[rescue] restorations and keyboards

[Kurt Huhn]

On Feb 3, 2004, at 3:53 PM, Kevin Loch wrote:

> Phil Stracchino wrote:
>> My wife figures that instead, what should be done with most old
>> buildings is what she calls historic restoration -- where you preserve
>> the external appearance of the building, you preserve as much as
>> possible of its character and feel and the original construction, but
>> you can make changes to the interior so as to bring it up to current
>> codes and make it actually usable as a living or working space.
>
> Great idea!  A good way to justify it is "What would ${origina_owner}
> have done with it if they were still alive?"
>


Unfortunately, That usually has very little to do with it.  My degree 
field of study was Historic Preservation, aka Architectural 
Conservation.  The prevalent thinking in that field at the time that I 
was consulting was to do perform accurate historical restoration and, 
failing restoration, complete reconstruction.  And yes, reproducing 
paint colors from chips discovered under trim pieces, or taking paint 
samples and reproducing the initial layer, was (and I assume still is) 
the norm rather than the exception.

The only side benefit of it is that I made good money doing what 
amounts to a forensic investigation of old houses.

--
Kurt Huhn
kurt at k-huhn.com