Patricia Poore - Restoration & Design for the Vintage House | Old House Online

Patricia Poore

Products of the Week

marvin windows timber frame

Marvin Windows and Doors offers customized, high-performance windows and doors.

pro wood marketplace

Brackets, Corbels & Fretwork

Nationwide industry leader bringing innovative and affordable new products to the architectural market every year that are purposeful and relevant to our customer's needs. US-made Cedar Architectural Accents: Brackets, Corbels, Tails, Porch and Gable Brackets, Screen Doors, Shutters, and Post Caps, Mantels and more.

crown point kitchen

Kitchen Cabinets, Counters, & Backsplashes

Crown Point Cabinetry offers custom cabinets for period style kitchens, baths, offices, laundry rooms, home bars and more. Styles include Shaker, Arts & Crafts, Early American, Victorian and Transitional.

The room mixes painted and unpainted wood for an evolved feel that looks more like furniture than a modern kitchen. The beams were salvaged.

Old-House Kitchens

Inside an addition to an old house in Pennsylvania, this new but timeless kitchen is a simple room with all of its details well-considered.

upholstered wing chairs, shaker design

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Restoration of this stone house has taken decades of respectful work by its owner, a designer who is inspired by Shaker design.

In an 1840 house, a drop-leaf tavern table in original red paint sits on a natural-fiber mat.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

The country vernacular.

Hardwood parquet flooring is the standard for high-style and urban Victorian houses.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

The flooring you choose sets the style, period, and tone for the room.

Used in both the entry and foyer, Pennsylvania flagstone floors connect indoors and out while introducing the textures and colors of nature. Continuing the indoor/outdoor dialogue, the use of natural stone softens the strong, modern statement made by the soaring fireplace.

Mid-Century Modern Houses

A predilection for Mid-century Modern leads to the perfect house.

adkins architectural salvage store

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Use our comprehensive guide to locate an architectural salvage store near you, or to browse the websites of stores across the country, many of which sell their wares online.

Beadboard wainscoting and simple fixtures define the cottage bath.

Period Bathrooms

Style notes for a room that's comfortable when it's traditional.

A garland of dried bay is fastened to the mantel in a Greek Revival house; small apples and a homemade toy sit amidst boughs of pine and balsam with wax berries and silk leaves. (Photo: Franklin & Esther Schmidt)

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

From simple to dramatic, here's a look at holiday mantels by period and style.

A kitchen overflowing with details.

The 1890 house had “all its integrity,” say its owners: stained-glass windows, a monumental staircase, fine woodwork, and even a dumbwaiter. But it needed their loving restoration.

Dumbwaiters were in use as early as the beginning of the 19th century—and probably earlier.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Many a row house had a hand-operated conveyance between floors.

bungalow bath

Kitchens & Baths

The typical bungalow-era bathroom is a simple space given to sanitary white surfaces and little ornament. Still, utilitarian can be handsome.

Much evolved, a true farmhouse kitchen retains metal cabinets along with the old corner cupboard, long-ago wallpaper, and an electrified kerosene lantern on a pulley.

Old-House Kitchens

Practical tips for getting the farmhouse look in your own kitchen.

The main block of the 1814 house has remained intact. The typical Federal-era paint colors were taken from a painting by Jonathan Fisher himself; his notes say he mixed the buff-yellow paint using ochre found on site.

Northeastern Historic Sites

The Kennebec Company kitchen was fitted into an existing addition.

Old-House Kitchens

An eccentric plan resulted in a workable and beautiful kitchen for this 18th-century Georgian home.

Complete with a berm and nestled into its sloping site, the Brown House mirrors 18th-century Chester County homesteads that were added to over time. Mixed materials were used in constructing stone, log, and wood-framed sections.

Historic Neighborhoods

An authentic stone house vernacular is still strong at this community of new old houses in Pennsylvania.

Green and cream tiles laid on the diagonal jazz up a Depression-era Tudor kitchen.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Serious or whimsical, cabinet hardware sets a period mood. It’s jewelry for the kitchen.

The kitchen wing includes an informal dining area with a fully paneled fireplace wall.

This new house was planned around a collection of rugs and furniture passed down for five generations.

Victorian color scheme

Old House Gardens & Exteriors

Follow these guidelines to create cohesive Victorian color schemes.

New England itinerant artist Rufus Porter rarely painted murals that portrayed an identifiable scene. In this example, a stenciled frieze pattern seems to grow out of the sponge-painted trees overlaid on a rolling landscape.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Stenciled designs and scenic murals were popular from around 1790 to 1850.

The bungalow is one of the more modest homes in this neighborhood of revival-style houses developed in the 1920s.

Pastel tiles with black accents warm up a modest Jazz Age bathroom.

Period Bathrooms

How to maximize space, solve storage woes, and set the style.

In this Arts & Crafts living room, practical roller shades can be pulled down to block sunlight or for privacy. Sheer half-curtains filter light and the view while subtly calling attention to unusual sash proportions.

Interiors & Decorative Accessories

Unfussy window treatments like these may be used alone or as an underlayer.

Garden gate

Old House Gardens & Exteriors

Three strategies for a sag-free garden gate.

Second Empire cottage all-white paint scheme

Old House Gardens & Exteriors

Historical color experts suggest that this late Victorian cottage might be polychromed in period colors.