We’ve just finished restoring Jill’s office. You may remember that our house was a fraternity for ten notorious years. Jill’s office was one of the less-destroyed rooms. It was notable, though, for its wall-sized painting of a rebel flag. It’s also the only room with a big arch, which was crumbling. We had stabilized the room but weren’t sure what we’d do to make it the showcase room that Jill wanted. I wasn’t eager to work on her room because one of the things she wanted was to rehang the door to the porch so that the door would swing from right to left instead of left to right. Have you ever tried to re-hang an old door? Oh my. Our renovation work on this room took six months — three times longer than we had planned. But that’s the way old-house rehab goes. If we didn’t think we could get such work done quickly, we might not be so quick to start it. So, always we dream of things being fast and easy, even though — deep down — we know it won’t be so.


It’s the same kind of hope that keeps people buying lotto tickets. You might get lucky! If our species didn’t believe in luck, there would be too many things we’d never try. So we moved Jill out of her office and into the TV room way back in March. Then I stripped the woodwork in her office. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again any time the topic comes up: I’d rather do sit ups, hundreds of them, than strip paint from old wood. That said, I’ve gotten really good at it. And we’ve arrived at a method that works well at restoring wood — which you can learn by watching our very popular Youtube video: “How to Strip Paint From Wood.” Stripping wood is like long-distance running. You’ve got to hang in there.


After stripping, then refinishing the woodwork, including the room’s original oak mantel (Jill’s not allowed to do paint-stripping any more for health reasons), we went after the wallpaper. Victorians loved their wallpaper — and they wall-papered everything, including their ceilings. We’ve got the stuff all over the house. We advise that you don’t go after old wall paper until you absolutely have to. Life is complicated enough.


Then there was lots of plastering, then new electricity, including a pair of antique schones over teh fireplace (don’t forget, the Victorians had very little use for electricity). Then refinishing the floor and the radiator, then hanging the porch door so that it opens from left to right instead of right to left (so that Jill can get a breeze at her desk), and then reinishing and installing antique crown molding (a pile of which we found incredibly cheap at a salvage warehouse). And installation of Jill’s cool library ladder (which she found on Craig’s list, of all places). Then, at last, the fun part: building stuff.




I built two window seats, which Jill helped design. Her designs always demand much more time than I want to take. In this instance, she insisted on having faux doors to make the seats look more antique. I built it to her specifications and, as usual, I must admit that she was right. After that, finally, I got to put together the ten-foot-long, eight-foot-high Victorian display cabinet that Jill had found at a local auction. This is something Jill does to make my life more exciting: she finds interesting architectural artifacts at local auctions, then comes home and says, with much excitement: “Guess what I got today!” At which point, I draw a deep breath, grip the nearest solid object, and utter: “What?”


Once, when Jill and I were at a big outdoor auction, I turned my back for a minute and the next thing I knew she had bought a big, iron-frame Victorian fish tank. It now lies in pieces in our basement. She can’t bring herself to sell it and suggests that we could use it as a terrarium. The Victorians loved terrariums.


The display case is cool but, like the acquarium, it was in pieces. I’ve never been a fan of puzzles but, in the case of furniture, I kind of like trying to figure out how the pieces go together. The display case came together nicely. Jill uses it to show off her considerable Steiff toy animal collection. Seems to me you could display anything in a cabinet like that — old socks, say — and it’d look good.


Now, Jill has a showcase office. And she’s feeling a little pressure because she says she’s got to keep it neat to do it justice. This makes me laugh because we’re not neat people and my little cubby hole of an office, on the third floor, demands nothing of me. Which is why it’s always a mess.

To see more of JIll’s way cool office, click here: Jill’s Victorian Office!

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Jill’s dream for our back yard was that I would pave the entire thing — 65 feet by 20 feet — in vintage brick for a super Victorian look. Mind you, this was not my dream. Laying brick, on my hands and knees, for days on end! No, ma’am.The task was daunting in a dozen ways: we’d have to find hard-to-find, old brick, 3 tons, to be exact, then transport it, and then store it while I worked on the yard. You can’t store that stuff on the sidewalk. More daunting for me was the issue of leveling the yard so that the bricks would lie flat and drain in the right direction. Most daunting was that Jill wanted this brick laid in a herring bone pattern, the most difficult design. And then there was the issue of cost: bricks aren’t cheap, running at $1 – $1.50 a piece. We’d need about 3,000. I told Jill that maybe I’d get around to this in 3 or 5 years.

