Resources for Your Old House

Madison Los Angeles offers the latest designer jeans, including 18th Amendment, J Brand, Anlo, and more.

Jay Johnson -- It's good to see an anti-flipping trend sprouting up in today's new housing market. With folks realistic about mortgages, we're seeing a bit less house flipping and a renewed emphasis being put on keeping up and improving existing housing stock.

Quick profits from flipping are giving way to looking at houses as homes once again.

Your home is, after all, where you and your family have chosen to live (not "flip"). It's the place where you return after work, raise children, entertain, prepare and serve meals, and live life fully.

I was delighted to attend The Greater Philadelphia Historic Home Show and the concurrent Designer Craftsmen Show of Philadelphia on January 20 in King of Prussia, PA. The high-quality exhibits were dazzling, with companies and individuals pouring love and attention into restoring, sprucing up, decorating, and furnishing the proverbial This Old House.

In the over 500 YouTube video shorts I have shot for our Design2Share Video Channel, I created a new one on this great show. Designer Irwin Weiner ASID, accompanied me at the show and is featured on my Visiting the Historic Home Show video. Enjoy the many highlights that caught our eye as we toured the show and focused on textiles that recreated historic patterns, great custom millwork, clever roofing and elegant copper exterior detailing, and a host of other innovations to help restore and maintain older homes.

And for regular readers of this column, please note that my little Radio Shack $99 camtastic video recorder has been officially retired. I am now using the SONY HandyCam DCR-HC28. I think you'll see the difference in the quality of the video. It was time to upgrade in the new year!

Here are some of the vendors that we saw at the concurrent shows, resources that we thought are worth looking at for your home:

Old House Interiors Magazine is a print and online resource devoted to interiors from homes built between 1700 and 1840, including romantic 20th century colonial revivals. Good inspiration for First Period homes through Georgian, Federal, early Greek Revival, and regionally flavored residences.

Antique Homes Magazine focuses on historic homes for sale throughout New England.

We met a delightful woman named Rabbit Goody at the show. Her studio, Thistle Hill Weavers (see photo montage), creates custom period fabrics and trims. We loved her Venetian carpets, which would be stunning for whole-room flooring as well as stair runners.

Steve Smithers is a master of finer silversmithing and design. We were amazed by his beautiful tea sets and lighting. His handcrafted brass lighting is extraordinary and a rarity.

The custom crafted lighting and hardware from Heritage Metalworks is incredible. We loved their Winterthur Reproduction pieces, including the Lebanon Bedroom Chandelier (see photo above). This group is also wonderful with restoring and repairing metal antiques and creating custom metalwork.

Mox Nix Textiles creates beautiful historically accurate hand-woven textiles and quilts, and our featured video shows some looming work being done right in their booth. The woman who graciously allowed me to videotape her at work told me about how she hand-wove one poncho a day for 18 straight days to deliver Universal Studios ponchos for Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. She makes a poncho from a textile sofa throw, and they needed to show the poncho getting more and more ruined as the movie progressed.

If you love that smooth and sensual soapstone feel, then you'll appreciate Bucks County Soapstone Company and their custom sinks, countertops, and fireplace surrounds (see photo below).

Ball and Ball has extraordinary antique hardware reproductions covering the 18th Century through Victorian times. Chandeliers, sconces, lanterns, hand-forged iron house hardware, locks, fireplace accessories, knobs and drops, door knockers, and Chippendale pulls are their specialties.

We died and went to Heaven when we saw the collection of custom-made, beautifully crafted doors from Historic Doors. They make custom-crafted doors, entryways, and porticos that add beauty to interior and exterior doorways. Look at the beautiful rustic cottage-style door in this photo!

The Beresford Gallery specialized in lovely custom wrought iron work, from gates and railings to lighting and fireplace tools. They feature the work of a third-generation blacksmith from France who does all the hand forging.

The extraordinary millwork and customized, authentic colonial joynery from Maurer & Shepherd is worth exploring further. They can really bring cabinetry, entryways, windows and sashes, and woodwork to life again.

The Real Milk Paint Company offers timeless products that have added vibrant color to homes for centuries. The paint is environmentally safe, non-toxic, weather resistant, non-fading, and remains usable for years. Check out their tung oil, waxes, brushes, and other products, too.

We can't rave enough about Timeless Kitchen Design! These folks really understand cabinetry and how to blend today's appliances in with yesterday's custom woodwork -- and creating a flawless, elegant end product.

Photo Credits: Goodrich & Company, Thistle Hill Weavers, Historic Doors, Bucks County Soapstone

Adopt a Building

Jay Johnson -- With New Year's Day 2008, many people are starting to make their resolutions. Some will want to lose weight. Others want a better job, improved grades in school, or a revved-up love life. We know many homeowners who want to tackle that DIY job that's been hanging around the house for years.

