The formal foyer, somewhat unusual for a Craftsman house, showcases stained and shellacked woodwork of Douglas fir. The library table and large Morris chair are Grand Rapids’ Lifetime Furniture antiques.

One word comes to mind to describe the approach taken by Carol Polanskey and Martin Ratliff for their restoration: scientific. Beginning in 1992, these committed homeowners used their analytical experience—both are rocket scientists—to take restoration to a higher level, researching the era and looking for evidence on site. The result is a house that glows.

Passersby inevitably slow down to take notice of the 1909 chalet–bungalow.  Its Craftsman-era piers of arroyo stone and clinker brick fit right in with other houses in Pasadena’s Bungalow Heaven Landmark District. But the exterior has “more action” than a typical bungalow, with steep gables and dormers, and stickwork that recalls late 19th-century Swiss chalets. Details are all the more evident with the polychrome paint scheme. (Despite many friendly knocks on the door, the colors chosen are a secret so that the house remains unique.)

A transitional nature is apparent inside, too, where entry is through a relatively large and formal foyer. The superb woodwork found throughout the house starts here, with a wainscot, staircase, built-in bench, and colonnade of stained and shellacked Douglas fir.

Living and dining rooms have a beautiful interplay of warm colors, authentic period furnishings, and original woodwork. A bold motif repeats: the peaked lintel over windows outside also frames doorways on the interior. Inside, the header is pierced by arrow-top stile extensions that look like through tenons.

The woodwork, which could be overbearing with white walls, has become the house’s strongest asset, owing to the owners’ paint-color choices and—they were amazed to discover—their embrace of wallpaper. Carol admits to having disliked fussy, papered walls. But, during an early restoration phase they dubbed “the white abatement program,” they say the house told them it had to have wallpaper. When they moved in, the interior was cold and uninviting and, scientists that they are, they had an explanation: Human eyes adjust to the brightest thing in the space; if that happens to be a white wall, the woodwork will look featureless and dull. Moody colors complement the dark wood trim, showcasing the wood’s grain and sheen and bringing it depth. The room becomes more cheerful.

Prepping for a bedroom paint job, the couple was surprised to find distinct layers of wallpaper on the walls, each paper from a different era. Martin and Carol slowed down to take note of individual layers, to experiment with various removal techniques, and to carefully save samples. It was the living room, however, that “really got the restoration juices flowing,” says Carol. This room had seven layers, one a leaf pattern that captured their fancy. They halted the project, meticulously photographed the paper on the wall before peeling it off, and eventually plan to have the pattern reproduced for use in another room. They went through a similar process in the dining room and first-floor office near the kitchen. “We’ve become wallpaper archaeologists,” Carol laughs, as she points out foam-core boards with vacuum-pressed samples attached. “We realize that this house has a true relationship with wallpaper.”

The first-floor office features a built-in, drop-front writing desk, below which is a twin hideaway bed.

Samples pulled from the upstairs bedroom ultimately influenced the couple’s wallpaper choices. Because their house is transitional, they wanted patterns with finer lines and subtle texture, not overtly American Arts & Crafts styles or 1920s geometrics. They selected hand-printed, abstract-floral reproduction papers by specialty companies, which required expert installation. Anticipating more discoveries, Carol notes that they’ve yet to strip the wallpaper in several rooms upstairs.

Precise and logical restoration came into play elsewhere, too. During the design of the new shade structure adjacent to the rear of the house, the couple agonized over how to be sure its stone piers would look authentic. On neighborhood walks, they scrutinized porches, even measuring grout thickness and depth, the clinker-to-rock ratio, how the clinker bricks were massed, and the distribution and size of the rocks. Then, using an Excel spreadsheet to chart their findings, they discovered that old masonry shows a wide distribution of color and size of rocks, while new masonry is more uniform. The craft of masonry was evident when the couple deduced that the grout tended to be about “two knuckles deep” and the distance between the rocks was always the width of a finger. Yet a rooftop feature of the new structure is hardly original: “Rocket scientists love solar panels!” Martin jokes.