Funny thing about the way we live, Jill and I never know when happenstance will change my mind or hers or both. We happend to be at an architectural salvage yard recenlty when we came upon piles of old brick for the rock-bottom price of 25 cents a piece. “We’ve got to get this brick,” I said, without really thinking. Jill beamed agreeably. Several trips later, we had about 500 bricks stacked in our back yard, enough to do the middle section. I said I’d lay these down, we’d see how they looked, and then, in a few years, I’d finish the job. That’s what I said.

My contractor friend, Nicholas, AKA “The Essential Handyman,” offered to help me. Nicholas is a much neater, much more exacting builder than I am. He patiently watched me work, then made suggestions, and then, by the end of the day, he was laying most of the bricks and I was cleaning and trimming them. As I watched him work, it occurred to me that 1) life is short, 2) I hate laying brick, and 3) Nicholas is much better at it than I — and 4) he does things like this for a living. So I gave him the job. “Do the whole yard!” I said.

More than a few people have mentioned that they liked the pea gravel that covered our back yard. “It’s kind of zen,” one visitor remarked. Truth is, the pea gravel was a terrible nuisance because those little stones got into everything, especially the treads of our shoes, and then we’d track them all over our house, scratching the wood floors, etc.  I went to Micronesia a few years ago — halfway around the world — and guess what I brought with me? Pea gravel in the treads of my shoes.. So I must admit that the thought of getting rid of the pea gravel  once and for all acted as a tremendous encouragement to put the brick in.

It took Nicholas about a week to finish. But first we had to take up the 500 bricks we had already laid because you can’t lay just any old bricks with any other old bricks. They have to be the SAME size; otherwise, they won’t line up right. Nicholas and I found a guy who deals only in vintage brick. Our batch is 100 years old and they are pavers, not building bricks. The difference is that pavers are much harder — made to withstand horse hooves and iron wheels. We bought 3,000 of them. The seller delivered them on a big flatbed and used a forklift to fill our garage.

So Jill got her dream in short order. And I can’t believe how beautiful the yard looks now — a totally different feel than before. It’s more “formal,” more dressed up, but also warmer. The brick gives us a courtyard feel. And they look like they’ve been there since the house was built, which is a testament to Nicholas’s skill. Nobody does better work than the Essential Hanyman. Every time I walk to the garage, I glance down at the brick and shake my head in wonder. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get to this job. And now it’s done.

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Jill says she saw our eccentric neighbor staring at our garden walls this morning. She didn’t go out to greet him because she wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw. Our garden walls are six feet high and made of brick. This week we installed ornamental iron atop those walls for a thoroughly Victorian touch. It was specialty work, done by an ornamental iron company. We weren’t sure it’d ever get done because we’d been waiting two years for the iron.

The stuff we got for our garden walls is called “cresting.” During the Victorian era, you’d have seen a lot of it on top of buildings as well as walls. It’s not only for ornament but also for security. Cresting like ours discourages ne’r-do-wells from scaling a wall, something that has happened on a few occasions in our urban neighborhood. Just last year we discovered a large boot print in one of our flower beds.

You should know that Ornamental iron of such an elaborate design is no longer manufactured in the U.S. Ours had to come from China. If the molds themselves are not original, they are designed after the originals. You buy iron like this from an ornamental metal supplier. Baltimore happens to be  home to one of the largest suppliers of ornamental iron in the nation: King Architectual Metal, located in the city’s industrial east side. Jill and I pored over their catalogue for hours. Then we contracted C & S Ornamental Iron (also on the city’s industrial east side) to install the pieces we ordered from King. But we had to wait two years for our order because there was none of our iron left in the U.S.A.

When I say “ornamental iron,” you may picture a blacksmith pounding hot metal over an anvil. But that kind of work is for artisans, not routine domestic installations, and getting that kind of work — blacksmithing — is as expensive as, say, contracting a famous portrait painter to paint your house. All custom iron work these days is a matter of welding together pre-cast pieces, with only occasional fabrication from scratch. Still, installing cast pieces demands a considerable amount of thought and finagling. Our cresting, for example, did not come with installation instructions or support braces. It’s not a do-it-yourself job, unless you know how to weld. But it is in keeping with our old house repair and renovation agenda, which is ongoing and, apparently, never-ending.

