All wood is original finish.
Entry paint in pompeiian style: Pompeiian Red, Pompeiian Blue-Green, and Yellow Gold;
Parlor: French Gray;
Upper Hall: Blue Moiré

Where on earth did you ever get Pompeiian colors - mix them yourself or were they sold as such?

Looks like a fun house - like stepping back in time with all the antique furnishings and

Kashka, got the colors from Sherwin-Williams about twenty years ago--whole house was painted in beige when I got it. Stripped at least three layers of painted wallpaper from the hall--I HAD to paint as my second task--I couldn't stand beige. :) Parlor and upper hall still are the first colors I used, but the entry I had done sage green first, and after two or three years, did the roman style.

My first task was to remove carpet from the hall and two of the bedrooms--the hall had only smallish pieces of felt for padding, each held with lots of tacks...I still find some in corners at times.

All the door hinges and knobs are bronze, bevelled glass in front door, with nouveau glass transom and side light. Mantel has bevelled mirror. Weird thing: knobs and plates upstairs are all egg-and-dart edged, downstairs they are plain!

I will clean this week and get pics of dining room and part of kitchen, maybe bath too...dining room is dusty rose, kitchen currently beige, bath is a coral color in S-W's victorian line.

Pics will be delayed of bedrooms because I need to clean and pack away lots of books and records! :)

My house was on the local historic district's garden tour twice, got written up in their brochure as a treat since it was decorated to period. :) I just had to do it--with so many original features left, anything else felt wrong.

All but a few pieces I got after the house--the dining set I got about two weeks earlier at an antique fair! Nine pieces, and I found a matching mirror three years later by chance!

Nice house, Columbusguy - original woodwork is a rare find. Someone 'renovated' my dining room around 1900 & did the fireplace exactly like yours, even to the color of the tiles. Is that a summer cover over the opening or is it some kind of heating device? Mine was rather badly gerryrigged but I'm curious to know what they were trying to do.

fireplace

I've come across many of those in our area that originally had electric coils.

I can't say what my fireplace had originally, but I'm assuming a gas insert or coal grate...when I moved in in '87, there was a gas insert probably from the '30s with the ceramic blocks. I hooked it back up, but the gas company did work by the street, and came in to do my pilots, and disconnected it as it no longer met code.

I burned wood for a few years, but finally found a new gas log insert small enough to fit. The bronze front came from two different places: the outer frame is original, but the rest had been removed to accomodate the old gas insert...but I found the pieces at a local shop which fit just right!

The gas shut off is to the left of the fireplace, and it looked darn close to original vintage to me...especially since every room upstairs has gas pipes for old heaters and lights. My attic's single light fixture is a combo gas/electric I still use.

wow.. great house, love all the wood details!

CG - your home is fabulous! Just as I imagined, from your descriptions & remarks... I expected nothing less than terrific - & wasn't disappointed.

Loving the woodwork - & the faucet. (And the lamps, & the framed art, & the piano, & the cats, etc...). Really wanting to sit back on the velvet sofa with a cup of tea (ok, coffee - with cream, please), & "carry on" about life - with a Siamese on my lap... It just looks like a comforting & inviting space. I doubt that just "happened", it's your doing. And well done.

It's a treat to see that some are true to the history of their house - down to the details. Kudo's, friend. :-)

I can't recall how old your house is and where in the US is it located?

Out of curiosity, do you know what the finish is on the woodwork? Shellac, or something else?

Thanks a lot, ks...I'm a tea drinker myself--and my younger siamese Chula does love to lay next to me on the couch--the downstairs is her province since she has problems with her back legs...the older, Bortai sleeps with me every night.

Tinker, the house was built in 1908 according to the abstract and fronts onto the town's first 'streetcar suburb'. I am in Columbus just north of OSU--alas.

RRM, the finish is shellac, whether there is varnish under that--I think so; I THINK the trim is oak (possibly red) downstairs...upstairs, can anyone tell from the pics? I am assuming red oak because one of my stop moldings on the window is broken, and the wood underneath the finish is definitely reddish in color down to its core. Again if anyone can confirm that for me, I'd be grateful--I don't know wood species well.

