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Colonials: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New (Updating Classic America)

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Manufacturer: Taunton

List Price: $29.95
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A lavishly illustrated guide to remodeling or building a Colonial home


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.37
EAN: 9781561585649
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 1561585645
Label: Taunton
Manufacturer: Taunton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2003-03
Publisher: Taunton
Release Date: 2003-04-15
Studio: Taunton


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Colonial Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Cape, Colonial, or Saltbox Home
• Creating a New Old House: Yesterday's Character for Today's Home (American Institute Architects)
• Capes: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New (Updating Classic America)
• Colonial Homes: 165 Plans with American Style (American Collection) (American Collection)
• New Rooms for Old Houses: Beautiful Additions for the Traditional Home (Nat Trust for Historic Preserv)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Great book -
I think this book was exactly what we were looking for. We were creating a new front entrance, adding a garage and great room and we also resided and replaced the roof. We found plenty of great pictures that captured the style of colonial homes. I think all the ideas and pictures in this book were perfect, adding the class and style of today but with keeping the old character of this time period. Great for a coffee table book too!

"This is not your father's colonial" -
The author, Matthew Schoenherr, is an architect who not only admires the colonial style, he has a lot of experience with remodels, renovations and new construction. There are lots of photos, floor plans, diagrams, and useful text in this book. He covers all the basics about what makes a home a colonial. There are explanations of various styles of roofs, windows, doors, chimneys, moldings, and other details that make a house "colonial."

What is kind of odd about this book is how few of the homes end up looking really colonial after the work is finished - especially the interiors. Most of the photos show rooms with lofty and/or vaulted ceilings, banks of windows, curved doorway arches, and other stylistic anomalies. Apparently his clients like the "idea" of a colonial style home but they want a very contemporary interior. The rooms are beautiful, but they tend to look like "Martha Washington meets Judy Jetson in Tuscany" more than they resemble anything I've seen in Williamsburg, VA. This is something that goes beyond having a colonial home with a multi car garage, large bathrooms, and a spacious kitchen. Schoenherr refers to this as blending colonial design with modernism.

The book is very logically laid out. (Well, he is an architect!)

Chapter 1 discusses the history of the colonial home in America, and covers what makes a home "colonial" style. He covers everything; the Early American Saltbox, Georgian, Dutch Colonial, French Colonial, Federal and Adams style, Classical Revival, and Post WWII Colonials - even the differences between northern and southern colonials.

Chapter 2 is about remodeling an existing house. What types of additions work when you need to expand? Do you really need to expand at all? What are the planning and zoning considerations? He mentions the difficulties involved in getting the vaulted ceiling look, especially on the first floor since most colonials have two stories.

Chapter 3 deals with renovating an older colonial. There are special considerations for colonial homes that were built in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as how to hide the wiring or how to create a 21st century bathroom. There are different problems involved for someone trying to renovate a colonial home that was built in the 1950's. One interesting example shows a saltbox house believed to have been originally built in 1694. The owners were attempting to undo a series of previous renovations that had occurred over the years and, in the process, made some very interesting archaeological discoveries about their home which they have done their best to preserve.

Chapter 4 is for the intrepid soul who is building a new colonial home. You have a lot more freedom in the design when you're starting from the ground up.

Chapter 5 is entitled "A Fresh Perspective." It includes such informative subheadings as, "This is not your father's colonial" and "A new sensibility." If you're a traditionalist, take that as a warning. However, you don't have to be as "out there" with changes to your own colonial home and there is a lot of good basic information in this book.

Colonials:Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New (Updating Classic America) -
Great inspirations and pictures that are very helpful.

Great Idea Book -
Colonial style homes have been built since -- well you can guess when. Modern colonials are built to suit modern taste. That is, the kitchens are large, there is a lot of storage space, it has a multiple car garage.

But if you have or are buying an older home, it may well not have all of these modern features. This book is a picture book with a fair amount of text showing how some colonial homes have been made more contemporary in the inside without changing the classic colonial front appearance. In many cases there are additions at the rear of the house to give the desired additional room.

Some of the houses being updated really go back a while, the earliest I noted was built in 1741. The level of remodelling/updating varies from house to house, some are really extensive, some done within a smaller budget. There's even a section on building a new colonial home.

I found this to be a great idea book.

Not a book for historical taste -
Readers interested in historically authentic renovations or new construction of colonial, federal or classical revival style houses will not find much of interest in this book. The houses and furnishings pictured for the most part present eclectic blends of contemporary and historic styles. I would describe many of the "colonials" pictured in the book as postmodern eclectic. A number bear no recognizable relation to the colonial style.
The text is typical of what you would see in popular shelter magazines like Southern Living or House Beautiful: pleasant, generally informative and upbeat but not very detailed, and of little interest to more advanced readers.
One should examine this book in a store rather than buying it online, because the content suggested in the title is not what the book contains.

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