The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*
I doubt that Joe or Mary Ann would have been impressed by what successive owners of the house did to it in the name of modernization and then restoration.
And looking at what has been done I have to say that when the mood to renovate comes over you it is time to lie down and have a rest till the urge leaves you.
It began with John who in his short occupancy ripped out fireplaces took down picture rails and covered everything in woodchip. And when I followed him I took out a perfectly good bathroom cabinet, and reintroduced picture rails but managed to have them installed upside down
Added to which in the bathroom we imported a miss mash of Victorian and Edwardian fittings taken from old houses in Gorton and which technically were anachronisms given that our house was built in 1915.
And now bits of what were already tired when they left east Manchester for the south need some tender care and attention.
The plans have bounced from the grand down to the cosmetic, and along the way have included considering “old stuff” and reproduction stuff.
Nor are we any nearer a solution.
What I have learnt is that it is a good idea to be careful and consider that fine line from adapting a fine old house and maintaining its originality to following current fashion which does nothing to the property and can work against the original plan.
So while you can never have enough power points in a kitchen we have refrained from “knocking through.”
Now Joe was up for modern.
He proudly boasted in the mid 1920s that the houses he built came with electricity through out and in the time he and Mary Ann lived here they will have introduced the new, from a telephone in 1924, a TV sometime in
1955 and may never have bothered with a kitchen range, preferring instead to buy or rent a gas cooker from the Corporation..
Sadly John in his zeal left no clues.
So we shall have to see
Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy
*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
And looking at what has been done I have to say that when the mood to renovate comes over you it is time to lie down and have a rest till the urge leaves you.
It began with John who in his short occupancy ripped out fireplaces took down picture rails and covered everything in woodchip. And when I followed him I took out a perfectly good bathroom cabinet, and reintroduced picture rails but managed to have them installed upside down
Added to which in the bathroom we imported a miss mash of Victorian and Edwardian fittings taken from old houses in Gorton and which technically were anachronisms given that our house was built in 1915.
And now bits of what were already tired when they left east Manchester for the south need some tender care and attention.
The plans have bounced from the grand down to the cosmetic, and along the way have included considering “old stuff” and reproduction stuff.
What I have learnt is that it is a good idea to be careful and consider that fine line from adapting a fine old house and maintaining its originality to following current fashion which does nothing to the property and can work against the original plan.
So while you can never have enough power points in a kitchen we have refrained from “knocking through.”
Now Joe was up for modern.
He proudly boasted in the mid 1920s that the houses he built came with electricity through out and in the time he and Mary Ann lived here they will have introduced the new, from a telephone in 1924, a TV sometime in
1955 and may never have bothered with a kitchen range, preferring instead to buy or rent a gas cooker from the Corporation..
Sadly John in his zeal left no clues.
So we shall have to see
Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy
*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
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