Repurposing vintage items, where to draw the line

[Shangas]

I hate it when people are like that, LizzieMaine. And believe me, I've met PLENTY of them. Mostly obnoxious, clueless younger people.

Since I AM a younger person, I find this a particularly cringing kick in my own demographic guts.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

You bring me back to our farmhouse. The day we moved in, my mother was already picking at a worn spot in the linoleum, searching for hardwood. The whole first floor was hardwood floors, covered in linoleum and shag. The downstairs doors, original, finished, 4-panel farmhouse doors, were covered with wood paneling to look 'up to date'. The only floors bare in the entire house were the pine planks upstairs which were covered in umteen layers of paint.

Remuddling (To remodel a building or room in a way that obscures or destroys key aspects of the original design. Term coined by Old House Journal)

Our house we live in now was remuddled. One of the most bizarre things we had to undo: The original wood floors, in good condition, were covered with new carpet and "new" wood.
Don't get me started on what they painted, which is everything except the floors.

 

[The Good]

I'll admit to doing this, in a way, to a vintage Stetson homburg, but it was towards something that I'm willing to keep for the rest of my life (God willing). I basically made it into a fedora, "de-homburging" the hat. Consider this, there are individuals that may wish to modify a vintage item to their liking, and would desire to hold on to it as long as they can, not really considering giving it away or selling it. I agree that the line must be drawn to some extent, but exceptions should be allowed too.

 

[sheeplady]

Sometimes, reworking the inside of a house can be beneficial - depends on taste. Turning 70s shag into hardwood floor might be considered an improvement, for example.

Well, it really depends on the history of the shag. If you buy a 70s house, rip out all the period appropriate shag, and replace it with hardwoods more appropriate to the mid-1900s, you have essentially remuddled. (It is different if you replace it with more shag, or period appropriate hardwoods). Quite honestly, there is value in our collective history- and that includes shag carpet. It might not be our taste (the fedora lounge), but it is history, and it is historically accurate. I can remember the fuss the first time they included a ranch in Old House Journal- people got upset. But the ranch house- just like the split level and the raised ranch- are part of our building history in the US. They represent a time and part of our history. We can't just name a time and step back and say: "Ok- anything pre-1960 stays, and we are ok with destroying anything post then." I don't think anyone throws a fuss about the ranches anymore- because people have seen them being lost.

I know in some areas there are concerns about remuddlings and tear downs of ranches and other homes from the 1950s and 1960s. Just because it is "newer" doesn't mean that someday it won't be old and important. (Just as an example, they used to sell depressionware in crates at auctions (in the 1950s). People bought it because it was cheaper than clay pigeons. It was yesterdays junk- and there was tons of it. Things go from being junk, to being collectable, to being antique- because people don't recognize the value of old things). It takes time to recognize this.

My long point of this is: If you don't want to live in a house of X vintage; don't buy that house. Trying to make a house "older" through remuddling is just as bad as trying to make one "newer" through the same process. Lots of people hide behind "taste" as being a good enough reason to destroy what is really history.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Exactly.

For example the hearth that was in front of the old fireplace in my house now forms part fo the approach to the door of my garden shed. It had to be replaced as it wasn't appropriate for the solid fuel fireplace we were restoring. But i'm damned if it's going to landfill. It's certainly not being used for the purpose intended, and i'm sure someone who values hearths would be horrified. I will also be burning the terrible modern mantle that was in place before we began to restore the house.

Here was me thinking that make do and mend was a mantra around here. Maybe the make do part has been forgotten a little.

[edit] I am indeed suggesting that there is no essential difference between re-purposing something that's 10 years old and something that's 100 years old. Or 30 or 50. Either you disagree with the principle of repurposing, or you don't. Straw men are welcomed to this party.

I have no qualms about repurposing if it keeps stuff out of the landfill.

 

[martinsantos]

An interesting question I put to myself some years ago. I got a radio from 30s that was altered during war years. Tube shortage made almost impossible to find tubes like the 80 (rectifier). One in black market would cost a little fortune. So a repairman wnated to give a solution to this, using two amplifier tubes in parallel as rectifier. Must I stay with a vintage trick or get the radio as factory made?

I personally preferred to get back the 80.

 

[LordBest]

I blame my archaeology and antiquarian training, but I can't even bear to resize vintage clothing to fit me.

Regarding interiors, my states heritage laws don't protect interiors at all it seems, in the past few years vast numbers of intact Art Deco and older interiors have been destroyed as the new owners (often shops or restaurants) 'modernise' them. A particularly awful example was a local Art Deco hotel which the owners promised to restore the stunning Art Deco bar and lounges. Yet when it opened it was all gone, utterly destroyed, right down to the original marquetry floors which were replaced with modern floorboards. The excuse? "Customers expect a more 'open plan' layout."