Wow, Columbusguy, nice to see the photos. I love the baseboards (so clean and elegant with just that curve on top). Our houses share similar vintage (were 1906-08-ish). I love color, so I gotta ask, those Pompeiian colors in the front hall - wow, they are striking. Are they really as bold as the photos show? You're a brave man to live with color that vibrant if they are. Brave man. Is the dado just paint? Nice layout, I may steal that for my back hall (which is still the POs horrible non descript pinkish-beige that everyone without taste seems to end up choosing, usually in Lowes on a Saturday morning with their screaming kids in the cart.)

j i m, thanks for the compliment! I've always loved the roman period, and based the design on examples from Pompeii's excavations. The two pics to sides of front door show them best--the stair one is a tad washed out, and the one toward kitchen is too dark due to the light fixture.

It's all done with paint--except for the frieze at the top. Drove myself nuts taking measurements, and laying out the lines with a three-foot level! Continuing it up the stairs was a major pain in the rear getting things parallel with the trim. :)

Here is a cross-section (best I can do with Paint) of my trim:

When I was planning, I was severely torn between the blue-green, and a bluish-black which I eventually decided might have been too dark with the trimwork. Technically, pompeiian-style was about thirty years out of date by the time my house was built--but it would have been perhaps fondly remembered by the buyers--so I went ahead with it. :)

Very interesting. The piano, that's very authentic! I expected Granny to appear in the next photo...!

I love the Pompeii treatment and am quite intrigued to see the pink upper wall colour with your wood. I'm always trying to factor wood colour in to paint decisions and find it hard. Curious too, are you going to be as daring with colour in the other rooms?

Karin L

I have plans to do the dining room over soon, if I can figure out where to start the frieze paper! The room is essentially square with a rectangular bay centered on the north side, a door on south side at the eastern end, and the sliding doors on the middle of the west wall. Ideally, you start at the left corner of the main door, but that would make it glaringly obvious from the kitchen door, so I'm wondering if I should start in the bay?

The new color will be a sponged maroon glaze over the current dusty rose--and the frieze is a swag pattern about twelve inches deep.

I thought about painting in some lines in the parlor to imitate ashlar, but decided all the ornaments were enough...and I was already crazed from planning the hall. :)

I have paper to put up in the back bedroom; my bedroom is done in Queen Anne Lilac, which is a bit pale to me, and the other front bedroom where my computer lives is Corinthian Green since I couldn't find a paper to match what had been there (yellow roses on a greenish ground). The attic is a silvery-blue my house-mate picked out.

I am toying with a soft yellow or green for the pantry and kitchen--they were both originally a mint green--open to suggestions there. Not sure about the closet/step area to the basement--it is currently beige, but do I continue the pompeiian scheme from the front hall or not?

The piano is an 1881 J.C. Fischer I got by trading in a 40s style roll-top spinet, which I hated. :) The keys are genuine ivory, but I don't play much as it is out of tune.

Hey columbusguy!!! I grew up in Grandview Hts so took an interest when I saw your name. How cool is that!!! I'll actually be there in a few weeks to visit my dad. There are some beautiful old homes in & around Columbus, & you've done an extraordianry job!!! Kudos to you!!!

~Jeana

Thanks Jeana! I grew up east of Columbus in a small town--in a late 50s ranch house, alas--hence my desire for a truly old house! :) Missed out on my first choice by a matter of hours, but this place was next on my list. I have friends over in Grandview Heights.

I live one block from the house I missed--an 1880s Queen Anne which was being sold by the son of the original owners--purchasers stripped it bare of all features and left it vacant. New owners are working on it, but I doubt there are many details left, although the contractor said there were when I spoke with him--what he showed me in one room was about a tenth of what had been there.

CG, I did see these the other day - was going to post on them, but I've only had time to "look & run", lately.

It's not fair - you can have original/gorgeous woodwork, or the stained glass. Or, all original on ONE floor only. Those are the rules. Right? Ok, fine. I'm just jealous. My poor, simple, flopped, junky old house.

Is that a Tiffany lamp, in the first set of pics? And how many pieces of Fenton art glass do you have? I admit, I do have Fenton on-the-brain, but I swear I see several! (Yum - love depression glass, love Fenton! And Heisey, & Fostoria, & Federal, & I digress, lol!).

