several months while he and his wife spent most of their waking hours
arguing it pro and con. They had selected the vicinity in which they
wanted to live, had the requisite cash in the bank to finance either
undertaking, and there were two properties that pleased them. The
latter constituted the snag. On the one hand, there was a sightly
piece of land with some nice old shade trees but no existing
structure; about a mile farther along the same road, lay another
holding of about the same size with a house in fair condition. The
price for this was naturally higher than for the undeveloped land, on
the theory that it would not cost half as much to remodel the house as
to build.
"I don't know what to do," this perplexed man remarked. "On one side I
hear and read that new building is much the best investment. That it
costs so much less to maintain a new house and if you want to sell,
you can find a purchaser quicker and at a better price. But no sooner
do I begin to believe that building is the only wise course, than I
run smack into an article on remodeling or meet some one I know whose
experience in remodeling shows by actual figures a big saving compared
with a new house of the same kind and size. In my own case, though,
the more I study what estimates I can get, the more I am convinced
that in the end I'll spend just about as much whether I build or
remodel."
These two people finally built a new house. There were good reasons
for their decision. First, they could buy the land for so much money,
and a general contractor of excellent reputation was ready to build
just the house they wanted for so much more. The two figures, plus the
architect's fee, added up to a definite amount. Having an accounting
mind, the knowledge that there would be no unforeseen contingencies
and that, ready for occupancy, the cost of the house would be so much,
was the deciding factor. In addition, he and his wife both inclined
towards something new. A house that had not been lived in by other
people, had no scars and marks of age and use, that embodied all the
newest materials and construction methods, was really what they
wanted. Had remodeling offered them an assured saving of several
thousand dollars, this couple would probably have suppressed their
subconscious leanings to be builders, proceeded to remodel, and been
only moderately pleased with the result.
The answer to the age-old question of whether to build or to remodel
is found in the preference of the individual. Some people are
temperamentally builders. They are happiest living in a home that was
constructed for them. In their eyes it possesses far greater charm
than anything that has been mellowed by years of use. There are others
to whom nothing is more satisfying than to take an existing structure
and alter it to their liking and needs. An elderly acquaintance, now a
widow and living in a sleepy New England village, is taking keen
pleasure in an old house of almost doll-like proportions. "All my
life," she said, "I've wanted to live in a really old house but until
now it has always been one new house or city apartment after another
and I never got my roots down."
Granted that building or remodeling, like cheese, is a matter of
personal preference, it is not improper at this point to set forth
some of the merits of both. With a fine old building, there is that
elusive something called charm. Time has mellowed it and the countless
feet that have crossed its threshold have worn its floors. The
blackened bricks or stones of its fireplaces bespeak the generations
that basked in the heat of the huge logs that once glowed there. All
these things have given it character.
[Illustration: ONCE HALF A HOUSE AND A HEN ROOST
_Photo by Whitney_]
[Illustration: WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH A BARN
_Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_. _Robertson Ward, architect_]
Don't expect a new house, the day it is turned over to you by the
contractor, to look as if it had been a family home for several
generations. It can't. It has just been built. Everything is fresh and
shiny; edges are sharp and even the bricks of the fireplace are
untainted by flame and smoke. But if you have been even moderately
articulate, the architect has been able to interpret your wishes and
you have a house built as near as possible to your plans. You also
have the satisfaction of knowing that, in the building, the
workmanship has been honest and thorough, and that in materials used
every advantage has been taken of the newest developments.
For instance, behind the plaster is the modern metal lath so superior
to the old wooden variety. The exterior walls are as thoroughly
insulated against heat and cold as any one of several highly efficient
materials can make them; windows and doors are products of large
wood-fabricating factories noted for superior work. All these are
points of advantage with tangible merit, but time and your own efforts
are the only means by which your new home can acquire personality and
charm. This new structure is yours, made to your desires; and what you
make of it is your own problem.
The house that you buy and remodel starts with certain attributes
given by age, as already stated. Here we must offer one caution. It
concerns houses built during the last quarter of the 19th century. The
majority were badly designed and the quality of workmanship was none
too good. Such houses are apt to be perched on high foundations, have
exterior walls that offer the minimum resistance to winter winds,
while architecturally, lines and proportions reflect an age when taste
was either bad or lacking. We know of several attempts to remodel
country homes of such vintage and are convinced that better results
could have been achieved for less money if the operation had started
with wrecking the structure and building anew.
