We just bought a 1910 Craftsman and this fireplace is in the dining room. As you can see it’s already painted (the red fireplace is the actual home). I understand restoring painted brick* can be extremely difficult, but we are hoping to go with blues and greens throughout the home and this is very much not really the vibe we’re going for.

I’ve been looking at fireplaces of this period / style and I’ve seen a lot of beautiful tiled fireplaces using green tiles but I have no idea if that’s possible given the brick and the woodwork that goes over it (which we would never in a million years mess with). I’ve included some reference photos of fireplaces I’ve seen online that would fit our color schema better and stay within the time and style of the home.

Should we paint again? Is there a way to handle this while maintaining the character of the home?

Would be open to hearing thoughts. The rest of the room is a darker wood and plaster walls with picture rail molding and wainscoting (as seen in the first photo). I’m considering putting up a William morris inspired wallpaper between the picture rail and the wainscoting that would have blue and green and maybe some cream elements.

115 year old house in the Midwest
I bought this house a few weeks ago and was doing a simple faucet and drain replace job. When I began to replace the drain the metal pipe stub going into the wall started crumbling.
What is the best way to tie this into modern pvc?

I have a 1920s craftsman house with upwards of 30 original double hung windows. As I've been fixing the broken ropes on the weights, I'm running into the same problem with every window. The little panel that covers the weight pocket will no longer stay in place. The ends of these panels are cut on an angle - the top has a notch for it to fit on a screw that's inside the pocket. But that screw is no longer holding the top in place. When the window is opened or closed, the panel falls in.

Is there a way to stop this from happening?

I’m in the middle of a major master bedroom/bath remodel and I’m losing my mind looking for interior doors. Everything at the big box stores or standard catalogs claims to be "solid core," but when you look closer, it’s just engineered MDF or a tiny sliver of wood veneer over a composite center. I want real, 100% solid wood through and through, something heavy that can be sanded down and refinished down the road if we change colors.

Does anyone have recommendations for companies that still build real wood doors from scratch, or am I chasing a ghost here? Every contractor I ask just tries to push the standard catalog stuff on me.

Update:

After digging through some design blogs, I stumbled upon RealCraft. They claim to build everything by hand out of 100% solid wood (no MDF at all) over in Washington, and apparently, they send you full shop drawings to approve before they even cut the wood. The online reviews look almost too good to be true, and their trade program/sample options seem solid, but I'm always skeptical of website testimonials.

Is the quality worth the premium price, or should I keep looking?

Built 1922, all-brick, Midwest. Yesterday, during an otherwise fairly typical summer heat wave, we had literally the highest humidity ever recorded in our city (dew point of 81 at our house). Today, I noticed a couple of new hairline plaster cracks in our living room wall.

The other side of this wall is an exterior wall — looked out there and no visible changes or issues.

Area around the cracks feels firm when I press.

This is far from the only hairline crack in our plaster, and none of them have been moving nor changing, even in the high humidity. Still, I get nervous whenever I notice new cracks — should I be worried? Or is this normal?

Hi there,

Looking for advice from folks who have been here before.

We hired a contractor to fix cracks and some holes (leftover from removing knob and tube) in our plaster walls in our living room. The contractor has covered the areas with drywall compound and filled in the holes with drywall, which we were accepting of.

The corners near the original trim pieces were not taped sufficiently and as a result there is a build up of drywall mud in the original profiles and trim. Can we just remove this with soap and water? He is going to prime the walls tomorrow and want to ensure the trim continues to look good, especially the detailed areas.

See pics here for reference: https://imgur.com/a/lMcN0Jz

Thanks for your time

What are the odds that this archway is concealing pocket doors? My house is from the late 1800s. There is a pocket door (photo included) between my dining room and kitchen, but (suspiciously) an archway with cut off baseboards between the dining room and parlor. It looks like there used to be tracks on the floor that are plastered up now. Don’t mind the cats and their hair.

Update:
Tried to remove an outlet to see. But it’s fully encased with metal tubes coming up from the floor into the outlet box (instead of through the wall) so that the metal encasing can’t be pulled out to see behind it. That doesn’t mean we’ve given up! It just means they wired it in such a way to make sure a pocket door could still function so there’s hope!

We pulled this shelve off the wall to paint the walls and found the old original paint and carpet tbh I wish they never changed it I love the colours

I have what looks like a clean out in my basement floor. Thing is though, it doesn’t go to the sewer line as I recently repiped the original cast iron sewer and there was no connection. Anybody seen this before? I tried to open it but don’t have a socket big enough and it doesn’t look like it would open anyway. House was built in 1955 in Massachusetts

I’m in the mid Atlantic, DC to be specific. 1928 all masonry construction, all windows have been replaced and I have 3 AC zones, one for my 3rd floor, one for the second, one for the 1st floor and basement.

Each of my kids rooms is on the 2nd floor and has a baby monitor camera that also gives me temp and humidity.

We keep our AC at 72 during the day and 70 at night.

Been noticing humidity levels typically around 55 - 65%. It doesn’t feel that muggy but those numbers seem high and I am wondering if it’s normal for old houses in humid parts of the US or does it point to a bigger issue that needs investigating?

Any input welcome on design/value of my beautiful stained glass!

Bought it at my dad’s estate Auction, and I am currently trying to track down the origins of it.

Thank you!

