the blog
For more tips on preparing your old house for winter, check out my video interview with expert Desiree Lawlor of Hart Water Conditioning. KATE WOOD grew up criss-crossing the country in the family’s Volkswagen Bus, visiting house museums, battlefields, Main Streets, and national parks. Today, she is an award-winning preservationist, real estate broker and principal […]
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Historic windows are an important character-defining feature of old houses. For me, as a preservationist, that alone is enough reason to go to the mat. I wrote a piece for CIRCA Old Houses covering the history of window technology and style, making a case for their aesthetic, historical and architectural significance. In my book, windows […]
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You’ve signed the pile of closing documents, officially hold the keys, and now stand in front of your house, realizing that smell is now YOUR very own damp plaster, mildew and mouse pee! What now? You might scan your memory for all the advice you’ve read online or gleaned from the slew of contractors and […]
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Congratulations! You’ve purchased a home that is 50, 100, 200(!) years old and brimming with special qualities. Maybe it’s the way the light filters through wavy-glass windows and warms the mellow wide-board floors. Or the smooth feel of the banister, polished by generations of hands. Or specific features such as original beadboard built-ins, door knobs […]
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People come to me when they have an old house that needs work, they know it’s special, and they desperately don’t want to f&%# it up. How do you bring a 50- or 100- or 200-year-old house into the 21st century without destroying its historic character? That is the essential question of historic rehabilitation, defined […]
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“You realize it would be faster and cheaper to just tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.” My client and I stood outside the ca-1876 train depot she had purchased a few months earlier, the contractor who made this pronouncement silently eyeing us. The moment of truth. Why did this property owner invest in […]
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Begin with the end in mind… That’s what the productivity gurus tell us. While sometimes it’s okay to get on your bike and just start riding, if we actually want to get to a specific destination in a certain amount of time, it really helps to have a roadmap. Then, when obstacles and worthwhile detour […]
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Moving Day in Little Old New York, satirical painting, c.1827 Time for a little spring cleaning? May is a time for fresh starts – planting a garden, hitting the trails, opening the windows and letting the air in. The idea of “spring cleaning” goes back millennia and makes particular sense in the 19th-century context of […]
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Spring Break is over. Easter chocolate and jelly beans have been consumed. Taxes are filed. So, what’s next? Here’s my calendar for the upcoming month, full of items that need tending to. After a long season of fireside planning, life is shifting outdoors again. I’ve already dipped a toe in the garden – hooking […]