On the contrary, except where decayed beyond salvage, we have yet to
see a country home of the 18th or first half of the 19th century that
did not respond admirably to remodeling. But it is well to be
practical and compare its cost with that of a new building. Among
architects, it is generally recognized that, save for a house with
unusually expensive details or added equipment, definite figures per
cubic foot of size may be computed that will cover the entire cost of
construction. To get the cubical contents of a house, the architect
takes the area in square feet of the ground floor and multiplies it by
the height from the cellar floor to the eaves, plus half the distance
from that point to the ridge of the roof.
For example, if the proposed house is thirty feet wide by twenty feet
deep, its floor plan area is 600 square feet. Then, if the elevation
dimensions are seven feet from cellar floor to living room floor;
eight feet from living room floor to that of the bedroom floor; and
seven feet from bedroom floor to the level of the eaves, which in
turn measure eight feet below the ridge of the roof; the cubical
contents would result from multiplying 600 square feet by the sum of
seven, eight, seven, and four, or 15,600 cubic feet. With this figure
established, it is simple to approximate costs as follows:
Wooden construction $0.45 per cubic foot
Brick veneer construction 0.55 " " "
Solid brick construction 0.65 " " "
Field stone construction 0.60 " " "
Cut stone construction $0.75 to 1.50 " " "
This tabulation, an average for the United States as a whole, is as
accurate as any generalization can be and a safe one for forming a
preliminary estimate, but local conditions may increase or decrease
costs. The architect can readily determine which. This table, of
course, does not include cost of land, construction of driveway,
landscaping, or expenses incident to bringing electric service or
telephone wires to the house.
From these calculations, it is an easy matter to take the outside
dimensions of a house you are considering remodeling and compute its
cubical content. Then you can ask your architect whether it can be
remodeled as you wish for a price competitive with building a new
house of like design and equal size. In order for this to mean
anything, you should determine what proportion of the price paid for
the property represents land value and what reflects the existence of
the structure itself. As a simple example, we will concede that land
in the neighborhood is held at $500 an acre and you can buy a
five-acre tract with a house on it for $3,750. Here $2,500 represents
land value, and $1,250 house value. The question resolves itself into
comparing remodeling costs plus house value with those for a new house
of like size and kind.
If so much must be replaced or rearranged that the figures for house
and remodeling are in excess of those for a new structure, the wise
course would be to abandon the idea and build instead. But the old
house may have certain details that make you willing to bear the added
expense. If so, you at least know the comparative costs and have
definite standards by which to shape your course.
From personal observation, we believe that there are many instances
where the total cost of house and rejuvenation is considerably below
that of a new structure. Since confession stories are just as
fascinating in home building as in the lurid fiction of the woodpulp
magazines, we cite the experience of a family that bought a home
nearly two years ago within the New York commuting zone. They were a
larger family than the average and the house, of desired size, had
once been a stagecoach halfway tavern. It contained twenty-two rooms
and was in better than average condition. The exterior had been given
two coats of white paint less than six months before.
The price for this old place, including twenty-two acres of land and a
barn usable for garage and chicken house, was $8,200. According to
actual record, only $2,798 was spent on remodeling. There were almost
no structural changes required. Two minor partitions were removed and
five new windows cut. Otherwise, this expenditure was largely devoted
to the introduction of plumbing, heating, and lighting. By type of
work, the costs for this remodeling were as follows:
Two bathrooms, each complete with shower;
a kitchen sink and laundry tub $590.00
Heating system, including steam boiler, piping
and 25 radiators, totaling 630 feet of radiation 889.00
Water system, cleaning well, installing pump
and 500 gallon storage tank 218.00
Electric wiring entirely of armored cable and
lighting fixtures 306.00
Sewage system complete with septic tank and
disposal fields 230.00
All carpentry, including necessary work for
plumber, electrician, etc. 160.00
Masonry, including repairs to fireplaces and
chimneys 105.00
Decorations, paint, and paper for twelve rooms 150.00
Architectural supervision, plans where needed
and preliminary inspection of several houses 150.00
Total $2,798.00
These are the actual figures for a livable and attractive country
home. There are, of course, some things that await a future time for
their accomplishment, but what place would be really enjoyable if
there were not certain corrections and additions over which the owners
could daydream and plan. We admit the figures just quoted are so low
as to seem hardly credible, but they demonstrate what could be
accomplished within fifty miles of New York during the summer of 1935.
The contributing causes for this happy result were that these people
knew what they wanted, hunted in a section that had not been too
thoroughly combed by others like themselves and, lastly, happened to
be ready to buy at just the right moment when the man who owned the
property was anxious to sell.
But old country residences, including structures built as taverns,
private schools and the like, are not the only type of buildings that
may be remodeled into acceptable homes. We have seen old barns or
stables, disused sawmills, general stores, old stone buildings that
once housed small industrial enterprises, and even a church of the
Neo-Classic period remodeled with distinct success.