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's exactly what happened to my grandparents' house, built in 1920, after we sold it -- many of the interior walls were torn out to "open the place up." And then they didn't just paint the old varnished woodwork, they tore it out and replaced it with the kind of thin white stuff you get at a discount lumberyard, because it "looked too dark." I happened to drive by there when the work was going on, and seeing all the debris piled in the yard made me nauseous. That was twenty-odd years ago, and I've never been able to drive past there since.

The original state of that house, though, was a very interesting insight into how woodwork was treated in the early twenties. The woodwork in the rooms was dark and varnished -- but all of the woodwork in the pantry, from the doorframes to the cabinets, was enameled white. This was original to the house, and it was a very common thing at the time -- the idea was that white or otherwise light-enameled wood would instantly show dirt and made it easier to keep the area completely sanitary. So stripping the paint off that wood as part of a period restoration would be completely inappropriate.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly.

For example the hearth that was in front of the old fireplace in my house now forms part fo the approach to the door of my garden shed. It had to be replaced as it wasn't appropriate for the solid fuel fireplace we were restoring. But i'm damned if it's going to landfill. It's certainly not being used for the purpose intended, and i'm sure someone who values hearths would be horrified.

You're still using it architecturally, for a useful function around the house, which is close enough to "original purpose" as far as I'm concerned. There's a difference between doing that for a sound and practical reason and just randomly tearing it up to turn it into some kind of "ironic" junk object, like the people who tear two-hundred year old beams out of old houses and chop them up into novelty ballpoint pens. That's the kind of senseless "repurposing" I'm against.

 

[JimWagner]

Well, it really depends on the history of the shag. If you buy a 70s house, rip out all the period appropriate shag, and replace it with hardwoods more appropriate to the mid-1900s, you have essentially remuddled. (It is different if you replace it with more shag, or period appropriate hardwoods). Quite honestly, there is value in our collective history- and that includes shag carpet. It might not be our taste (the fedora lounge), but it is history, and it is historically accurate.

Let me see if I understand this line of reasoning.

I bought my house in 1977. It was 4 years old at the time. The builders had installed green shag and gold shag in the various rooms. I never got around to replacing it except in the family room and one bedroom that became a hobby room where there's tile as of about 1980.

Flash forward to today. It's long past the time that shag should have been replaced. And the kitchen needs remodeling.

So, in the minds of some of you, I'm somehow obligated to put in new 1970's shag carpet and find old crappy almond kitchen appliances to "preserve" the 1970's appearance of my house for some reason? I'm supposed to be living in a 1970's time capsule because that's when my house was built?

Now, I have nothing against someone actually wanting to live in a house that is perfect in every detail to to ideal period house. Go for it. That's your business.

But most people aren't stuck in time. And no one can stop or reverse it.

 

[brspiritus]

Jacksonville is a treasure trove of 1920's and 30's houses most of which are foreclosures and in dire need of repair. They could be restored competantly but most chose to "modernize" them. I have no problem with repairs to bring a house up to code (wiring and plumbing) but to start tearing down walls for open space is absurd. You particularly see this in bedrooms. The bedrooms are too small for people now so they gut it all out to add closet space and larger rooms. People in the old days didn't live in their bedrooms like people now do so a smaller space was perfectly acceptable.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with my grandparents' house is that it never had central heating -- the heat came from kerosene stoves in the kitchen and living room -- so small rooms and functional internal doors were an essential part of being able to control the heat: if a room got too warm you'd close the door, and if it was too cold you'd open it. The stairway was also enclosed behind a full wall and door to control heat to the second floor. The layout of the house, as it was built, wasn't just a matter of aesthetics -- it was specifically engineered for a functional purpose.

Granted, that purpose became redundant when the new owners installed a furnace. But the result just didn't look right -- they ended up with a stairway that was never meant to be exposed, in a room that was never meant to have an exposed stairway, and it looked like it was put together by a third grader experimenting with his Junior Architect Playset. I honestly don't understand how anyone could consider it an improvement, aesthetic or otherwise.

 

[scottyrocks]

I think people like open floor plans today because of all the horror movies that feature big old house with lots of doors leading to lots of rooms. People dont want to walk down these hallways at night with all those closed doors in front of them . . . never knowing whats behind them . . . waiting to jump out and . . . EAT THEM!!! AAAAUUUUUUGH!!!! <hehehehe>

 

[rue]

That's exactly what happened to my grandparents' house, built in 1920, after we sold it -- many of the interior walls were torn out to "open the place up." And then they didn't just paint the old varnished woodwork, they tore it out and replaced it with the kind of thin white stuff you get at a discount lumberyard, because it "looked too dark." I happened to drive by there when the work was going on, and seeing all the debris piled in the yard made me nauseous. That was twenty-odd years ago, and I've never been able to drive past there since.