The guys at C & S made our installation look elegant by simply spot-welding each piece to a long metal plate that they bolted to the top of our walls. They also welded each cast piece to its neighborh to create a contiguous appearance. We were impressed with their work. Now, our backyard walls look thoroughly Victorian. It’s the kind of thing that the original home-owners would have appreciated.

The added bonus of our cresting is that now our cats can NOT get out of the yard. Even our fat old tom, Simon, thought nothing of leaping from our six-foot-wall to the sidewalk and then hightailing it down the street. Many a time I’ve had to chase after him. But no more. Simon isn’t happy about the new constraints but he’s getting used to lounging in the yard with his sister Sophie (who used to jump into the neighbor’s yard to chew on their flowers).

The thing we often forget is that, in its day, Victorian ornamentation looked modern, even cutting edge. Today it looks quaint and old fashioned in the best way — that’s why we like it. The equivalent today would be something sleek and minimalistic, I suppose. And perhaps today’s hi-tech look will appear thoroughly old-fashioned in a 100 years. Or perhaps, in an odd turn-around, the Victorian style cresting we’ve put up today will look cutting edge in 100 years. There’s really no logic in what is and isn’t fashionable.

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When Jill and I bought our Victorian house in January 2000, it had been abandoned for a year after having been owned by a notorious fraternity for 10 riotous years. The house was wrecked and everything of value had been stolen from it. There were no light fixtures in the house, just bare bulbs — if that — dangling from the ceilings. We have spent a decade bringing the house back. Finding lights has been one of the most enjoyable tasks.

The first thing we noticed was that a good, era-appropriate ceiling light can transform a room. In fact, even an empty room will look more or less finished if it has a killer light fixture. We got our first batch of vintage lights from a guy named George, who owned a tiny antique light shop in Fells Point. His shop was like a museum. We dropped $1000. that afternoon, which was a whole lot of money for us at the time, but we brought home seven cool, old lights. Most of them we still have. George’s shop, by the way, is long gone.

This week, Jill and I completed our lighting upgrades, which is to say that we’re nearly done with lights (though I know that we’re never really done in this old house). We’re big fans of something called “early electric,” light fixtures made from 1890-1920. Keep in mind that, up until that time, people knew only gas or oil lighting — or candles (poor folk had candles and oil, rich folk had gas). That’s one reason why most early electric lights didn’t put off much illumination.

But the fixtures were gorgeous — most were luxury items. Also, many of the early models showed off the light bulbs. That’s right: folks back then thought the naked light bulb was super cool and high tech, so they tried to show them off. You see that effect in old theater marquees.

Other designs featured costly “art glass” shades, which nowadays will run you from $100-1000. each. Jill and I have found some at auctions to fit our early electric fixtures. Another thing you’ll notice in these lights is their similarity to gas fixtures, which only makes sense. At the time there were also fixtures that combined gas and electric because nobody was sure that electricity would catch on. That sounds outrageous to us now but, remember, nobody had anything to plug into electrical outlets. In the first two decades, people used electricity only for lights and fans. The electric iron didn’t catch on until the 1930s. Electric washing machines didn’t catch on until the 1940s and so on. That’s why the electrical panels in old houses is so small and have to be replaced.

Nearly all of the light fixtures we buy need repair. But light fixture repair is one of the easiest DIY jobs you can attempt. To make a light work, you only have to attach two wires to two screws at the light end, and then the same at the plug end. Jill and I have collected lots of old lamp parts and screws and other stuff so that we’re always prepared for every kind of lamp repair.

When our old house was built in 1897, it had both gas and electricity. There was one electrical outlet in each room and one electric ceiling light in the largest rooms. There were gas sconces everywhere else, including the hallways and some closets. Any Victorian house will tell the same story: few lights. The Victorians lived in gloom. Jill and I have run new electricity to all of our hallways and closets. If the original owners were to return for a time-traveled visit, they would be squinting in amazement at all the light in our house.