Again, in Massachusetts there is a former textile hamlet. The mill
itself is now a community club and the workmen's cottages, built about
1815-20, are homes for a dozen or more families where, daily, the head
of the house motors to his office in an industrial city about a
half-hour away. These story-and-a-half cottages, executed along simple
Federal lines, are owned by the families who occupy them. They look
out on a street lined with fine old elms and at the end is the stone
mill with its belfry where still hangs the bell that once ruled the
lives of spinners and weavers with its clanking iron tongue, morning,
noon and night.
For picturesqueness, if the unconventional has a greater appeal than
the more standardized type of home, remodeling an old barn into a
country home has its advantages. This is particularly so if one can
find either a capacious one of roughly laid ledge stone, once popular
in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and more rarely built in other
sections, or a large hay barn with hand-hewn framework and side walls
of weathered boarding. It takes only a little imagination to visualize
such a building remodeled into a country home with a generous stone
chimney and fireplace occupying one of the end walls of a former
haymow. Invariably such remodeling includes construction of one or
more wings to house dining room, kitchen, and servants' quarters as
well as additional bedrooms and baths. The actual barn structure
seldom lends itself to more than a living room and possibly two
bedrooms.
In summer this type of country home has much to offer. It is light,
airy, and spacious; but when fall begins to indicate its arrival,
unless the structure has been made nearer weather tight than is the
nature of barns, life in the haymow is chill and sour. For use the
year around, the old barn must be completely rebuilt with a cellar
beneath for a heating plant and side walls and undersides of roof well
covered with insulating material to prevent cold from entering or heat
escaping. One of the most successful methods of treating the front,
where once the old barn doors swung wide to admit a fully loaded
haywagon, is to substitute a many-paned window of almost cathedral
proportions. This lets in adequate light for what might otherwise be a
dark interior. In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and
mosquitoes. Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces
south or west, pours that most valuable attribute of country living,
bright sunlight.
An old water-power sawmill makes an unusually attractive country home.
We know of at least one so adapted. Here the space once given over to
sawing logs into boards has been completely enclosed and is now the
living room. On one side is a noble fireplace flanked by large
casement windows that look out on the old mill pond. Bedrooms and
service quarters are located in the end sections where lumber used to
be seasoned and other special work done. This unique bit of
remodeling, combined with the pond as a main feature of landscape
development, is both rare and enviable. Yet there are a surprising
number of old commercial structures that lend themselves to remodeling
into present day homes and by their very unconventionality take on
added charm.
In New England there is a substantial stone building of no
architectural pretensions except that width, depth, and height are
distinctly related to each other. It is now a country home but it
began as a small textile mill in the early days of the 19th century
when the industrial revolution was just getting under way. Later, when
the factory era became thoroughly established, this lone little mill
was left high and dry by the tide that swept toward the larger
centers and it stood untenanted for years. Finally it was retrieved by
some one with vision enough to see that, with proper partitions, both
ground and second floors could be divided into satisfactory rooms.
Here the new owner, or his architect, had the discretion to preserve
as much as possible of the past. The old mill owner's counting room,
on the lower floor, is now the library and, in almost untouched
condition, is complete even to the cast-iron stove that once warmed
it.
Converting buildings originally designed for other uses may take a
still different course. A house, too small in itself for present day
use, can form the nucleus of a country home. A most attractive place
in Maine was so assembled. There were two or three other buildings on
the property which were shifted from their original locations by jacks
and rollers and skillfully joined to the little house to form wings.
By clever rearrangement of rooms and shifting or removal of
partitions, the assembled group became large enough for the new
owner's uses.
Even a modern structure, designed originally for some branch of
agriculture, can be converted into an excellent house if an architect
is inclined to undertake the necessary contriving of plans and
builders can be found who will follow his directions. Several years
ago, a man was bitten with the urge to raise chickens according to the
latest scientific methods of artificial lighting and forced feeding.
For this he built a substantial structure with steam heat, electric
lights, and other elaborate provisions. Being nurse maid to thousands
of chicks ranging from a week old to the proper size for broiling was
a strenuous job. Further, the creatures developed all sorts of
maladies not provided for in the book and the mortality was so high
that the project was finally abandoned.
The building stood vacant for some months until it came to the notice
of a resourceful young architect. He measured, sketched, and drew
plans. Now, what was once a factory for the raw material of broiled
chicken is an attractive and compact Cape Cod cottage. Because of site
and accessibility, the original building had to be dismembered and
moved about two hundred feet. When re-erected according to the plans
provided, the result bore little resemblance to the original box-like
structure except that the floor space was the same.
