Historic homes are an integral part of the New England landscape. They have history, charm, and often, a need for a handy homeowner.
When people buy homes built in the early to mid-1800s before electricity or indoor plumbing they come with their own unique issues, says Historic New England’s senior preservation services manager Sally Zimmerman.
Historic New England owns 37 house museums made from historic homes and strives to keep them as close to their original construction as they can while still maintaining them.
“Old buildings – and really old buildings only more so – are a significant part of our landscape,” Zimmerman said. “They’re made from wood from the local community, the people who milled the lumber and put it together probably lived in that community. They’re very much a local product, and it’s something that just can’t be replicated.”
But that doesn’t mean they must be left completely untouched forever, she said. Maintenance is an ongoing issue with older homes and because they weren’t built with modern energy efficiency the cost of heating and cooling them can be high. All these issues can be addressed, Zimmerman said, while still maintaining the integrity of the architecture.
For example, homeowners can reduce heat leaks by restoring their historic windows and adding storm shutters at about the same cost as replacing them with modern windows.
Zimmerman recently gave a talk on retrofitting your historic home for better energy efficiency at the New Ipswich Historical Society.
Peterborough resident Judy Koch, who is currently planning to do energy upgrades on her home, attended.
She and her husband Rob aren’t strangers to the renovation game, she said. They bought their 1870 Italianate-style home in 1975, and the house at that point had been divided to create a separate apartment on the second floor. The Koches turned it back into a single-family home.
Koch said she and her husband made special efforts to preserve some of the architectural features of the house. For example, they kept the detailed molding around the door frames and even found a carpenter to re-create the same style molding for areas where the molding had rotted.
Linda Greenwood, of 34 Pine Street, recently completed a renovation of her 1840’s cape-style home, to make it suitable for one-floor living. She and her husband have lived in the two-story home since 1969, and want to be able to stay in the home as they age.
In order to have enough room, the couple added a small addition onto the living room.
Greenwood said they weren’t always able to re-use the original materials, but attempted to keep the age of the home in mind when they re-did the floors and living room wall. The wall is built with boards from an antique barn from Hancock. She even incorporated an antique yoke found under the barn floor into a new mantelpiece for the wood stove, and extra boards for shelving.
Greenwood also re-purposed a barn door and mounted it on her wall, using it to showcase some of her photography.
Greenwood said she grew up in New York City, and had never expected to have to adopt an antique aesthetic – but has grown to love it over the years.
“I grew to love old furniture, I grew to love wood, which really surprised me,” Greenwood said. “I grew to love this house, and I knew there was no way to change the integrity of the house, even while we were trying to make it livable and work for us at this point in our lives.”
Sharon and David Ward, of 53 Pine Street, said they also recently renovated the first floor of their 1870 home to make it more livable while incorporating antique materials.
“We called it the house of many doors,” David Ward said. The couple bought the house in 2015, he said, and were so turned around by the maze-like construction of the first floor, they had to get the floor plan from the realtor to really understand the layout.
The rooms, particularly the kitchen, were undersized, likely for heating purposes before the house had electricity, Sharon Ward said.
“And none of it really felt functional,” she said.
The couple opened up the floor plan but attempted to keep a lot of the materials. Flooring that couldn’t be used downstairs has been saved for when they plan to finish the house’s attic, and they used materials from a 1900s cabin. They preserved the trim and molding and kept the original doors and fittings.
If you’d like to learn more about historic preservation techniques, www.historicnewengland.org has a list of historic preservation resources.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertrancript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.