1890s Victorian cottage color help!!
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Please help! Old Victorian house
Comments (12)If someone asked what on this house needs covering up so as not to be seen, my answer would be: absolutely nothing. All of the period details give it buckets of charm. When I think of the cottage garden style, while all the plants, in and of themselves, are very pretty, the overall effect is generally "busy" to the maximum. If it could correspond to a style of interior decorating, it would be clutter (and sometimes hoarding) ... with something different everywhere one looked. In addition, there is a propensity for the cottage garden to obscure much of what is behind it. Does this describe the objectives you are seeking to fulfill? I think your simple blue flowered hanging baskets and pink wreath look spectacular with the white gingerbread of the house. If you let a correlated theme spill into the yard, I think you'd really have something. For getting landscape help, you'd do better to post a wider shot of the yard. (Or from the same camera position, show left and right-ward directed shots.) While your zone # shows in the first post, it doesn't tell where you live. As you can imagine, zone 7 plants in Jersey are different from those in New Mexico and Arizona...See MorePlease help advise - interior paint colors 1895 victorian
Comments (8)Victoriajane, I love your house, it's beautiful! kec01, thank you so much for posting that link, it's amazingly helpful. Victoriajane, we have a 1898 home, not as fancy as yours, but I've been hemming and hawing on colors as well. Our small stained glass is similar in color to yours, our larger one (will put photo below)is similar in that the dominant colors are flipped. Most Victorian colors were earth-toned, but with that, I think in the 1890's it was really almost anything goes, so it gives you a bit more licence to do what you'd really like. I would suggest sitting with paint swatches right by the window and pick 4 that you really love that go with each other. I second slateberry's drabby color suggestions and would put those with the right "feel" of light- read lucy's warm- cool suggestion, next to the appropriate windows. Then would maybe "pop" the dining room and/or parlor with brighter jewel tones. For the wall around our larger stained glass in the hall, I wanted a warm neutral (yellow-brown) to pick up the yellow light that comes through the window, also to make the cooler blue and cooler pink to pop. Here's what I have (forgive the quick paint job, I am indecisive with paint and need to live with it a bit before committing): the paint color is SW stonebriar (which is close to BM Shelburne Buff, also close but yellower is Chestertown Buff): In our livingroom, I wanted something deeper but classic and neutral enough to go with my red velvet and gold brocade victorian furniture. I think I'm going with SW Bunglehouse Grey- it's a arts and crafts color, but since that's an offshoot of Victorian, I'm not too concerned. That's close to BM Kingsport Grey and BM Nantucket Grey. It's actually not at all grey, despite the photos: Again, please forgive the lousy paint job, it's not the way it will look! Let us know what you choose, I'm still totally undecided about the dining room and would love to hear what direction you went in!...See MoreCan I do a craftsman interior in a Victorian cottage?
Comments (32)I was glad to see this question. I am getting ready to move into a 1890 cross gable Folk Victorian (and I would consider it a farmhouse.) I live in a city in the very southwest of Calif. (almost to the border) In the late 1800s,, early 1900s, ten acre lots were sold to gentlemen farmers from the east and midwest to plant lemon groves. The agreement included that they had to live there and build a house that was worth at least $2,000, which was a lot in those days. Some have been destroyed, but the city is sprinkled with quite a few large, fancy, Queen Anne Victorians, many that are restored perfectly. They are called Orchard Houses, of course because they were built by the owners of the orchards . This house is an Orchard house, but not as big and fancy as others. I can get more info about it at our Historical Society Museum, but I have not gotten over there yet. Maybe they skimped on the $2,000 or maybe there was more to it before. Maybe it had a guest house, or horse stables. I know nothing about old houses but my family is all in Minnesota and this looks somewhat like the farmhouses and rural, in town houses that my aunts and uncles lived in. I had to search pictures and articles to determine that it is probably a Folk Victorian, but I think I am pretty close. I say "move in" because I will be renting it from my brother in law who has had it for 37 years, but it is a rental and he built 2 apartments behind it. He doesn't know much about it and hasn't had a lot of interest it it, other than to keep it rented, even though the Heritage Society has been out to see him a number of times. My brother in law spent his youth in rural Minnesota, so this is just a house to