Mary,
Check out Vintage Woodworks. I think this link should help..
I had ordered a Victorian screen door from this co in my last home & it was beautiful.
~Donna

Here is a link that might be useful: Vintage Woodworks

Vandykes may have some of what you need.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vandykes

This eBay seller has a lot of Victorian gingerbread very reasonably. Good luck to you!

Here is a link that might be useful: freespiritwoodworks on eBay

Are you trying to match existing balusters and corbels, or are you going for total replacement? Matching may be tough and you may be forced to go custom - there are some balusters missing from our inside staircase and stock ones are just different enough to look weird, so I'm going to have to pull one and have the replacements custom turned. :-p If you have the time, architectural salvage might be a possibility too, but that may be more hassle than it is worth.

Can you post a picture of your house? Depending on the style and if you're going for total replacement you might be able to go with flat sawn/fretsawn balusters which tend to be cheaper than turned ones, and a local carpenter could probably bang them out for you pretty inexpensively rather than paying shipping to order them elsewhere. Have you tried the local independent lumberyards, too? You might be able to get a bulk discount if you're buying a whole slew of balusters, but they may also have a better selection of stock ones. I have heard some good things about Anderson & McQuaid in Cambridge and National Lumber (multiple locations) although I haven't been there myself as it's a bit far - I'm up in NH.

The last possibility - repairing your existing porch parts with epoxy-based repair products like wood consolidator (such as Abatron LiquidWood) and epoxy fillers like WoodEpox. There are a bunch of different brands. The stuff can work miracles.

Thanks all. I got a VanDykes catalog today and it looks promising for corbels/gingerbread-y pieces.

Here are a couple of pics. I like the railings and posts, but they are rotten (the posts only at the bottom, so we may be able to just cut out the rotten part). It's all painted creamy white right now - shouldn't the ceiling be light blue? Thoughts?

Also took a couple of shots of the house exterior, so you can see the overall "look". Hate the siding and metal shutters, but no $$ to change them. I'll be begging for Photoshop help to landscape though!

Thanks again, and any add'l porch thoughts appreciated!

What a charmer! I absolutely LOVE the existing railing and balusters on the porch, they are so unusual that I really, really think you should do what you can to save them. IMO it would be kind of sad to see them replaced with more generic spindles and railings. Same goes for those lovely corbels/brackets, I think those are definitely worth saving; if you do take them down (send them to me!) I would copy the brackets up by the roof. Vintage Woodworks has some that look quite close.

I think the bottom railing would be pretty easy to replicate inexpensively, and the bases of the porch posts would not be hard to patch in either if you're reasonably handy. Seriously look into the epoxy consolidants though, because it's very possible that you wouldn't even need to cut the bottoms off the posts and patch in new wood. (Get the "Old House Journal Guide to Restoration... I'm finding it loaded with useful information.) Are you running into code issues with the railing height? In many areas if you repair the existing material rather than replacing it entirely, you're grandfathered on the height - check with your building department to be certain, of course.

The folks over on the Old House forum have spoken well of Citristrip, Soygel, and Peel Away as being effective, less toxic paint strippers to remove those thick layers of paint. It's a wee bit on the pricey side up-front but infrared paint removers like the Silent Paint Remover get positive comments as well, and are less likely to set fire to the wood than heat guns. (It's also supposed to be great for removing adhesives from hardwood floors, so if your POs put down vinyl flooring or glue-down carpet padding...) I expect we'll be giving them a shot next year... PO didn't bother to scrape the chippy paint or sand before he globbed paint all over the interior trim, arrrrrgh!

