I love questions with easy answers.... 1. If you have an opportunity to buy an Arts & Crafts house, do it. You are buying a uniquely American gem. For more information about these houses see Arts and Crafts Styles: Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square Houses. 2. Keep your existing windows if at all possible. There are many good references on the web and in books detailing how to rehabilitate old windows. If you are deterred by the old sash weight balance system, there are a lot of replacement balances, including those that permit the window to tip in for easy cleaning. Blain Window Hardware is your source for all things window. 3. Recent DOE-funded studies show that a properly rehabilitated single glazed window with a storm window is just as energy efficient as a new double-glazed window. For historically correct wood custom made storm windows with sliding screens, check out Spencer Works. 4. Steam or (more likely) hot water radiator heat is the very best kind of heat. There are no drafts such as are created by forced air systems. You be amazed at how little dust you will have in your new house. To add cooling, I suggest a split sytem with one unit for the top floor run through the attic, and one for the bottom floor run through the basement. You can now get condensers (the outside part) that hang on the outside wall. Not the prettiest things, but they work. This dual zoning allows you to separately control cooling on each floor, so you can turn up the cool at night in the bedroom area, and dial it down in the day time. Vice-versa for the living areas on the first floor. This should be in the range of $8,000 or so for a 13 SEER high efficiency system. It's the duct work that adds cost. By splitting the system you keep ducting to a minimum. If space is very right, try a high velocity system with 4" ducts. These can be located nearly anywhere a water pipe can go. 5. To locate cat urine, use a black light. To eliminate cat urine stains and smells, call a cleaning service such as Service Master. These guys have the heavy duty equipment to make sure the job is done right. Good luck. A house this old is a continuing adventure.

Latex is terrible paint for anything you care about. It's soft, it can't be prepped well for the next coat when it gets old; it takes months to "cure" even though it dries in an hour; it does not, by any means, look or feel anything like a good oil paint, in fact, in humid weather it can get very sticky, and there's virtually no way to get it to totally level out into that classic "satin impervo" look no matter how much Floetrol you put in it or how expensive a brush you use, though if you have a painter skilled in laying on latex they can get close, though with significantly more effort, or if you spry it, but spraying forces you to reduce it so much it degrades the paint. Downsides: oil does take overnight to dry, the solvents are not healthy to breathe; cleaning brushes takes an inordinate amount of thinner and slop buckets. Upsides: if you hire a good painter, you'll get a finish head and shoulders above latex. If I were doing a really nice interior, I'd be reluctant to slop latex on all that nice wood detail. As a former painting contractor, I can tell latex a mile away. I personally hate using oil, but I would never defend latex as great, or even particularly good, paint. Also note that if you can even get Ben Moore Satin Impervo oil in gallons, it has been reduced to high quality sludge through the removal of a lot of the solvents (VOCs) that made is so good. So be prepared to doctor it up with thinner or conditioners (Penetrol). The Impervo they sell in quarts to get past the VOC laws ("for metal only") is actually thin enough to paint with right out of the can. AS for yellowing, it does yellow with time but we're talking 15 to 20 years time--I have done over many many oil-based interiors, and the yellowing was kind of nice, if you were to ask me. I don't know what happened with the commenter above, no idea. Definitely not the norm.

Thanks everyone! Thanks for the information on the dormer, that gives me something else to research. We had toyed around with the idea of razing the 2nd floor altogether and completely redesigning it but nixed that idea (for now anyway). The kitchen is down to the studs right now, I hope to have a working kichen by the end of January :) I posted a thread on the kitchen forum with pictures of all my ideas and linked it below if you're interested. I have also changed the landscaping to more of a cottage garden. I love continuous color all season and various textures so I'll work on adding some of those pictures as well. I have considered naming the house but haven't really come up with anything yet. I'll have to give it some more thought :) I'll see what other pictures I can get off the external hard drive this weekend to give you some other images of the house. I truly enjoy this house and we love giving it our own personal touch!

If you are using acrylic paint, it's very hard if not impossible to brush out a door, or any large surface, and have it come out looking good. You should either roll the door and leave it or roll the door and brush out the rolled paint. Modern day paints just dry too fast. Aura is a good product for rolling and the Aura extender you can buy to increase the open time is also good. Regal is not really a good product for rolling...it does not self level as good as the Aura. Also, this does take practice. DIY'ers and homeowner painters have 2 tendencies. They do not put enough paint on and they overwork the paint. The key to getting paint to look good is to put the paint on heavy and then leave it. After 15 second have passed, do not go back into an area that you have already painted. Try a 4" Wooster Pro Dooz sleeve, 3/8" nap or even 1/4" if you are afraid that 3/8" is too big. The pros always tend to use bigger naps than the homeowners. Try not to get frustrated...painting these days is hard! This is why I try to spray as much as I can.