Dressing up a Victorian-era house (like this Italianate-Second Empire blend) means paying attention the exterior as well as interior. (Photo: Fotolia.com)

The “outdoor room” concept has gotten a lot of press recently, but the idea isn’t exactly a new one. One need only look to the classical gardens of upscale colonial-era homes, the substantial front porches of bungalows and Queen Annes, or the easily accessible patios of mid-century ranches to understand that what’s outside the house has long been as important as what’s in it.

If what’s outside your house is less than stellar, that’s easy to fix. Adding a porch light here, and some seating there will do wonders to enhance both the aesthetic appeal and the livability of your outdoor environment. To that end, we’ve rounded up a few choice picks for three different eras (plus one more online). So what are you waiting for? Get outside, and get decorating!

Colonial Classics

In America’s early years, private pleasure gardens were a province of the very wealthy. For average homeowners, the yard was a more functional space, reserved for practical pursuits like vegetable-growing. Aesthetic enhancements were often driven by practicality as well—lanterns featured wire cages to protect delicate glass and fickle flames, and blacksmith-forged hardware was designed for maximum durability. But today, it’s precisely those utilitarian details that make colonial-era accents so appealing.

Alfresco Finery

You can thank the Victorians for perfecting the concept of outdoor living. In the mid-19th century, advancing technology gave the middle class more leisure time than ever before, and much of that time was spent outdoors: strolling and picnicking in public parks, conversing and courting on front porches, and playing games like croquet and lawn tennis. The abundance of pattern and ornament that typified Victorian interiors extended outside the house, too—accents that replicate intricate scrollwork, delicate lace, and stylized florals are always a good fit.

Artisan Accents

Perhaps more than any other architectural style, Arts & Crafts houses are defined by their connection to the outdoors. Instead of standing apart from their environment, they aim to meld with it through the use of indigenous materials, earthy finishes, and low-slung forms. This emphasis on communing with nature, coupled with an affinity for the artistic—hand-wrought being a major tenet of the movement—means that a wealth of hand-forged, -fired, and -made accessories designed with simple, straightforward construction are suited to bolstering your bungalow’s curb appeal.

Sleek Accessories

The great migration of Americans to the suburbs during the middle of the 20th century marked an uptick in opportunities for spending time outside. Though the rise of the automobile cut back on the popularity of front-porch gatherings and evening strolls, house designs continued to embrace the outdoors—witness the massive picture windows of Modernist homes, or the sliding glass patio doors of the ubiquitous ranch. Today, there are plenty of mid-century-friendly outdoor products to choose from, whether your house is sleek and streamlined or Atomic Age kitschy.

A restored bungalow in Portland, Oregon (embellished with friezes by artist C.J. Hurley), boasts classic A&C seating: a Morris chair and matching ottoman, and an even-arm settle. (Photo: William Wright; furniture photos courtesy of JMW Gallery)

Whether you approach American Arts & Crafts furniture with a design-trained eye or a sentimental heart, its appeal is undeniable. The period’s best pieces stand boldly at the threshold of Modernism. At the same time, the furniture evokes nostalgia for a pre-industrial era. One well-designed piece can be enough to make a statement in a contemporary interior, or you can assemble an entire collection to re-create the warmth of a turn-of-the-century living room.

Although furniture-makers at the dawn of the 20th century produced a wide array of Arts & Crafts-style furnishings, the following pieces have become must-have items for the Arts & Crafts enthusiast. Some forms are easy to find and offer a terrific bang for the buck. Others are what we all aspire to own. Jim Messineo, owner of the JMW Gallery in Boston, offers some advice on pricing and what to look for in a great piece of Arts & Crafts furniture.

Morris Chair

What could be more artsy-craftsy than lounging by the fire with a mug of tea perched on the Morris chair’s wide paddle arm? Introduced around 1865 by Morris & Co., the chair’s adjustable-back design—based on a Sussex carpenter’s pattern—was configured for cozy comfort. Gustav Stickley later took William Morris’ concept and refined the chair’s styling; his slats-to-the-floor design is a now considered an Arts & Crafts classic.

