Sometimes, what is retained is as important as what is renovated or added. Small things and the right details in a cottage renovation can bring back the joy.

The specs are confusing, quality and pricing all over the map. Here’s a stab at untangling the choices.

When it comes to restoring the tile in a period bathroom, which style is appropriate for your home's style and era? A look at the evolution of styles, colors and uses for home bathroom tile in the 20th Century.

An inside look at the history and evolution of the common bathtub can help you choose the right one for your old house.

In an old house or one built in a revival style, default to the look of early 20th-century bathrooms with white fixtures.

Original sources are credible—and charming.

An otherwise all-white room gets boundless energy grounded by a colored floor.

How appealing is this vintage Victorian cottage bathroom, all in green and white?

So many choices, it’s hard to decide: antique or reproduction, European or modern?

Ideas from every era for old-house kitchen shelving.

Keep your bathroom timeless while using fixtures designed for modern living.

Bungalow-era baths were of the “sanitary white” persuasion. Not so the bathrooms built after the mid-1920s! Bright color and Jazz Age glamour continued through the 1930s. By the mid-40s, white tile was back.

To replace nondescript space in an old house, an architect designs a hard-working “modern Craftsman” kitchen for a friend who has strong ideas about design and function.

Mediterranean color meets Craftsman design in a joyfully restored house in Portland, Oregon.

Despite remodelings and our expectation of modern function, the old-house kitchen is a favorite space, often exuding atmosphere.

These examples show it’s possible to combine old and new to create a traditional yet comfortable kitchen.

A McKim, Mead & White house gets some thoughtful kitchen and bath updates.

Barnes Vanze Architects designs a real cook's kitchen for a Mid-Atlantic Mediterranean.

A keen regard for period details by a Seattle homeowner resulted in this kitchen design.

From cabinets and flooring to tile, lighting, and hardware, it’s the details that usher a white kitchen into the right decade. Keep in mind that white hasn’t always meant bright white, either.

The master bath was enlarged and re-imagined for an existing Shingle Style house.

Remaking the kitchen in a 1912 English Arts & Crafts house.

A no-style bathroom gets an affordable makeover, courtesy of reclaimed and salvaged materials and good design. No need to gut the room.

Bathrooms and kitchens have very specific lighting requirements, but who says task lighting can't be beautiful as well as functional? Vintage fixtures, period reproductions, and subtle contemporary lighting keep the design spot-on.