Pal, you mentioned contractor or wife. My story. I bought a house second hand. I knew it was the demo built for the contractor and his wife when I purchased it. It was the stud house in the neighborhood. I hated the decor, wallpaper, stove, bathroom furnishings, etc. I had to live with it, however until our children got their graduate degrees (at least). One day shortly after moving in, my neurologist called to ask if I would talk to a lady who needed a pep talk about MS, who was very depressed and he needed an upbeat patient to counsel. So, I told him to send her over. I am sure she told me her name but it was a common surname. She complimented my house and the decor. I thanked her, told her I loved the architecture and how every square foot was utilized wisely by the contractor, but went into a rant about hating other items, but getting it for a good price and how I planned to demolish the baths and kitchen, blah, blah, blah. It turned out she was the contractor's wife. She had chosen all the colors, papers, furnishings for the baths and kitchen. C'est la vie. Days have only 24 hours, thankfully and I was over my faux pas in about 4 days, so less than 100 hours. Neurologist has sent me no subsequent referrals.

Mama Goose, I always imagined using old barn siding in a house, but never in a living room. More likely in a family room or more casual surroundings. Definitely not near a kitchen which has a way of depositing greasy stuff on any paint job or other finish. Very difficult to keep that coarse finish clean, IMHO. I sympathize with your desire to redo the trim in a 1920s period style, smoother finish. Mama Goose, epoxying the bathroom tile instead of removing it is inspirational to me. We have a totally BLUE TILE, BLUE TUB, BLUE SINK, BLUE TOILET bathroom in DH's little cape up in Massachusetts. He hates the tub surround because it leaks, is not tiled in. I'm now thinking we could change out the toilet and sink, have the tub refinished in white, remove the surround and have a newer tile put in. Of course, If the epoxied tile does not match closely, I suppose we could just rip it out. I saw where a towel warmer in the bath was used in place of a bathroom heater. Possibly the floor tile, white with a tiny diamond in the middle of a 4" area, could be taken out and a heated floor put in. But right now, we are wanting to be done with that house so we can enjoy it a little while before putting it up for sale. I will miss that little house, and the lovely yard too. It was a brief taste of what it would have been like if DH and I had married 50 years ago when we were first engaged.

Oh ... Old fashioned apple butter cooked in a big copper kettle over an open fire. DH's grandfather in WV used to make the most awesomely amazing apple butter. Never had anything come close since his passing :-( and nobody knows what happened to the kettle.

I did finally get around to stopping for a photo of one of the local places that has a name: If you can't read it, it says Oakenwald in a gothic script. It's nice that this topic has resonated with others. @bpath. I definitely think some folks are more sensitive to ghosts of place than others. I also think we're the same folks who tend to imbue objects and places with "spirit" more often, although we often express it as "sentimental value." And I suspect we are the same subset that actually sees the value in architectural design that speaks to and attempts to work with or amplify the spirit of a specific place. It's hard to articulate WHY it bothers us when someone wants to "plop" (to use Mark's term) a random box on their lot, rather than work with the property. Especially if the piece of land is something other than a subdivision lot, or has some sort of meaning to the owner already. This is my new goody. (Well, one of them. I'm like Erasmus - when I get a little money, I buy books. If there is any left over, I buy clothes and food). A brief quote from the introduction: "The power of place isn't necessarily life enhancing. It can be threatening or devastating, pulsing with negative or positive charges that may change a valence according to our personal points of view. Architects, city-planners, garden-designers, interior decorators, and before them priests, shamans, and geomancers have always known that our environment, external or internal, can be shaped to elicit certain feelings or moods, promote health or sicken us, or encourage certain behavior. They have also been aware that in modeling the landscape or constructing a building they must work with a creative force inherent in the land itself, known in the ancient classical world as the genius loci, usually translated as the "soul" or "spirit of place."