With their turned spindles and claw feet, pre-Stickley-era Morris chairs are usually deemed too fussy by collectors. But even among the pared-down Stickley-designed chairs, there is variety. An open-arm chair (no side slats) is the most affordable, and is still robust and attractive. My early L. & J.G. Stickley open-arm Morris chair has been my husband’s preferred TV viewing seat for more than 15 years. Next in desirability comes the side-slats-to-the-seat model; the aforementioned slats-to-the-floor style is at the top of the desirability scale. From there, even more rarified designs by Stickley can be found, including the bent-arm Morris chair, bow-arm Morris chair, and a design that incorporates slender squared spindles rather than broad slats.

What’s Out There: “If you aspire to a slats-to-the-floor Morris chair, an affordable option is the Morris chair produced by J.M. Young,” advises Messineo. “These can be found in the $2,000 range, whereas a similar Gustav Stickley-designed chair is currently in the $8,000 range.” Good-quality reproductions are also available from Warren Hile Studio and Stickley Audi & Co.

Library Table

This is the perfect accompaniment to a Morris chair, and period examples are relatively plentiful. Library tables are sturdy rectangular tables with a lower shelf on which to pile books. Some have end shelves as well, and generic types are still widely available in antiques shops. People misunderstand the purpose of library tables and assume they are small, uncomfortable desks (“Where do I put my feet with that shelf going across?”), but don’t dismiss them. Find a well-made example (solid oak, through tenons, hefty legs), pile it up with interesting books, and place it away from the wall to make a strong statement in a room.

What’s Out There: Period library tables range from $300 to $3,000, depending on quality, maker, and rarity. Library tables from the A&C era were made in large quantities. Unsigned tables that are not quarter-sawn oak, have end shelves, and are nailed together rather than pinned crowd the low end of the price range. Higher-end tables are quarter-sawn oak, and have pegged through tenons and subtle design details, such as corbels on the inner side of the legs.

Even-Arm Settle

Along with the Morris chair, the even-arm settle (also called a box settle) is the quintessential piece of seating for the Arts & Crafts collector. To the uninitiated, the even-arm settle may appear severe and uncomfortable, but the opposite is true if you pile it with comfy cushions and nestle into the corner. Reserve the discomfort rap for those Arts & Crafts settles with high backs and low arms (sort of an indoor park bench). These are better used in entryways or as visual focal points.

Period examples of box settles can be delightfully light and airy, such as L. & J.G.’s Model #232, with its carefully spaced back slats. Or you may prefer a beefy, deep “crib” settle that envelops the sitter in a sort of room-within-a room.

What’s Out There: Even-arm settles were made by all of the major Arts & Crafts furniture companies and range from $2,000 to $10,000. Higher prices reflect construction, maker, heft, proportion, and comfort, with deeper seats being more comfortable and therefore more desirable.

Tabourets

Perhaps the most beloved piece of furniture of the 20th century and beyond is the highly useful coffee table. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist during the Arts & Crafts period. If you’d like to be true to the period but still have a convenient place to set your glass down, consider a tabouret—a low round or octagonal table. Place a pair of tabourets together in front of your settle for a charming, period-inspired alternative to the ubiquitous coffee table.

What’s Out There: Tabourets are easily found in antiques stores, for anywhere from $150 to $2,000. They range in quality from turn-of-the-20th-century high-school shop projects to small gems of Arts & Crafts joinery created by Stickley and other fine furniture-makers of the period. The high-end examples have through tenons and gently arched stretchers, and the best have inlaid tiles from period manufacturers like Grueby.

Bookcase or China Cabinet

Storage is a priority for everyone, and there’s no better way to store books or breakables than in a beautiful Arts & Crafts case piece like a bookcase or china cabinet. (The latter has glass sides as well as glass doors to better display china or pottery.) Through tenons on the plank ends are desirable; keyed tenons are even better. Also look for true divided lights on the doors and the use of quarter-sawn oak on the mullions themselves as well as the rest of the piece. Lifetime produced lesser-quality bookcases with a mullion grid laid over a single pane of glass; they are still attractive and desirable, but the price should reflect this cost-cutting production technique.

