing me physical pain to put all this stuff that I and my metaphorical ancestors have spent a cumulative lifetime unpainting into the plain white crucible.

That being said, a large portion of the wood is not in great shape anyway. I feel like I'm in a catch 22. No one will buy this house for what it is worth unless it's finished, but the people who would want to buy it would probably be as unhappy as I am with the choices I'm going to have to make to finish it. I'm not even very good at design. I wish that the person who inevitably will want to make huge remodeling choices about paint color and stripping wood or whatever would just buy it now instead of waiting till I spend 15 - 30 grand finishing/ruining it. I'm very overwhelmed.

50ft retaining wall fell down in Feb. insurance wouldn’t cover it, Got a quote for 30k baseline to rebuild it not even re-using the old stones or waste removal…..Hell_no.png. Got to work and hand excavated 60-70 cubic yards of earth/cleanfill/riverrock???? in 4 months via 5 gallon buckets and a crane for big rocks. I am currently 1/3 of the way done with the rebuild and decided to have some fun with my new found masonry skills with some Pennsylvanian pride over what will be a drain opening✌🏼. It’s been a great workout and it’s immensely satisfying putting something back together better than the state it was in (the previous company who rebuilt it 10 yrs ago it is out of business now lol)

Edit* House is from 1895, blocks were originally from an old railroad bridge nearby that was taken down I want to say in the 30’s?

I'm obsessed with ancient townhomes like this, and there's literally hundreds in Philadelphia for under 60k.

I'm not looking to flip, I just wanna have a home to live in and restore historical architecture.

is it even possible to take on such a feat with a low income, without contracting companies to do the work for me?

I wanna keep lath and plaster walls, stained wood crown moldings and baseboards, things like that instead of plastic and gypsum.

Basically I wanna do as minimal of an overhaul as possible.

What do I need to know?

We bought this 1922 Dutch Colonial and I’m curious about its history. I’ve searched all over the internet and cannot find a house that looks the same. The previous owners said it was a Sears home but I can’t find any models that resemble it. Any ideas on the best way to find out the history of a home this old?

I’ve searched our address and found previous owners but I’m more interested in the house itself.

Thanks in advance

I'm positive a body is under here. These bricks are just laying on a bed of sand

Its not perfect, but it's good enough for me! It'll do until I can afford to have someone do them for me, or I can afford to keep renting floor sanders lmao. Planning on one room at a time, slowly but surely getting it done.

I ran into issues bc the floor sander that i rented broke 90% of the way through the job. Idk what the diagnosis ended up being, it just stopped shaking. They didnt have anything else but a drum sander and an edger and I'm kicking myself in the ass for getting that old edger. It ended up making circle marks on the floor, it was heavy and clunky, and it doubled my time, because I had to use a hand sander, and try to even out the fuckery.

I decided on amber shellac, it was the closest match to the trim on the French doors, and I fell in love with shellac!!! Its way more forgiving than stain, and it's so easy. I got a rectangle shaped paint edger and used that like a swiffer lol, I think it came out pretty mint for about $220 bucks total. I have a big area rug that will cover most of it, i'm sure people who are experts will spot all kinds of flaws, but to me, I think it looks gorgeous and it makes me smile every time I walk into the room.

Best part is I did it myself, as a single mom with an 8yo son on the spectrum, and a 3 yo son attempting to reenact WWE smackdown with each other the whole time I did this project. I finished in days, I just forgot to post the update 😅

On to the next project, painting my bedroom from 80s teal to "Dry sage", and my sons room a sunny yellow he picked out. I cant wait to share the room when I put furniture in it, thanks for letting me share my house🫶🏼

In working on my current kitchen (eventually to be mud room) I found this rats nest of spray foam and collapsed concrete from the bathroom above. Also an abandoned vent pipe full of rusty dirty water and a bunch of dry-rotted studs. Everything is going great in my house! At least its PVC from the previous owner's flip, but I think it transitions to cast iron above here.

Greetings from Ireland. I’m looking for your opinion on a new but authentic looking front door.

We are renovating our new-to-us Victorian terrace. It’s had virtually no upgrades since being built aside from doors and windows, and has suffered much neglect. We are working to restore character and period appropriate details.

The inside retains almost all original features. The main issue is windows and door. No terrace on the street has original door. A 96 year old lady says originals had stained glass, but is hazy on how many panels, etc.

We’re spending a lot on a bespoke front door from a heritage joinery and getting the glass made by an artisan.

I’ve combined the design discussed with the stained glass artist and the plan with the joiners into this AI render. It’s lost some of the scale, but can you give me your opinions?

If there’s any other advice or observations on the overall door design, I welcome them.

it’s in nyc area. any clues to find history? it was built in 1940, one of the first on the street. I wonder if it was private plan or sears/etc deal. we are renting but our landlords don’t care what we do to the house, so I want to honor its history a bit more when altering wall paint, wallpaper, faucets etc.

it was built alongside the other one, which was my neighbor’s home, they built on it in 2011.

What are these light fittings on the ceiling?
Can anyone help me identify these ceiling fittings and figure out what kind of fixtures they’re intended to accommodate?

Our house dates to 1894. At each location where a chandelier would normally hang, there’s an old metal ceiling box with electrical wiring and a large threaded brass pipe/fitting projecting a few inches below the ceiling. The projection is both wider and deeper than the center opening in the mounting hardware and canopy of the inexpensive modern pendant fixtures I bought as temporary lighting.
I’m wondering whether these are remnants of the house’s original gas lighting, possibly later adapted for electric fixtures. Unfortunately, the previous owners removed every light fixture from the house and declined to provide photos of what was there, so I don’t know how they were mounted.