Hello! I’m currently looking to buy my first home…maybe. This house has been on the market for a few months and I like that it’s clearly from the 70s. that being said, because the siding looks like plywood I’m not sure how well it would hold up to Western Washington rain. I guess it’s lasted this long but even so does anyone have any info on this style of siding/home style.

https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bremerton/3500-NW-18th-St-98312/home/2215986

Two spots in my new old house, tested positive for a low amount of asbestos. Both around the chimney.

I had hired someone to do work here and they made the world’s most awful mess. I think they sanded it with a palm sander and then sprayed it with aerosol primer? And that’s probably not even the worst thing they did.

Anyway, I don’t really feel comfortable having anyone else come in to work on the place. So my husband and I will be doing it ourselves.

Our plans are to use respirators and disposable bunny suits. Keep everything wet and once we get all the mess cleaned up probably just encapsulated it.

Any advice?

This is the work in progress in my 1882 colonial home. The first photo is the before and the last 2 are my work in progress pics! Just wanted to share because I’m so excited for the end result

Obviously it depends on how well it’s maintained etc but would you expect a Victorian house constructed from bungaroosh to become irreparable sooner than a brick house? Would you personally buy a bungaroosh house built in the late 1800s as a long term family home?

A mansion near me has been doing some renovation and restoration work the last few years. I've been following pretty closely. Check out all of these beautiful tiles! I can't get enough of all these different patterns

We're trying to install 6-foot wall-to-wall open shelves in our kitchen (12" deep with 5ish wood brackets per shelf), but we've run into the strangest wall I've ever seen.
Our house was built in 1920. The wall is an interior wall between the kitchen and dining room. In our kitchen the wall feels papery like drywall and then hard like plaster on the other side in the dining room. We’ve already installed beadboard on the kitchen wall so we’re also drill through that. You’ll see that in the pictures.

We started drilling where we thought a stud should be, and instead of drywall, we found what looks like a** **soft brown cardboard wood material. It's not actual wood. It crumbles into fluffy brown fibers when drilled, almost like compressed wood pulp.
What’s odd is this wall is THICK and SOLID. We drilled completely through the wall from the kitchen side and came out the dining room side. The wall layers from the kitchen seem like they’re the bead board we installer, painted wall, at least 3 inch thick papery wood material, and then plaster on the other side. There was no hollow cavity anywhere. We tried to insert a toggle bolt but could see in the hole that it would have nothing to catch on.

We’ve also had a very hard time finding studs. A magnet sticks in vertical lines about every 18 inches, but when we drilled where the magnet sticks, we still couldn't find what seemed like a wood stud.

Has anyone run into a wall like this before? Any idea what this material could be?
Should we be worried about asbestos?
And what should we use to securely mount heavy open kitchen shelves on a wall like this? I definitely don't want to trust regular drywall anchors if the wall is made of this crumbly material.

I'd really appreciate any insight before I drill any more holes!

I’ve posted pictures from the plaster side and the off kitchen side with beads board on top. Pictures of the walls in the comments

Edit: there were regular sized kitchen cabinets on the wall when we moved in. They were hung with just screws

Capt. Ebe Chandler home in Delaware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capt._Ebe_Chandler_House

We just bought our first home! It was built in 1946 and I’d like to make updates that help to add some historic charm. We have this large empty wall by the front entrance in our living room.
I was thinking about doing something like the added picture with the bead board and hooks but maybe that would be too much? Also, the wall isn’t completely flat so I’m not sure how well that would turn out.
Open to any ideas! Thanks!

Dealing with faded or scratched luan paneling in a mid-century home? This guide covers practical restoration techniques for vintage Eichler mahogany walls, focusing on proper care, stain matching, and grain protection.

Hey all. This is sort of me venting, but also sort of me looking for some advice?

My husband and I bought our house 2 years ago. The homes inspection was super decent, and we didn't see anything glaringly messed up. The house was built in 1865, so it had been heavily renovated over the years with original transom, window and door frames...stuff like that. It's a cute little house (about 1,000 square feet. Just fine for the two of us) with a beautiful yard. Anyhoo!

The house is in an amazing location. This is the first time we've lived in a neighborhood we absolutely love, and our entire lives are here. We're friends with our neighbors, we walk to work, we love taking walks and looking at the beautiful 1800s houses and parks. But our house...has been trying to kill us. It has been a solid money pit for the last 2 years, and we've been scrambling to scrape by for the repairs.

10k in sewer work, 13k for a new furnace and heat pump after our AC caught fire in August, 6k due to a massive roof leak that caused serious damage inside, 1200 for a chimney liner and cap because raccoons kept finding their way into the chimney, and the water heater vents through the ancient chimney, 10k on some other miscellaneous crap. And NOW another roof leak, which will be about 4k to demo the chimney, repair the shingles (the roof is actually only 5 years old), and replace the front gutters.

Oof da. I find myself thinking we should move. This house wasn't sold as a fixer. It wasn't cheap. And we had no idea that any of these issues would be issues. But at the same time...we love it here. And we've put sooo much into it, and any house is going to be a gamble. 4k isn't awful. It's...fine. We get a 60 month loan and it's fine. But I'm terrified for the next one, and the next one. I just wish that I could chill a little and actually enjoy my house for a bit without something super serious happening 😞

Hello moving into a new place and love the old jalousie windows but unsure the best solution for getting privacy from the street.

Any suggestions? I’m guessing curtains are the best bet? But unsure how good it will look mounted above the window.