Some country homes begin as week-end retreats. Then the habit of being
in the country two or three days grows on the family until they see no
reason for living in the city except for an occasional overnight
ordeal with a stuffy hotel room. To make the average week-end shack a
permanent home calls for material expansion. Double-deck bunks have
been installed to provide adequate sleeping quarters; and for a
limited time they find it fun to cook, eat, and live in one large
room. But, when the house is used seven days a week, such condensation
is anything but practical. So the establishment must be enlarged. This
can be done with ease, especially if the original plans were drawn
with such a change in mind. That is, the original structure now
becomes the living room, while new wings and additions provide the
much needed space for service quarters and conventional bedrooms and
baths.
But the week-end place is not always built particularly for the
purpose. Many times it is a very small farmhouse acquired cheaply and
made usable at a minimum of time and money. When the decision is
reached to convert it into a home of larger proportions, whether one
realizes it or not, the plan of campaign follows the plan of no less a
person than George Washington. Mount Vernon was not always a mansion
but was the result of consistent enlargement. When Washington inherited
it from his half-brother, Lawrence, it was a story-and-a-half hunting
lodge of eight rooms. Then he married Martha Custis, richest widow in
the Virginia colony; and, to have a home suitable for her, he had the
roof raised and the house made full two stories.
Shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution, he planned two
wings. The first was that at the south end with library on the ground
floor and master bedroom for Colonel and Mrs. Washington on the
second. As the revolt against the British crown progressed, the
construction of the north wing lagged somewhat but was worked on
intermittently. This, the banquet hall, when finished became one of
the noblest private residence rooms in America.
Washington, however, did not leave these steps in the enlargement and
renovation of his erstwhile hunting lodge entirely to professionals.
Whether away fighting in the French and Indian Wars or directing the
course of action of the Continental Army, he never forgot what was
happening at his country seat. His correspondence is full of minute
directions regarding the finishing of certain rooms or of such
injunctions as, "I beg of you to hasten Lamphire about the addition to
the north end of the house; otherwise you will have it open, I fear,
in the cold and wet weather." When the Revolution was fought and won,
the Washingtons returned, not to a Mount Vernon that was a stranger to
them, but to the country home they had so carefully planned. This
specific planning by the owner, now as then, has definite bearing on
whether the house will be yours or just a beautiful structure, perfect
in all its appointments but totally lacking the impress of the owner
or his family.
Several years ago, a man and his wife acquired one of the early Dutch
farmhouses of the New Jersey back country. They had long wanted just
such a place and having taken possession, they summoned an architect,
an interior decorator, and a landscape architect. A few days were
spent with them inspecting house and grounds. Then the new owners left
on a winter cruise around the world. Their final injunctions were to
the effect that next May they would return and would expect everything
done. They did and everything was complete. The old house was perfect.
Its furnishings were all genuine antiques of the period. The grounds
had been graded, trimmed, and polished. Gardens, shrubbery, and hedges
were just right, but the final effect was as impersonal as a
demonstration model.
In a year or two, this property was sold to a golf club and its former
owner bought another place and moved right in. Nearly two years were
spent consulting and working with an architect and workmen,
supervising a garden or two, and in buying antiques, a piece at a
time. His second attempt at country living was not as sophisticated
nor did it approach the museum standards of the former; but, when
completed, it had that prime essential of any home, it reflected the
character and personality of its owners.
LOOKING AN OLD HOUSE IN THE MOUTH
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER VI_
LOOKING AN OLD HOUSE IN THE MOUTH
Buying an old house is a good deal like selecting a horse. Having
found an animal of the desired type and breed, the question arises,
"Is it sound of wind and limb?" Houses nearing or past the century
mark also have their spavins and these should be recognized by the
prospective buyer. He can thus form some estimate of how extensive
replacements are needed, even on first inspection. This is of prime
importance since it has direct bearing on the worth of the house.
Whether built of stone, brick, or wood, such structures may have
rafters, sills, and main beams so decayed that new ones must be added.
The foundation may need rebuilding and door and window frames may be
so weathered that they also must be replaced. Beware of a house where
floors slope and side walls are out of plumb. This means extensive
shoring which is slow and expensive.
For a truly pessimistic report on the health of an old place turn to a
trusted carpenter or contractor. He congenitally dislikes old
buildings and will point out all defects with ominous head shakings
and subtle suggestions for new building. In this way the prospective
buyer will know the worst, painted at its blackest. Somewhere between
it and the rosy view of the real estate agent will lie the truth.
Therefore, it is well to do some inspecting independently. Knowledge
of what are the weak spots in old houses and where to look for them
will save much time and effort in the initial stages of house hunting.