Regarding the closet/hall entry, I'm not familiar with period details you've gone with... Is there a way to continue the method there, with more muted colors? ONLY suggesting since it sounds like a smaller area, & perhaps the beautiful bold colors you have used (which I love, btw) might make a small space seem smaller? Or not - I don't have instinct for deco, I admit. It'd be a shame, though, to not have continuity, I think. What REALLY matters, though, is "What would you like?". What would give you happy-feelings when you walk through the space?

ks, I feel sort of cheated since I missed on the first house--my offer was accepted as a backup, but the first one went through--if they'd told me they showed it earlier, I'd have offered on the spot when I saw it. The wood throughout was original stain, original electric lights (with tassels hiding the chains), three fireplaces or four, all with green tiles, three sets of sliding doors, oak panelled stairs. Almost 3k square feet, and I offered 40k in 87, they were asking 44.

I would have had to remove carpet tile in two rooms downstairs, and put in a new furnace, nothing else. A couple years ago when I saw a contractor working there, I told him about seeing it intact, and he showed me a room with trim and stuff piled all over the floor--saying there was more in the garage. He didn't know anything about the sliding doors, and I could see that however much was 'in the garage', it would not have been enough to restore what I had seen--the fireplaces were gone by then also.

I don't have much depression glass, a few green plates and a creamer, but I have about five Fenton cats, some fostoria, a cobalt Heisey Imperial candy dish, four pieces of red/yellow flashed glass...and my Brown & Ritchie Oriental Gardens service for twelve. :)

I guess I'll continue the same colors and pattern into the closet area--just have to move out my coats and vacuum cleaner--this is the place I need three more coat hooks...hint, hint. :)

Here is a link that might be useful:

What an absolutely GORGEOUS house! I grew up in one that had an almost identical exterior, but it was nowhere near as nice on the inside. What a lovely, lovely place - thank you for sharing and don't be shy if there's more cool stuff in your house to show us! ;)

just a bump because this thread was mentioned in a recent thread

Here is a picture of my newest acquisition--a 1948 Zenith am/fm radio, works great!
My oldest radio is still the Graybar Model 700 in the dining room--it was made in 1931--also works great though it's am only.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Love that glass! Wishing we had an older home than our 1950s postwar Cape (ours really is charming, though) - yours reminds me of the 1920s house I spent high school in - lovely, lovely wood and details. It was a 1970s nightmare when we moved in. I loathed it. My mother found and restored a fireplace in the master bedroom! By the time I was a senior and they had to move, it had become my favorite house of all time.

And I think you found that ceiling fixture somewhere like the attic or basement? Totally cool.

Drbeanie, thanks for the kind words! I grew up in a 50s ranch, and swore never to live in one again. When I moved to Columbus, I rented the upstairs of a victorian house with a friend until buying my own house eight months later...though that house was rented, the owner got it from his aunt, and many original features were still there, though he was loath to do more than basic maintenance.
There is a link above to another Victorian I missed out on, but this house was the next best one I saw in my searches. It turns out that I had looked at a 1.5 storey house which sits diagonally across the street from this one, and had paid no attention to this one. Columbus has several victorian neighborhoods (German Village and Victorian Village), but houses there were either too small, or at the very top of my price range, so I kept my eyes open in other older neighborhoods. There is one, Olde Towne East, just outside downtown where I could have bought a large Victorian with many original details for around 25k, but back in '87, you would have been taking your life in your hands and throwing it away to walk outside in that area even in the afternoon. That area now, is fast gentrifying, but there are bad areas still around it--I think you can get a house there now for around 350k.
Sorry to go on so--the shade in the upstairs hall was found in the attic, the fixture in my bedroom with the painted shades, I got at a yard sale for $10...the central shade in the dining room, and two matching pendant shades in the pantry, I got from an antique mall for $25...the kitchen shade (need a decent pic of it), but it is sort of bee-hive shaped white glass with brown drapery similar to the parlor shade, I believe I got for $15.
Here is a link to more of my interior pictures:

House Pics At Last II