The original state of that house, though, was a very interesting insight into how woodwork was treated in the early twenties. The woodwork in the rooms was dark and varnished -- but all of the woodwork in the pantry, from the doorframes to the cabinets, was enameled white. This was original to the house, and it was a very common thing at the time -- the idea was that white or otherwise light-enameled wood would instantly show dirt and made it easier to keep the area completely sanitary. So stripping the paint off that wood as part of a period restoration would be completely inappropriate.

I understand your revulsion. I never go back to a house that I lived in, because of the one time I went back to see my childhood home. It's a 1920s home as well and the new owners let me in to see it. I was horrified to find out they were turning it into some sort of bizarre house of mirrors and we're getting rid of all the things my mother had painstakingly restored to original condition. It broke my heart.

As far as the paint on the woodwork, this house we're in is the same. It would have had painted wood in the kitchen butler's pantry and bathroom, but sometime between the 40s and 50s they painted everything, took out all the cabinets in the butler's pantry, took out all the pocket doors and tried to make it more colonial, even on the outside. The house is a foursquare and used to have a porch and a dormer, but those were ripped off and the front door was changed out for a colonial door. They also took out the fireplace in the living room and closed it up.

The books I have on restoration say to leave some of what the previous owners did, if it makes sense, to preserve the changes over time, but it's hard to decide what stays and what goes, at least for me.

 

[Fletch]

I think there's a palpable cultural arrogance that comes into play with a lot of this type of destruction, like the ancient soldiers who carved their initials across the Sphinx. It's cultural vandalism disguised as self-expression.

I came across a guy on some website or other whose specialty was taking 78rpm records and cutting designs thru their surfaces with a dremel tool to make "art." Someone challenged him on this, and his response was along the lines of "yeah, but it's really lame music -- who would ever listen to this stuff?" The defaced record shown on the site was a dance band record from the mid-twenties, and I can assure you that there are a great many people who listen to "this stuff." But Mr. Artiste believes that his tastes trump theirs, because, you know, he's all cool and stuff.

Mr. Artiste is not necessarily pretentious. A lot of people who repurpose stuff are plain old philistines, who unironically regard the stuff as junk in its untouched state.

People like that are stuck with an old idea of "old." It goes back to the techno-modernist myth of progress, that anybody now can do anything better than anybody then. It started in science, took over technology, and then - spurred by the hunger of consumerism - began eating into culture itself, like gingivitis attacking the jawbone.

 

[sheeplady]

Let me see if I understand this line of reasoning.

I bought my house in 1977. It was 4 years old at the time. The builders had installed green shag and gold shag in the various rooms. I never got around to replacing it except in the family room and one bedroom that became a hobby room where there's tile as of about 1980.

Flash forward to today. It's long past the time that shag should have been replaced. And the kitchen needs remodeling.

So, in the minds of some of you, I'm somehow obligated to put in new 1970's shag carpet and find old crappy almond kitchen appliances to "preserve" the 1970's appearance of my house for some reason? I'm supposed to be living in a 1970's time capsule because that's when my house was built?

Now, I have nothing against someone actually wanting to live in a house that is perfect in every detail to to ideal period house. Go for it. That's your business.

But most people aren't stuck in time. And no one can stop or reverse it.

I have no desire to legislate, personally, what you do within (or even outside) that home. There are a few houses that should be frozen in time- these are highly historical and valuable homes. I would much prefer that people come to be educated about the historical value of the houses we live in.

What I am urging people to think strongly about is that many decisions that we make have huge reprecussions on future generations. People have said before that craftsman houses were junk- that cape cods were junk- that ranches are junk. Therefore, we'll let people tear down entire tracks of them. We need to come to an understanding that ALL of our history is valuable. If we say houses from the 1970s aren't valuable today (and therefore, let's destroy them) then when they are valuable, there won't be any left.

I am a liberal preservationist. I think that things should be returned to a somewhat historically accurate feel, and that wasteless changes shouldn't be made. So, for instance, you shouldn't go and tear out all the woodwork in your house just because you don't like it (this is actually a recommendation by some lead paint removal specialists). I have no problem with updating- if it is needed- particularly when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms. But I would encourage people to think twice before ripping out original wood floors or solid wood cabinets, because it is extremely wasteful.

Someday the houses built in 1973 that haven't been touched will be as valuable as the homes that haven't been touched from the 1940s and 1950s.

 

[sheeplady]

I understand your revulsion. I never go back to a house that I lived in, because of the one time I went back to see my childhood home. It's a 1920s home as well and the new owners let me in to see it. I was horrified to find out they were turning it into some sort of bizarre house of mirrors and we're getting rid of all the things my mother had painstakingly restored to original condition. It broke my heart.