What’s Out There: A bookcase or china cabinet—whether from the period or a reproduction—is an investment. Any high-quality reproduction in solid quarter-sawn oak will still run in the thousands of dollars. All of the period pieces are rare in the marketplace, so any attractive bookcase should be considered. Prices range from $1,000 to $10,000 for antiques, depending on the aforementioned construction details. The low-end pricing includes bookcases with plain glass doors with no mullions. These were produced by all of the Arts & Crafts furniture-makers, and while they don’t have the same look, they do offer an attractive, unobstructed display space for your art pottery collection.

Limbert Occasional Table

Arts & Crafts collectors naturally focus on the Stickleys: Gustav, L. & J.G., and Stickley Bros. But every collector should aspire to a Limbert piece. This Grand Rapids-based manufacturer successfully brought English and Northern European influences into its designs, and Limbert pieces can have interesting cutouts and subtle curves. An exquisite example is the single-oval occasional table, which adds grace to a room with its canted legs, trapezoidal cutouts, and curved top. Place an art pottery vase filled with forced forsythia stems on this table, and your room will become an artistic revelation.

What’s Out There: Expect to pay around $2,000 for a refinished Limbert single-oval occasional table (perhaps subject to too many water stains from flower-filled vases over the years) to $5,000 for one with its original finish. The rare Limbert double-oval occasional table evokes the work of Scottish master Charles Rennie Mackintosh and is in the $10,000 range. Both forms are being reproduced if you can’t wait to locate an original. Stickley Audi calls its single-oval table the Limbert Library Table, and the Warren Hile Studio produces a well-crafted example that would be a beautiful addition to any collection.

Massachusetts-based writer Barbara Rhines is a longtime collector of Arts & Crafts furniture and pottery.

The living room at Craftsman Farms. (Photo: Courtesy of Craftsman Farms)

Craftsman Farms
Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey
Given that he often touted the importance of the fireplace in his magazine The Craftsman, it’s no surprise that Gustav Stickley’s own home boasts an awe-inspiring hearth. The hefty stone structure takes up the better portion of the living room’s south wall, and features a copper hood inscribed with a Chaucer quote: “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”

The Lodge at Torrey Pines
La Jolla, California
It may be a relatively new building, but this Arts & Crafts-style hotel is infused with plenty of authentic Craftsman detail. The lobby fireplace is a standout centerpiece, featuring Greene & Greene-style woodwork, an art-tile mosaic surround, and a hand-hammered copper hood.

Blackwell House
Windermere, England
Situated inside a low-ceilinged inglenook, the main fireplace at Blackwell House, the only home by British Arts & Crafts architect M.H. Baillie Scott open to the public, is a cozy corner in an otherwise soaring main hall. Eclectic and whimsical, its firebox is covered in blue and white porcelain tiles, and a half-timbered minstrels’ gallery perches above the nook.

The Gamble House
Pasadena, California
Nowhere is the Greene brothers’ woodworking prowess used to better effect than at their 1908 masterpiece. Decorative beams highlight an inglenook in the living room, where a Grueby-tiled hearth, high-backed built-in benches, art-glass-fronted bookcases, and hanging light fixtures (all designed by the architects) combine to create a breathtaking display.

A vintage postcard depicts one of the Grove Park Inn's massive stone fireplaces. (Photo: Courtesy of the Grove Park Inn)

The Grove Park Inn
Asheville, North Carolina
When you step into the cavernous lobby of the Grove Park Inn, you can’t help but be drawn to the two enormous fireplaces flanking the room. Made of irregularly sized granite boulders and large enough for several adults to stand inside, the fireplaces’ stones bear various inscriptions, such as this one from the north fireplace: “Take from this hearth its warmth; from this room its charm; from this Inn its amity. Return them not—but return.”

Ainsley House
Campbell, California
Built in the English Cottage style in 1925, the Ainsley House has a Tudoresque aesthetic, but the library is pure Arts & Crafts, thanks to a Batchelder tile fireplace topped with a patinated, hand-hammered copper hood and surrounded by built-in bookcases with leaded glass doors.