Blue porch ceiling is up to you - if you want it, have it, it's only paint. It's sort of a regional thing, I think, more common further south, but why not? My house is about the same vintage as yours but mine has a stained beadboard ceiling, which is original. Your porch floor does look like it's in better shape than ours! :-)

I understand completely about the siding too... PO here removed the clapboards, shingles, two-over-one windows and original trimwork on our New Englander and covered it with vinyl siding, aluminum trim (which is already scratched and dented and it's less than two years old), and cheap vinyl windows. It's enough to make one cry. About the only things left original on the exterior are the chamfered square porch posts, the aforementioned porch ceiling, and the front door (with about 67 layers of gummy paint, including over the gorgeous Eastlake knob and twist doorbell). Exterior restoration will be a massive project that will probably take us a decade to save up for. So I really sympathize!

I can vouch for Soy-gel and Peel-Away. And I agree with johnmari about checking out epoxy for the bases of the posts.

Oftentimes, if you need to match custom wood, you can get it done at a local millwork place. You'll never find intricate pieces to match at the big box stores. We've found millwork to be not so horribly expensive for the pieces we've needed.

Clubcracker and johnmari, To strip paint off metal, boil water and add a couple of tsp of baking soda. Drop your metal piece into the boiling water. After 15-20 min the paint will be soft and it will peel right off. You'll find the original metal underneath. Just don't use a pan you cook in. I've used this method with eastlake door trim and the original copper color with black was all intact.

What a cute house, rotten wood and all! What a treasure!

kec, I've also heard that you can just drop the parts into the hot water/baking soda mixture, remove from heat, cover and let it sit overnight. I hope to get to the door next summer since it's actually going to be a pretty big job for us - not only does the hardware need to be cleaned and the door itself stripped and repainted but the window needs to be reputtied and the threshold replaced. Figuring out how to board up the doorway without actually nailing/screwing to the doorframe should be interesting. :-)

Thanks for the feedback all. Maybe I will try to replace pieces here and there of the railings, because we do have a ridiculous code requirement - 42" high railings! I'm not going 42" on those railings.

Johnmari, I'd love to see pics of your house! I can't believe what POs do to places - grrr. Sounds like a wonderful house with lots of opportunities for restoration though! I sort of feel like a caretaker/guardian of these old houses, like I have a responsibility to preserve their history and restore where I can.

Fortunately this house's Eastlake entry set is in perfect condition, including the working skeleton key lock. :) The door has not been overly painted either. In our last house we pried vinyl flooring glued over wood - that was fun (!). Fortunately this one had all of its wood intact (even in the kitchen and pantry) and only suffered some semi-charming Yankee ingenuity of painting the stairs and floorboards on the second floor - I guess to give the effect of carpet w/o the cost? Anyway, it was kind of charming, but very chipped, so we had it refinished.

Thanks again, all, and I'll keep you posted on the progress. :)

Mary

Definitely look into grandfathering on that railing! If it is completely unavoidable, I'd talk to a restoration/preservation professional about how the porch can be reconfigured, but you may be stuck with replacing the main posts in order to raise the railing. If there's a historic building commission in your town they may be able to help you out.

Here's a pic of my place I took last month. I need to take another one now that the trees have filled in but the lawn really needs mowing. :-) It was built in 1900 so it has some aspects of Arts & Crafts style as well as Victorian - for example the porch was always boxed in like that although it was originally decoratively shingled - but it's always been a modest 1 1/2-storey cottage. We've only lived there since the end of September so we've done very little to it as of yet, but we have many plans. I too think that we're just caretakers of this house for future generations, with a responsibility to the generations before to preserve their hard work. So many old houses are being torn down willy-nilly, especially these smaller ones that don't have lavish amenities like master suites and "great rooms" that are in such demand, or over-the-top details like the Italianates and larger Queen Annes. We moved here from a 1994 tract Cape which always felt kind of soulless and generic despite all the work I put into it, while here we can feel the "psychic residue" of all the people who lived and loved and fought and laughed and, yes, died here.

Detail of the door area, followed by a shot of the doorknob (taken from the inside so it's more visible). Please ignore the sad plastic light fixture the PO put up; I want to replace it with

Side view taken last summer.

There are some interior pictures, not a huge amount yet, here.