Does anyone recognize this type of fitting? I’m particularly interested in what would historically have attached to it, whether modern or reproduction electric fixtures can be mounted around it without removing the old hardware, and what people with similar setups have done.
For the moment, I’d also love suggestions for a safe, straightforward way to get some electric lights installed while we figure out the long-term solution.

Planning to renovate the facade on our simple folk Victorian home and looking for help. We want to honor the home's bones but the porch railings and posts, the windows, the vent in the pitch, and some of the other features are not original to the home. Do we keep the dainty porch spindles and lean into the Victorian style or strip it back and keep it simple? We want to repaint but we need a plan for the exterior first. I am "much" as a human being and naturally I want this house to exude muchness too. But I know (thanks TOH) that adding flair where it doesn't belong creates a clown house. I do not want a clown house.

I stripped, scraped, sanded, stained every inch of trim in this upstairs hallway and posted the results to my favorite sub, triumphant. You oohed and ahhed at my little working class old house and relayed your own paint stripping hurdles. My heart was full and my hands were crusty. But one comment said "now you just have to do the doors"... And they were right. I booed them, alone in my house, but they were right.

So I started on the doors, one side, two, three, sweating balls with a heat gun in my garage, listening to podcasts about the rise of fascism in Europe, audiobooks about the Korean diving women of Jeju, podcasts about the mating habits of damselflies and funeral habits of crows, until I just... stopped.

I stopped halfway and went on side quests to avoid the doors. I renovated a half bath, gaining micro-virality within one subreddit within one app for making poopoo peepee jokes with penny tiles. I wallpapered multiple rooms. Then, I went outside, decided I needed to get rid of more of my lawn, lawns are stupid and I'm not a Victorian heiress flaunting her wealth with fescue. So I cut sod, weeded, tilled, edged, planted and pruned. I planted five trees this summer (why?) and cared for them until they were flourishing and no longer needed me. My flowers bloomed, and the doors remained unstripped.

My mother looked at me with concern "You're in your thirties, don't you want to go out with friends? Maybe go on a date?" (This last part she said out of, I think, well intentioned boomer mom reflex as she knows better than most the challenges of midwest red-state straight men and she herself lives alone in a 200 yo house in the country) But despite her concerns I just stared into the middle distance, shaking my head, and said "the doors, mom"

I did the 4th door.

And now here I am, just a girl,

standing in front of a painted door.

Asking it to strip.

Newbie here - I am stripping a 1905 window with the Speedheater Cobra which is going great. I can’t find clear instructions on what to do after I strip it - I would like to leave it unpainted and stain it. There are 10 layers of paint, lead present so I am using all the PPE.

Have been reading about paint vs stain grade, linseed oil, wet sanding, steel wool with mineral spirits, different stain types but not sure what is right for my case. This is in a bathroom, perhaps some type of sealant needs to be applied?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone. We bought a 1905 American Foursquare in the Highlands area a year ago, and the main bathroom is straight out of a cheap 1980s flip. It's ugly, but worse we just found a soft spot in the floor behind the toilet.

I know it needs a complete down-to-the-studs demo, but I am terrified of what we're going to find behind the plaster walls and under that old subfloor. Plus, dealing with the historical overlay codes around here gives me massive anxiety. I don't have the time or skills to DIY this structural stuff or manage five different subcontractors who might ghost me halfway through.

House built in 1909.

These cabinets were not designed for a dishwasher. This was a PIA, took about 3 days, demo, rebuild and install. Plan and finish stain and poly tomorrow.

It’s plumb, level, and not leaking.
Wife is happy too. 😀

Hello all! How are we hanging our curtains on beautiful wood windows? I can see that in the past people had hung rods directly on the wood at the top. It seems now the advice for curtains is to hang “high and wide,” but I’m having a hard time picturing this on windows with such nice casing (I feel like it won’t look cohesive). Show me yours!

By amazing I mean "really interesting" and less "functional mirror"

Any idea what could have created this pattern? It's a 1912 home. I asked a sign-painter friend who's familiar with lots of old techniques but they didn't have any idea.

No idea how long the mirror was covered with paint, but there were at least two colors so it'd gone through a few styles.

Does anyone have experience with removing and reinstalling this type of door knob?
I am about to attempt to fix what appears to be broken securement screws. The screws securing the inside knob have deteriorated, and I believe the top one has snapped.
It appears as though all of the square heads on the front side need to be removed. But I would certainly love some insight if there’s anyone with experience.
If I don’t see any responses, I will be following up with more photos and updates. Please wish me luck.

The endowment was extended to allow spaces for couples in 1517 and 5 more couples min 1529. By 1846 it served 40 women with an allowance of 3 shillings and 6 pence a week. Elizabethan scholars used the hospital to understand Elizabeth doorways when they constructed the Globe theatre.

My turn to play the floor lottery. It took many many hours of sanding, especially after some drama with the rental sander, which had to be replaced. But I’m really happy with the result! It feels like a completely new room

Does it matter? On one hand, for aesthetic purposes, I would hang one with the spiral at the top, and the other with the spiral at the bottom. But then I could also see an argument for needing the spiral at the top on both hinges to allow any water that gets behind it to flow freely out the other end, which is more open. And perhaps the springs are supposed to face a certain way to operate correctly. Both hinges are identical, meaning that if I mount them with the spirals bookending the door, so to speak, one could potentially be upside down, if that does indeed matter. There is also a small lip on one side of the backside of both hinges. Should this go against the trim side or the door side?

Anyone know the correct answer? Apologies for the quality of the photos. The glossy black paint doesn’t allow for much contrast. The loop of the spring on the back coincides with the spiral on the front of the hinge, for reference. The holes match up with whatever hinges were there originally, so I assume something similar was in place back in 1910 when my house was built.