Boettcher Mansion
Golden, Colorado
Built as a hunting lodge in 1917, the Boettcher Mansion evokes a medieval splendor, particularly in its grand hall (now known as the Fireplace Room), the centerpiece of which is a massive inglenook carved out of the irregular stone walls. Inside the inglenook, the firebox is flanked by Arts & Crafts-style oak benches, exact replicas of the originals.

But how do you balance those relatively modern ideas of the perfect bathroom with the realities of an old house, where baths are often small and basic? It’s not easy, but it can be done—whether by carving out space from adjoining rooms, reconfiguring fixture placement, or getting creative with the details. These 10 baths caught our editors’ eyes precisely because they’ve been able to strike that ideal balance between period authenticity and modern luxury. Let them inspire you in your own bathroom restoration.

How to Design a Small Bathroom

When cooking on her Bengal stove, Margaret Keilty can enjoy a mountain view through the windows to her right. (Photo: Mark LaMonica)

Margaret Keilty had been searching for a house with then-husband Raymond Shove for some time, but the ones they toured never seemed quite right. “What is it that you want?” Raymond would ask her. “I’ll know when I see it,” was always her response. One day, they stumbled upon an abandoned 1850s folk Victorian farmhouse in Sharon, Connecticut, with a dirt cellar and 8′-tall grass encroaching upon the back porch. Raymond dismissed it as a dump, but Margaret was hooked. “There was something about the way it stood there, not too far from the street. I knew immediately that this was my house.”

The two-story farmhouse isn’t elaborate; it’s sturdy and strong, built with hand-cut nails and corner boards that are mitered in place. Margaret envisioned a simple, utilitarian early 20th-century kitchen, grounded by a well-traveled Monitor Top refrigerator.

The Monitor Top fridge once belonged to Margaret's father. (Photo: Mark LaMonica)

The fridge had belonged to her father, who had removed it from his brother-in-law’s home in the 1950s. At that time, a fridge with a compressor on top was considered a sign of poverty, so the in-laws wanted it gone. The fridge had served as a basement beer-and-soda cooler for Mar-garet’s dad; when her mother said she was getting rid of it after he died, Margaret had to have it. “The Monitor Top fit perfectly with the vision I had for the kitchen,” she says.

Margaret and her partner, Mark LaMonica, immediately began looking for a vintage stove to accompany the refrigerator, and found a 1923 Bengal gas-and-coal combination. “It’s a cream and green porcelain and cast iron number that sits on little legs, with a shelf on top and nickel plating everywhere,” Margaret gushes. The couple found it in a nearby town, where someone had been using it as a plant stand. Margaret and Mark took the Bengal apart and gently cleaned it (taking care not to lose the patina), hooked it to gas, and now use it every day. They also worked to undo some of the cosmetic changes (like room partitions) that Margaret’s ex-husband had installed in the kitchen, and restored the plaster and refinished the floors.

Thanks to the pantry’s thoughtful construction details, you would never guess that it’s a modern creation. (Photo: Mark LaMonica)

The kitchen’s crowning glory is a pantry that Margaret created by removing a wall between the kitchen and a woodshed. She built the pantry with open shelves on top and cabinets at bottom, then accented it with a two-tone paint scheme, porcelain knobs, brass hinges, and a 2″-thick pine countertop cut from local wood. While she created the pantry with her ex-husband, it’s Mark who added the finishing touch: a row of windows along the back wall that added a drop-dead mountain view to the workspace. Mark and Margaret found the wood double-hungs at the local lumberyard.

“I was very conscious of how I approached it,” Margaret says of her kitchen design. “I didn’t want to spoil this house by putting anything modern into it.” While a few friends don’t understand the appeal of her utilitarian early kitchen (some have asked over the years, “When are you going to put a kitchen in?”), Margaret thinks it’s perfect just the way it is.

Find vintage appliances in the Old-House Products & Services Directory, or check out our Buyers’ Guide to Vintage Appliances.

Strategy #2: Create custom cabinets to echo original Arts & Crafts handiwork.