Even so, our house is probably not as bright as yours because so much of our lighting is early, which means we have colorful and sometimes moody art-glass shades and atmospheric table lamps. It’s the kind of light we seldom see anymore because, back in those days, lighting wasn’t nearly as utilitarian at it is today — it was often an aesthetic statement. If you want to see the full array of lighting in our house, check out our slide show of lighting here: Ron and Jill’s light show.

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I spent Memorial Day at a country auction. I’m a sucker for a country auction, especially one situated in the midst of rolling corn fields like yesterday’s, because it seems to guarantee that I’ll find a bargain. This auction advertised the sale of an old bicycle, called the Apollo, made by the Edward K. Tryon Company of Philadelphia. A quick internet search told me Tryon was the oldest sporting goods company in America, did business from 1811-1936, and sold guns, fishing tackle, and bicycles. One of the last things the company made, in 1935, was a Buck Rogers football that looked like a rocket ship. Their Apollo bike was the companion to the Vesper, their woman’s model, and was made in 1895. The popularity of bicycles in the 1890s was equivalent to the popularity of cars in the 1960s.

Thanks to 1) the invention of pneumatic tires, 2) steel bicycle frames (much sturdier than the original wood frames) and 3) a low profile design that allowed man, woman, or child to mount a bike easily (as opposed to the old high-wheel style that necessitated a ladder), biking became a sensation in the 1890s. Baltimore had no fewer than eight bicycle clubs at that time. Thumb through any late-1890’s issue of The Ladies Home Journal, the most popular women’s magazine of the decade, and you will see dozens of bicycle and bike accessory ads. One shows a woman phoning her chauffeur to tell him to bring around her bicycle instead of the carriage, after which the chauffeur muses: “This do beat all. The madam bought a Waverley Belle from the Indiana Bicycle Co. . . . for $75. and now she uses it ten times as much for her morning rides as she does her carriage and horses that cost $2500.”

But get this: the Victorian bike was such a new invention that it had not occurred to manufacturers to equip the thing with brakes. You will find all manner of biking accessories in the pages of, say, the Sears catalogue, everything from “tourists’ cases” to trouser clips for bike riders, but no brakes. Ironically, we have come full circle because today’s quintessential city bike — actually a track bike with a single gear and NO brakes — is again all the rage. Apparently pedaling without brakes in city traffic tests the rider’s wiles and reflexes. When all else fails, you apply your foot to the back of the front tire. Good luck.

Despite the high price of the late Victorian bicycle — which could cost $25 to $100, amounting to one-tenth the average annual paycheck — the bicycle was a good investment since it could last a lifetime and replace a horse or trolley in the worker’s daily commute. As the average commuter would make about 172 trolley trips annually at a dime each, a bicycle would pay for itself after only a few years. That’s probably why the Monarch Bicycle Company, just one of many, sold 50,000 bikes in 1896. Said one observer in 1899: “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”

The sudden growth of biking led to road reform — the end of cobblestone and the advent of smooth pavement — well before the demand created by drivers of the automobile, which didn’t enter the marketplace until 1896 (the same year that saw the country’s first automobile accident). Because the bicycle in America has long been reduced to a recreational toy, we forget that bicycle shops were critically important in developing and popularizing early motorized transportation: bike shops attracted the era’s best mechanics who began to manufacture some of the first motorcycles, automobiles, and more. The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, you may remember. In short, the Victorian bicycle was a technological revolution that made good roads and motorized transportation of every kind feasible.

But there’s more! The Victorian bike also advanced women’s independence — it allowed them to possess something of their own (men didn’t ride women’s bikes), it got them out of the house (if they were middle class or higher), and it allowed them vigorous exercise at a time when there was much debate about whether women should ride horses at a gallop (they were admonished to ride side-saddle, don’t forget). A woman on a bike was a bold image and could well be the defining symbol of the women’s rights movement.

Pretty cool, huh? So, yeah, I bought the Apollo at the auction. Cost me $95. I want to give this piece of history a home. But I’m not going to mothball it. I’m going to put it on the street again, with new tires, re-spoked wheels, and a tune-up (but leave the original, now-funky paint intact) and be amazed every time this ancient vehicle takes me from here to there.

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