George, is your garden on the Westport tour? The Guilford Garden tour is June 10th. I usually go to this one every year and have never been disappointed. A few of the gardens are usually within walking distance of the Guilford Green and there are plenty of good restaurants in town when the lunch bell tolls, a couple right on the harbor. Guilford's Secret Gardens Spectacular private gardens around the historic Guilford Green and in the countryside will be open to the public on June 10 for the annual "Secret Gardens of Guilford" tour. Visitors will be welcome to stroll through the private sanctuaries from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Shuttle buses will transport visitors from the centrally located Bishop's Orchards on Route 1 to a countryside destination on the tour. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 on the day of the tour, which will take place rain or shine. For tickets or information, please call 203-458-6516. This year's tour will include several gardens with water features. Among the sites on the tour are new gardens of neighbors who have shared plants and ideas, and some gardens from previous tours that have been reworked to create new effects. Proceeds benefit the Guilford ABC program, which provides "A Better Chance" for academically talented young women of color. The program, which is in its 29th year, has sent more than 100 young women from inner cities to Guilford High School and on to distinguished colleges and careers. Also on the 10th there is a garden tour in Newington and one in West Hartford. Tomorrow is Farmington. Usually I go to this one too but last year I was just not impressed by it at all. When I bought the tickets the day of the tour I overheard one of the volunteers tell someone that is was just "regular people's" gardens that year. What she probably meant was there were no real high end or historic homes on the tour and there weren't but that wasn't the issue for me. At least half of the gardens were not ready for a public tour. A couple of them looked like they hadn't even been spring cleaned yet. I brought a friend who had never been on a garden tour before and even she was puzzled. Oh well, usually it's a good tour so maybe it will be back on track this year. Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Farmington Garden Tour

I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.

Bell thanks for your clarification - I think your photos illustrate something I would say too - that we want to understand what the original design intention was back in 1905, not so that we can slavishly create exact replica of how it was then, but so that we can go out and choose products and furnishings that fit in and create a beautiful and cohesive whole. No reason at all modern pieces couldnnt fit in with the overall look and feel. In fact as we can see from the previous owner's efforts, trying too hard to look "historic" just left us with a cliched 1980s version "Victorian" which really wasnt very authentic and true to its origins at all. Similarly, I think it would be a mistake for OP to go out and fill the house with 2017 interpretations of "craftsman" because the end result would just be a 2017 interpretation of craftsman. One of the best kitchens I saw in an early 1900s house (wish I could find the pic) used a mixture of modern and vintage pieces. It was unfitted, having freestanding pieces, worktables, and a kind of utilitarian industrial feel that was quite modern, but in its way far more authentic to the house than a lot of the ubiquitous white fitted cabinets + granit counters you see on Houzzz. Guess Im so interested in this thread because my house is of the same era and very similar style - ie has strong arts and crafts features but floorplan is your basic midwestern Wisconsin foursquare vs the classic Chicago bugalow. My approach was basically to strip it down to its essentials - remove 100 years of GACK - all the layers of flooring and wallpaper - so exciting to find the original paint colors (all golds, browns, grays, bronzy greens, one room was a dark inky blue that Ive become quite fond of.) I wont do exactly the same colors but finding them did get me to rethink my color scheme. I do have some arts and crafts oak pieces (incl a massive oak library table in the kitchen now used as a worktable) but also mixed it up with other fav and well loved stuff, vintage up into the present. Oh one other thing to acknowledge is that OP's house is part of a historic tour, so Im guessing she will probably want to be leaning in the direction of being more faithful to historic roots than some of us are. Still, that doesnt mean it she cant freshen it up and make it hers.

Totally agree about wood, and why I closed with masonry being more vulnerable. Virgils point probably has to do with poor terminology or not enough explanation on my part. Sorry if I've confused and will do best to explain what I meant. Hopefully you could tell my reluctant drystack comment was designed for an escape hatch but I'm not yet ready to climb off the limb quite yet. Like so many things here, it depends on details. It's the veneer application that's in doubt and would love a link on any relative research. It's a tough thing to study with so many variables. The only thing I could find with a quick search was a study of full scale dry stack blocks that concludes with: "The earthquake and harmonic base motion energies were dissipated through inter-brick friction, and in some cases by bricks cracking and crushing. The fact that the bricks were dry-stacked allowed them to move and hence dissipate energy." This was not a veneer but suggests how drystack can perform better than monolithic mortar construction. Outside of veneers, I believe it's widely accepted that drystack walls perform better in earthquakes. The oldest standing structures on earth are dry stacked stone, among the most impressive craftsmanship in Peru and Bolivia, an area known for extreme seismic activity. A good mason friend of mine, turned me onto proper walling as he received his certifications from the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain and did further training in France. A picture here of one of his "dry stacked style" walls, but listed by him in the mortared work of his website. It uses mortar and clips to tie to whatever kind of wall is behind it. Here is a picture of an interior ashlar wall with visible mortared joints I had him do for one of our projects: At the time, he tried to talk me into more of a drystack style, not for earthquakes but because the black regency stone required more work and waste to square up. If both walls were subjected to the same earthquake, I think the tighter fitting drystack style would fare better. Assuming both walls had cracking, the one with visible mortar joints would be more obvious. Earthquakes aside, mortar tends to be the weak link. Stone or brick work with no visible mortar will never need to be repointed. Mortar is highly variable and I don't like the many ways that craftsman can screw it up. Commonly available masonry sand is designed to be easy to work with at the expense of longevity. Studying old mortars that are still functional, one will find sharper aggregate varying in size. Got to hand it to Matt Risinger, the man knows when to put out a timely youtube video. Check out his just posted video on a brand new, leaking masonry wall. Things I would highlight relating back to my earlier posts are that rain-soaked masonry can drive moisture to the interior without an actual leak, windows/doors are the major water source and these problems may not become obvious for another 10-20 years. That's a very high-end, presumably architect designed home to be having all that hidden water leakage. Original builder is mostly to blame but I suspect as-built details were not far from plan.