When Diane Mall purchased her modest 1,600-square-foot 1906 bungalow in Pacific Grove, California, it was in fair shape—except for the kitchen. “It was pretty bad,” she recalls. “It looked like it might have been redone in the 1960s.” Layers of linoleum had been covered with hideous ceramic tile, metal cabinets lined the walls, and a closet had been appropriated to add extra space, resulting in an awkward layout.

“I wanted to restore it to what it would have looked like originally,” Diane says—so she called in contractor R.C. Banjanin, owner of Jade Coast Construction, whom she and her husband had worked with on previous projects.

The existing built-in pantry was fitted with new cabinet doors; only the sliding doors on the pass-through (which were stripped of white paint) are original. (Photo: R.C. Banjanin)

To correct the layout issues, R.C. returned the closet annex to the master bedroom and created space for the fridge by removing an old chimney that had once vented a wood-burning stove. He also shifted the doorway that leads to the adjacent sleeping porch to make room for more counter space. The layout adjustments actually made the 11′ x 13′ room slightly smaller, but it feels more open now, thanks to the improved design.

The kitchen did have one redeeming feature to its credit—an original built-in pantry with a pass-through window to a built-in buffet in the dining room. Most of the doors on the pantry had been replaced (only the sliding doors on the pass-through were original), and the entire thing had been painted white, but the basic structure was still intact.

The dining room buffet provided a design template for the new cabinets. (Photo: R.C. Banjanin)

R.C. removed the pantry’s doors and stripped it of paint, then fashioned new doors out of Douglas fir. Their single-panel profile matches the original doors on the dining-room buffet. Above the pass-through window, he fitted the doors with slag-glass panels to allow light to penetrate through the leaded glass windows of the dining-room buffet.

He also custom-designed identical banks of cabinets to go under the sink and along the opposite wall, where the metal cabinets once hung. The new cabinets were built entirely on site: “There’s no way we could have bought cabinets and made them look right,” R.C. says.

He upped the cabinets’ authenticity with reproduction catches and bin pulls from Rejuvenation, selected to match the original hardware on the dining-room buffet. “Even though it’s brass, the buffet hardware had all turned black, so we decided to go with a darker finish,” R.C. explains.

The rich tone of the custom-made cabinets is set off by reddish Silestone countertops. (Photo: R.C. Banjanin)

For the countertops, he originally had planned to use Minnesota pipestone, a reddish clay stone, but in the end, he decided to go with similarly colored Silestone due to its greater availability and durability. He finished the restoration with ½” tongue-and-groove white oak flooring to match original flooring in the rest of the house. “Once we redid the floors, everything just flowed,” he observes. Diane agrees: “A lot of people think it’s an old kitchen, but everything except the pantry is brand new.”

Find kitchen cabinets in the Old-House Products & Services Directory.

Strategy #3: Change little, but add a lot of panache.

The Cutugnos added a subdued paint scheme, Marmoleum flooring, a new ceiling light from Schoolhouse Electric, and a streamlined faucet reminiscent of 1950s single-lever designs. (Photo: Elliott Anderson)

Some people have terrific vision when it comes to old houses—they can easily see beyond bad wallpaper and shag carpets to the gem that lies beneath. That wasn’t the case for Portland, Oregon, couple Michelle and Dan Cutugno.

When their realtor first walked them through a 1949 ranch designed by Ken Birkemeier, they told her they weren’t interested. “It just looked like a cosmetic nightmare,” Michelle says. But then the realtor took them to another Birkemeier house down the street—one that had been nicely rehabilitated. “It was like, ‘Wow, that’s what our house could look like?’” Michelle explains. They walked back through the ranch with new eyes, thinking of all the things they could do to make it better, and bought it.

Michelle and Dan couldn’t move in right away, because the kitchen wasn’t functional. It retained just a single working appliance—a dishwasher that appeared as old as the house. As they worked on a plan for the kitchen, they knew they wanted to keep as many original features as possible—features they began to appreciate more and more through an educational program at Portland’s Architectural Heritage Center that provided them a wealth of information. (The Cutugnos’ kitchen was open to the public on the Architectural Heritage Center’s April Kitchen Revival Tour.)