I would like to adopt a building. The building on this old postcard, to be precise.

I'm not sure if that's possible, or even remotely feasible, but it's a goal and I'm sticking with it for now.

In the 500 video shorts contained in my Design2Share Video Library on YouTube, you will see examples where I have taken my video camera -- a sturdy palm-sized Radio Shack $99 camtastic Sanyo special -- and shot many an interesting building, from both the outside and inside.

But I went back to the town where I graduated from high school (Clinton, IA) the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I saw old, familiar buildings through new eyes.

The old main post office building on Fifth Avenue, for one, caught my eye. I was given an update on this building, a childhood favorite, from Barbara, my friend and fellow Clinton High School River King grad (Class of '70). Click on this link to view Fifth Avenue Is Our Memory Lane, a video of part of our downtown. Ignore the lame jokes, please, as well as my obsession with trying to find the water spout on a new fountain. But note the post office!

I also drove alone through the Lyons neighborhood of Clinton and took another video. Click on this link to view Abandoned Buildings Dilemma, and you'll see that I'm starting to get into a groove of despair about some of the buildings that really were important to the town where I grew up.

As much as I would like to save the post office on Clinton's Fifth Avenue, there are many other buildings that need attention, like the ones I shot in Lyons. Think about it:

• Old buildings deteriorate. It's costly to fix them up, and you know how steep the price tag can get just by using the upkeep costs of your own home as an example.
• Towns and cities flow and ebb. Proud emigrants at one time built a beautiful church in their new town, and generations of families grew up worshipping. The local enclave died out and/or moved away, and suddenly a once-magnificent building was abandoned, closed, and endangered.
• Laws, statutes, codes, and ordinances change. A wonderful old building may have to close if it can't be upgraded to meet changes in handicap accessibility or other improvements. It's sometimes easier and cheaper to build something new than make costly fixes to landmarked structures.

So back to the old main post office. The postcard above shows the original structure. It's a Beaux Arts beauty, now considered to be one of the most endangered historic buildings in the state of Iowa.

Here's another postcard showing the updated structure from around the 1930s, with a new addition in back.

Buildings like this one went hand in hand with Clinton's designation in the 1880s and 1890s as having more millionaires per capita than any other community in the United States. This was during the Midwestern lumber boom. 

And then there was Lillian Russell, the first great lady of the American stage -- and she was born in little Clinton, Iowa (see photo).

I grew up in the town not thinking of millionaires or famous Clintonians at all. Little details about things like this post office captured my imagination. I remember there was a black sidewalk with glittery sparkles around the front and side of the post office. It was hard to slip and fall on its gritty surface, and if I'm not mistaken, it was heated to melt the snow as it fell. I wonder if it still works -- and more basic than that, is my heated sidewalk memory legitimate or an overactive kid's imagination at work?

This building is something I would like to lease or buy, love, fix up, and restore to its former glory. It probably wouldn't be a very good post office any more. I'm sure there's a new facility that does a better, faster, more automated job. So it would be fun to turn it into something else, something that would serve the town well.

When I returned to New York after my Midwest weekend, I loaded my Clinton videos into the YouTube Design2Share site. Then I realized that there was another video I had taken a month or two earlier about an abandoned barn near our Bucks County weekend home. Click on this link to view Landmark Canal Barn, and you'll see yet another historic building in disrepair.

It all got me thinking:

1. You can never go back home again. This old chestnut is true. It's not the same place you remembered growing up. Things shrink. They age. They weather.

2. Small towns need some TLC. That's Tender Loving Care, as opposed to The Learning Channel. Small towns need aggressive civic restoration projects to preserve the past, landmark key buildings, and find new uses for old structures.

3. We should all fall in love with the past. Being "new" doesn't necessarily make a house or a public building beautiful or more desirable. I've done several past entries on the importance of loving old buildings and settling down in something with history and character. One example: In New Hope, PA, Marsha Brown is an amazing restaurant built inside a former church.

So I would like to adopt the old main post office building in Clinton, Iowa in 2008. The small glitch is that I don't have the money to take any action -- yet!

Michael Moore adopted an old movie theater in Traverse City, MI and turned it into a chic film festival experience. It helped revitalize their downtown. Maybe Michael will give me a call and help me fix up the old building of my dreams. Maybe we can set up a Design2Share office in there . . . and show art films and classic movies at night!

Happy New Year to you and yours -- and here's to achieving all your 2008 resolutions.

Photo Credits: The 2 Buds, Clintonia, Lambertville House, Answers.com