him. I have always liked the house. It is definitely "folk" and doesn't have any fancy Queen Anne style trim etc... It fact I thought it was a craftsman, until I found out when it was built. It is structurally very sound, but is sort of unkempt looking. I am a retired teacher, single and don't have experience in this, but he is happy that I want to make it look as close to how it was originally (but not for much money LOL!!) Just to have it clean and really well kept up will make him happy. The block has a couple more old houses, one Queen Anne Victorian that is not kept up at all. Otherwise it is a hodgepodge of 50s and 60s. This is the one very visible old home, so the neighbors are sort of hinting that they don't like it being such a mess. I especially want to get the bushes cut down in front of the enclosed porch so I can open the windows and use it for that. I saw the house 35 years ago, and now have only been able to do a quick walkthrough. The Craftsman question interested me because I have quite a bit of Craftsman style furniture that I already own, and I felt that it would match the farmhouse feel that this house has. Of course I am just talking about furniture, interior decorations, etc..., no permanent changes. Overall though, I don't think my brother haschanged much (except in the kitchen.) I believe he has maintained original moldings, possibly even lights and he hasn't done any dumb stuff like take out the built ins or put big modern closets. The bedrooms still have the tiny little closets (with the original doors) where you can hang a few things and I think tenants have made closet type spaces by putting rods and curtains at the corners of the gables, so that did not change anything structurally and can look cool with the right kind of material. He is a contractor and does most work himself, and if something can be fixed or maintained as is, that means he doesn't have to spend money, so the house is lucky in that respect. It has a basement with an inside door and an outside cellar door (so I will be prepared for tornadoes), and it has a mudroom, because in Southern California I need a place to put my parka and snow boots (we don't even have rain LOL) and those steep gables will keep the snow from collecting so my roof won't collapse. They built what they knew when they got here!! I think the combination Victorian Farmhouse/Craftsman will work because it has a farmhouse feel and we are only talking about furnishings, I do have one final question though, and I hope this picture comes through. It is odd looking because this house is flat in the front. It has an enclosed porch that is flush with the outside wall, a very small porch for the front door, otherwise, there is no other porch with posts and a covering like Victorian's (and usually farmhouses) seem to have. It looks like something is missing. Maybe something was removed over the years. Or is there a way that a larger porch could be added to make the front look more interesting, and to have a place to sit outside, but still in character with the style of the house? I might be able to talk my brother into it because he could build it himself. I am excited about the enclosed porch because those windows have hinges and open completely out but have not been opened in years. I suggested that it would be really nice if he could take down those dumb apartments, but he wouldn't go for that!! Lol!!...See MoreVictorian Home Exterior Help
Comments (29)It's a tough choice for you because when looking back, it looks like the wood under your siding was taken off- I've never heard of that before, I wonder why on earth anyone would do that? Some homeowners make really strange choices. With that in mind, I honestly don't know what I'd do in your position. Doing wood is the right thing to do, but you are right, that would be very expensive. Part of the choice is finding out what is under there- is your home really drafty? You can put in more insulation when doing this project, which you might want to budget for. With colors, I'd suggest looking into Roger Moss's books. Many have been out of print for some time, but you could find them at the library. My friend who is a historic preservationist recommended his books to me when thinking of color- she specifically mentioned "Century of Color". Fantastic books that really help you think of color and placement. I'm not sure what colors we are going to choose, most of the homes on our block are white, as is our house currently, but it just so happens that the house on one side is a yellow-cream color with dark brown trim, and the house on the other side is a deep green-brown color with cream trim and a red door. Fitting a color scheme into those in a way that doesn't look too much like one or another is tough. I have several preservation colors that I'm looking at, but after exhausting many of them, we might fall off the preservation wagon and do slightly different colors in order to have them fit into our block. If we make a definite decision, I'll post it!...See MoreRelated Professionals
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