Older homes in Fairfield County come with a particular kind of pressure. They are usually beautiful, often quirky, and almost always carrying ninety years of well-meaning renovations on top of the original architecture. The temptation, when you're starting a project, is to treat all of it as a problem to be solved. We try very hard not to.
Read the house before you change it
The first thing we do in an old house is walk every room slowly, looking for what's still original. The wide-plank floors under the carpet. The plaster crown moulding hidden behind a dropped ceiling. The hardware on the back of a closet door. These are the bones — and they tell you what the house wants to be.
Edit the layers, don't erase them
Most old houses have been renovated three or four times. The right move is rarely to undo all of it. We typically keep one or two of the additions that work (a 1980s screened porch, a 1990s primary suite) and edit out the rest. The result is a house that reads as continuous, not as a collage.
Match the materials, not the era
If the original kitchen had honed soapstone, the new kitchen probably wants soapstone too — but it doesn't have to be a period reproduction. We'll often pair an old material with a modern silhouette: a soapstone counter on a flat-front oak cabinet, for example. The material does the historic work; the form does the modern work.
The goal isn't a museum. The goal is a house that feels like it has always been this way — and always will.
Light it for now
One area where we always modernize is lighting. Old houses were built for incandescent overhead fixtures, which means most of them are under-lit by current standards. We add layered lamp light, integrated millwork lighting, and dimmable downlights wherever the architecture allows. Done well, no one notices the lighting is new.
Restraint is a finish
The single most useful design instinct in an old house is the willingness to do less. One excellent piece of upholstery, one good rug, one beautifully restored window. Old houses already have a great deal of personality. Our job is to give it room.
If you've inherited (or just bought) an older home and aren't sure where to start, our full-service design engagement is built for exactly this kind of project.