The kitchen's original tiled countertops were a big selling point for the Cutugnos; they had them professionally cleaned and re-grouted. (Photo: Elliott Anderson)

“We really liked the charm of the home and the funkiness of it, including the groovy tile countertops in the kitchen,” Michelle says. But they felt a little intimidated trying to find a color for the cabinets that would work with the vivid tiles, so they found designer Jennifer Roos to help them select paint colors.

She suggested a two-tone scheme with off-white on the upper cabinets and a greenish-gray on the bases, a color that would be repeated on the scalloped decorative trim at the ceiling. “We never could have come up with that color combo on our own,” Dan says. The scheme works to keep the vibrant tiles the focus of the room.

The cabinets themselves required a fair amount of work. While they are all original, they had contact or wallpaper covering all of their interior surfaces. Dan worked with a contractor to strip, sand, and repaint them. Then he and Michelle selected new pulls with a retro feel, which they found at Chown Hardware.

The couple’s modern installation of glass subway tiles pays tribute to the original backsplash. (Photo: Elliott Anderson)

Next on the list was a lighting fixture discovered at Schoolhouse Electric. “It’s got that beautiful blue/green color on it that really complements the countertop tiles,” says Michelle. To accompany their new stove, Michelle and Dan needed to install a backsplash. They opted for modern glass subway-style tiles with an inset design that echoes the hue of the hexes.

The flooring was a relatively easy selection. At purchase, the kitchen sported a crumbling vinyl floor, which clearly was not original. Michelle and Dan had been intrigued by Marmoleum since they had researched it as a possibility for their last home. It proved to be an era-appropriate fit, and Jennifer helped them choose a dark pattern that resembles mottled stone.

“We wanted to update the kitchen and keep it in character with the rest of the house,” says Michelle. “We’re really proud of how it turned out.”

Find period style lighting in the Old-House Products & Services Directory.

Online Exclusive: 6 More Strategies

Creating a kitchen that fits with your house is all about taking inspiration from period details. Check out 6 more amazing transformations below, which grace homes of all different vintages—from colonial-era farmhouse to 1920s Tudor.

To read more about these kitchens (and see more photos!), pick up a copy of The Old-House Guide.

Structural upgrades to the bungalow included seismic reinforcement, plus a new garage that created a sunny deck on the side of the house.

By his own admission, Nick Khoury didn’t know much about the Arts & Crafts movement when he embarked upon a two-year journey to fix up the 1912 bungalow that he and his wife, Dina, own in Portland, Oregon. But he recognized that a successful project would hinge on being able to peel back the layers of the home’s history. “I knew I had a knowledge gap and needed to fill it somehow,” he says. “I was the general contractor, and I had all the subcontractors lined up, but I didn’t have anyone on the project who really understood the history of the house.”

By luck, fate, or some combination of the two, Nick happened upon C.J. Hurley and Barbara Pierce—the duo behind the period-design firm C.J. Hurley Century Arts—as they were completing some exterior paint work on their home. “He kept asking us all these questions,” C.J. remembers, “and finally said, ‘I’m working on my house in another part of the neighborhood—would you guys like to come over and take a look?’”

C.J. and Barbara arrived on the scene just in time: The Khourys’ carpenter was recommending removal of the distinctive flared skirting above the home’s belt course. “Barbara and I were like, ‘Why are you doing that? This is what makes your house unique,’” C.J. recalls. Nick and Dina hadn’t given a second thought to the feature—but they caught on to its value as C.J. and Barbara explained its original function (its flared edge appears to have been designed to shed rainwater) and its Eastern-influenced Arts & Crafts underpinnings.

The skirting stayed, and the contractor who had suggested its removal was dropped from the project. Soon, work on the house began to move in an entirely new direction. “C.J. and Barbara really educated us,” Nick acknowledges. “They put us on a path of preserving as many of the original architectural elements as possible.”

Strategic Save

The addition of a wood mantel and tile surround and hearth brought new life to the home’s original brick fireplace.

Those original elements include one of the home’s most distinctive features, a brick fireplace that had been partially covered by a wall when the home was converted to a boarding house in the 1920s. “We had no idea what was back there until we tore out that wall,” Nick says. “We uncovered all of this old yellow brick that stairstepped up on the sides.”