As far as the paint on the woodwork, this house we're in is the same. It would have had painted wood in the kitchen butler's pantry and bathroom, but sometime between the 40s and 50s they painted everything, took out all the cabinets in the butler's pantry, took out all the pocket doors and tried to make it more colonial, even on the outside. The house is a foursquare and used to have a porch and a dormer, but those were ripped off and the front door was changed out for a colonial door. They also took out the fireplace in the living room and closed it up.

The books I have on restoration say to leave some of what the previous owners did, if it makes sense, to preserve the changes over time, but it's hard to decide what stays and what goes, at least for me.

They tore down my father's family house. We went back to visit one time, and they had the cranes there. That house had been in my father's family since the 1800s when they emigrated to this country. (His parents sold it in the 1960s, and it sat empty).

My mother spent three years (everyday) stripping the pantry in my parent's home. She wrote on one of the cabinet doors that she is going to haunt anyone who paints it. She'll do it, too.

Our kitchen was remodeled in the 1960s and the upstairs bathtub leaked at least three times, ruining the original plaster celing. They put up an abesto's ceiling, then a third paper board ceiling. In the last ceiling, they put in potlights. There were scorch marks on the abesto's ceiling from the pot light's wiring. The master bed room is above the kitchen. If it hadn't been for that ceiling, we'd probably be dead. A sheetrock ceiling or the beams themselves would probably have just ignited. (Granted, if we had the original 40s kitchen this wouldn't be an issue.)

So... long story short... if you have pot lights in your house, you might want to check their wiring. I don't like the things asthetically, and now I have come to believe that they are unsafe. (And be careful if you paint things, somebody's Momma might come back and haunt you).

 

[martinsantos]

:eusa_clap

I think people like open floor plans today because of all the horror movies that feature big old house with lots of doors leading to lots of rooms. People dont want to walk down these hallways at night with all those closed doors in front of them . . . never knowing whats behind them . . . waiting to jump out and . . . EAT THEM!!! AAAAUUUUUUGH!!!! <hehehehe>

 

[Pompidou]

Let me see if I understand this line of reasoning.

I bought my house in 1977. It was 4 years old at the time. The builders had installed green shag and gold shag in the various rooms. I never got around to replacing it except in the family room and one bedroom that became a hobby room where there's tile as of about 1980.

Flash forward to today. It's long past the time that shag should have been replaced. And the kitchen needs remodeling.

So, in the minds of some of you, I'm somehow obligated to put in new 1970's shag carpet and find old crappy almond kitchen appliances to "preserve" the 1970's appearance of my house for some reason? I'm supposed to be living in a 1970's time capsule because that's when my house was built?

Now, I have nothing against someone actually wanting to live in a house that is perfect in every detail to to ideal period house. Go for it. That's your business.

But most people aren't stuck in time. And no one can stop or reverse it.

I have no desire to legislate, personally, what you do within (or even outside) that home. There are a few houses that should be frozen in time- these are highly historical and valuable homes. I would much prefer that people come to be educated about the historical value of the houses we live in.

What I am urging people to think strongly about is that many decisions that we make have huge reprecussions on future generations. People have said before that craftsman houses were junk- that cape cods were junk- that ranches are junk. Therefore, we'll let people tear down entire tracks of them. We need to come to an understanding that ALL of our history is valuable. If we say houses from the 1970s aren't valuable today (and therefore, let's destroy them) then when they are valuable, there won't be any left.

I am a liberal preservationist. I think that things should be returned to a somewhat historically accurate feel, and that wasteless changes shouldn't be made. So, for instance, you shouldn't go and tear out all the woodwork in your house just because you don't like it (this is actually a recommendation by some lead paint removal specialists). I have no problem with updating- if it is needed- particularly when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms. But I would encourage people to think twice before ripping out original wood floors or solid wood cabinets, because it is extremely wasteful.

Someday the houses built in 1973 that haven't been touched will be as valuable as the homes that haven't been touched from the 1940s and 1950s.

This exchange pretty much says it all. Jim's time capsule/stuck in time comments said things better than I would have. I think Sheeplady's response is reasonable as well. Some houses are historically sacred and shouldn't be touched. Most houses aren't, but it's not a bad idea to learn a bit about your house to make sure you're okay with what you're doing. After that, it's all good. One thing I disagreed with from many other posts was the notion that once a thing, anything, is created, it is seemingly sacred, and any serious modification to it is ironic, pretentious, just plain wrong. Everything has to come from something else, and I don't buy the theory that it's wrong to make any item from anything but raw materials.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I have spent half my life talking my parents out of 'modernizing' houses. They flip a lot of houses and with the flippers it's always 'slap some paint up' 'open this room up' and other such things you see on HGTV. I hate that. That's how your ruin a home's charm.