Old House Renovations

As you proudly survey your home’s new no maintenance vinyl windows, you wonder how much the house value increased with your improvement. With your new vinyl siding project under way, you’ll be looking at major equity in no time, right?

Actually, when you are renovating an old house, newer is not always better. In fact, if you are living in an area that is or is about to become a historic district, your improvements may have decreased the value of your home! Historic homes have special requirements, such as repairing old wooden windows or getting permission to replace old windows with reproduction wooden windows.

Even if your local historic district allows you to do certain renovations that don’t use period materials, like replacing plaster walls with dry wall, you may discover that you don’t qualify for historic grants and credits you were hoping to receive.

I remember the first time I looked at a home in a historic district. It had replacement vinyl windows and asphalt shingles on it. I mentioned my interest in the house to the town administrator, who told me she’d love to have me buy it, but I’d have to remove the asphalt shingles and replace them with reproduction clapboard siding and replace the windows with reproduction wooden windows. I did a lot of research and decided a home in a historic district wasn’t the right choice for me at the time. I still make an effort to do period renovations, but homes that aren’t in the historic district don’t have as many regulations about house color, mail boxes and a host of other little things.

Bottom line, though, is that any old home can benefit from a proper restoration instead of a quick fix with materials that weren’t available during that time period.

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