Nick and Dina’s original plan for the fireplace was to demolish it and build a replacement in a less conspicuous location to open up the room, but C.J. and Barbara urged them to keep the fireplace intact. “C.J. was emphatic,” Nick says. “He told us, ‘You can’t find brick like this anymore.’”

Unfortunately, the home’s past (after the boarding house closed, it was a rental unit for several decades) had left the fireplace in pretty bad shape. The original brick mantel had been removed to make room for that boarding-house wall, and apparent fire damage had left many of the bricks around the firebox pitted and stained. “We brought in the guy who restored all of the bricks on Portland’s Union Station, but even he couldn’t bring them back,” C.J. says.

So he came up with a period-appropriate solution, covering the lower section of the fireplace with classic Arts & Crafts-style green tile, and designing a new wood mantel that incorporates elements from the home’s moldings (all of which he also designed, based on period conventions and a few remaining original pieces). The original brick is still visible above the mantel. “The fireplace is now the centerpiece of the home,” Nick says.

Detail Oriented

Their work on the fireplace typifies C.J. and Barbara’s approach toward the home’s restoration—where original material was missing or too damaged to save, they came up with new designs based on historical precedents. “We respect the past of the house, but we also like to give the homeowners their own meaningful layer of history,” says Barbara.

C.J. designed the dining-room buffet to house Nick and Dina’s wedding china. The couple had originally envisioned hanging sconces on the wall, but once C.J. realized that would trap the light, he advocated hanging box-beam pendants from the buffet instead.

For Nick and Dina, much of that layer comes in the form of artistic details designed by C.J., many of which were solutions to problems that popped up during the course of the project. The iron railing on the interior stairs, for example, was originally conceived as a way to get around a code issue. “We wanted to retain the original banister,” C.J. explains, “but the way it dies into the ceiling didn’t meet code, which specifies that the banister has to be continuous.” So, incorporating diamond details from the original balusters and adding a bit of an Art Nouveau flourish, C.J. designed a new handrail and brought in blacksmith Van Kellems to forge it in iron.

Other new-but-period-inspired details came courtesy of the Khourys themselves. Armed with vintage examples from C.J. and Barbara, they delved into Portland’s extensive market of old-house parts to search for light fixtures. “We hadn’t placed lighting high on the list of things we would fret over, but the more we got into it, we realized that if we didn’t do it right, it would affect the whole house,” says Nick. Their careful hunting yielded an eclectic mix of vintage and reproduction fixtures—an eye-catching mélange that, says Barbara, perfectly represents what an average bungalow would have looked like in the early 20th century. “People often get it stuck in their head that just because it’s an Arts & Crafts bungalow, it has to look like a picture book with everything matching,” she says. “But that wasn’t really the case back in the day—things were a lot more diverse.”

The couple’s most prized antique lighting finds grace the downstairs rooms, while more basic reproduction fixtures were hung upstairs. This same public/private division is echoed in other details as well—namely, the countless yards of molding C.J. designed to replace long-gone originals. In the living and dining rooms, dark-stained trim with complex profiles and graceful curves confers a more formal atmosphere; upstairs, the more simplified molding is painted. “When you walk into the house, you see this integrated molding system that makes the home look all tied together,” says Nick. “You’d think it’s all original, but it’s not.”

Living Legacy

A swing is tucked into a cozy alcove in the corner of the porch.

By the end of the two-year project, the Khourys not only had a house they loved and newfound friends in C.J. and Barbara, but also a budding appreciation for the Arts & Crafts movement. “I’ve learned a bit about how they did things back in the day, and there’s a lot to be said for it,” says Nick. “I never imagined myself living in an Arts & Crafts home 10 years ago, but I love it.”

He gives credit for his change of heart—and the project’s change in direction—to C.J. and Barbara. “The house would have looked very different without them,” he says, “and not in a good way.”

Although the end result was quite a departure from the contemporary renovation the Khourys had originally envisioned, Nick wouldn’t have it any other way. “I had the feeling that this was going to be the last time someone was going to restore this house for the next 100 years,” he says. “I wanted to do it right.”

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