Old House Restoration: 11 Essential Historic Home DIY Books
Tips, Tricks, and Comprehensive Guides to Start You on Your Old House Remodel
Restoring an old house on a budget? Not sure where to start, what to restore, and what to replace? The task can be daunting, but fortunately there are many resources out there to help you on your way, and do justice do your incredible historic house! These 11 books are essential reading for anyone planning to restore a historic home.
A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America’s Domestic Architecture
Start with this classic reference book, to first understand your house. Lauded as “the unmatched, essential guide to American houses,” this invaluable book features a wealth of photos and illustrations. A Field Guide to American Houses will quickly help you identify the architectural style and characteristics of your house, as well as speak intelligently when you talk to the pros.
Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes
While this book title appears with the parenthetical “for pros by pros,” it’s actually a fantastic starter read for owners of old homes.
In Renovating Old Houses, experienced contractor George Nash covers everything — from replacing foundation walls to repairing old windows, including how to save what’s irreplaceable, where to use the best materials, when it’s necessary to update (and when it’s not), and how to make repairs that will endure. This recently revised edition also contains a new chapter on preventive maintenance plus a resource guide.
Restoring Your Historic House: The Comprehensive Guide for Homeowners
The brand new Restoring Your Historic Home does not repeat basic information that is readily available in many standard DIY books about carpentry, wiring, and plumbing. Rather, it shows how to adapt those DIY skills to the specialized needs of a historic house.
Although there are other books about renovating old houses, this is the first that prioritizes the identification and preservation of the historic, character-defining features of a house as a starting point in the process. That is the purpose of this book: to describe and illustrate a best-practices approach for updating historic homes for modern life in ways that do not attempt to turn an old house into a new one. The book also suggests many ways to save money in the process, without settling for cheap or inappropriate solutions.
The Old-House Doctor: The Essential Guide to Repairing, Restoring, and Rejuvenating Your Old Home
In The Old-House Doctor expert carpenter and house “doctor” Christopher Evers equates old homes with ailing patients, describing how you can successfully “treat” your old house and make it good as new.
With over 300 clear, line illustrations, Evers provides a practical guide to repairing, renovating, and preserving your old house–basement to attic–so you can enjoy it for years to come. Evers gives detailed instructions on the “anatomy” of old homes as well as how to fix a wide variety of problems
Living In The Past: An Owner’s Guide to Understanding & Repairing an Old Home
Filled with over two dozen full-color tutorials, Living in the Past describes the most common repair projects including wood windows, siding, hardwood floors, painting and more. Learn the how and why behind historic home design and construction from historic preservation expert Scott Sidler.
Restoring a House in the City: A Guide to Renovating Townhouses, Brownstones, and Row Houses wth Great Style
Restoring a House in the City features twenty-one real-life renovations in this essential resource—from stately town houses to brownstone fixer-uppers—to give the true experience of creating an urban oasis on any street. Whether hunting for rare chandeliers, salvaging floorboards for new tabletops, or removing walls to let more light in, all the nuts and bolts of restoration are here.
Antique New England Homes & Barns: History, Restoration, and Reinterpretation
Antique New England Homes & Barns reveals the essence of antique New England homes and barns—their history, the people who built them, why they were built that way, and how to restore them, piece by piece, without losing their character. Learn to identify architectural styles from different periods, how to strategize a restoration, and how to approach it systematically, from the timber frame to the floors, walls, and ceilings, windows and doors, wiring, finishes, and landscaping.
The Complete Home Restoration Manual: An Authoritative, Do-It-Yourself Guide to Restoring and Maintaining the Older House
An essential guide for owners of period homes, The Complete Home Restoration Manual provides illustrated instructions and inspiring ideas for interior and exterior restoration of homes built between 1750 and 1930.
The Window Sash Bible: A Guide to Maintaining and Restoring Old Wood Windows
The Window Sash Bible is about the repair, maintenance, restoration and improvement of old or historic windows made from about 1800 to 1940. With so much misinformation provided by replacement window contractors and vendors, this book aids homeowners, do-it-yourselfers, carpenters, architects, designers, preservation commission members, and anyone in the old-house business make sound decisions about windows.
Antique Houses: Their Construction and Restoration
It’s difficult to understand how to care for and restore your old house without first understanding the construction techniques used when building it. Antique Houses: Their Construction and Restoration is a fascinating, must-read book that will familiarize you with the “bones” of your historic home.
12 Ways to Fix Lath and Plaster Ceilings: Complete Do-it-Yourself Guide for Homeowners
Based on over 30 years of on-site experience 12 Ways to Fix Lath and Plaster Ceilings shows you how to evaluate the condition of your ceilings and quickly run through the options you have to repair and keep them.
It also describes you can how (if absolutely necessary) you can safely remove them and install new ceilings, either with like for like traditional materials or more commonly, with modern drywall materials.
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