The Last Shots of Rosemirlea

To those who've been following the blog for a while, you may remember my post from the Rosemirlea Apartments fire, back in June.

These were the last photos I took as demolition began on the building (a few months ago, just before winter was setting in).

Luckily for me, demo began on a Friday, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten any photos, since the work was done during my work hours.

At this point, they had torn off all the brick and the rear porch addition.







Original painted placard.



Details of the beautiful entrance and interior staircase. Note the beautiful corbels and transom windows.





Old radiator.



Newel post with simple Craftsman details.



The lot now sits empty, and I miss the building every time I pass by.

Cornwall Homes - The Cornwall Armoury Building

Today's entry doesn't really count as a "Cornwall Home", but it's a rather significant local building that I want to highlight.

The Cornwall Armoury has always been a building in town that can't help but be noticed. It looks like a castle due to it's Tudor Revival style, and castellated peaks. There are also numerous Gothic details, such as the main doors, and carved accents.



You can read more about the building here, as well as see a few extra views (such as the rear): http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=11228



As a kid, I remember this place mainly as the home of the Sea Cadets and Air Cadets. For several years, my younger brother was in the Sea Cadets and trained here. In all the times I went (with Mom to go pick him up), I never actually went inside, other than by the back, into the large hall (which looked like a giant gymnasium).

Apparently the building has a nice museum collection of military artifacts, medals, and uniforms, as well as a library.









The doors are simply beautiful.

Jaw-Dropping

I rarely see a house where there "isn't a single thing I would change", but I just stumbled across one that I absolutely HAD to share.

I spotted it while doing my weekly browse through the posts on Old House Dreams.

Old House Dreams


The listing is for a 2 million dollar home, and the owners are clearly well-off. Whoever did the decorating and colour choices did a perfect job. It looks just like an old well-cared-for country home should, and I just can't stop gushing over it.

Click through and browse the full-sized photos. The property is amazing, and from what I can see, the main house is a combination of 6 different additions. You can see a log home, and a very old stone house, and they were added-onto in different stages. Yet, even with all these additions, everything seems to blend together really smoothly.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1790-Limekiln-Rd-Douglassville-PA-19518/82192825_zpid/

I'm not sure how long the listing will be up, so I'll just include a few highlight photos. The photography is also amazing.

Cornwall Homes - A Much Needed Restoration

Today's post is a simple one about one of the beautiful historic homes on Sydney Street that's currently under renovations (restoration).

The home is one of many beautiful Victorians on this street downtown, and while most are in very good shape, others are not. This was one of them. Several years ago, it used to be a very light yellow. I think it switched hands, and the new owner had it repainted in a nice light seafoam green (blue-green) with slightly darker shutters in the same tone. Since then, it hadn't had much maintenance done on it, and the condition of the woodwork was really starting to suffer.

Here are two images from Google Street Maps from August 2012. You can clearly see how depressing the house looked: shutters falling apart, peeling paint, and entire boards along the bottom rotting away. Also notice the fascia boards along the roof line.





Pretty sad. I especially like the upper window with the curved walls. As far as I know, it's the only house in Cornwall with this particular detail. We also don't have that many homes with decorative shingle work left (maybe a dozen?)

I was overjoyed to see that this summer, a lot of major work on the exterior/siding was being done. I have wanted to go by and take photos for a few weeks, but I didn't happen to be in that area until this evening, since I made the very slight detour to go snap some photos. The lighting wasn't ideal, but I'll be taking some nicer ones once the reno is done.



I love the decorative roof peaks/decorations. Also note the stained glass in the upper windows.



I've always found it unusual that this home had no front porch. I wonder if it did have one at one point or not.



Original windows, too. I really liked the small details on the sides under the upper sashes. They have a bit of a stop block with a decorative bottom edge, and they give the impression of a recessed panel on each side (hard to see clearly in the photos).





I can't wait to see what they do with the painting. Single colour, multicoloured, or the same as it is currently (which looked fine). Either way, I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on this one.

Amazing House Tour

I got to see most of a stunning early house yesterday (Friday morning). My boss has a client who lives in Morrisburg (a city east of Cornwall) who he's done several pieces for, and we had to go and pick up an old sofa to be recovered.

We arrived early, so we walked around the property, and I took some photos.

My best guess is that the house dated from around 1830-1840, but it could possibly be earlier.

House from the road:



Front door. Note flat board siding, beautiful side lites, and beautiful casings.



Window on front porch:





The facade of the home has different mouldings than all the other doors and windows on the house. All the others are a typical early Fedeal/Georgian 1840's style, while the front ones have a more Greek Revival look to them.







Beautifully executed dentil moulding all around the top.





Main (back?) door in the centre, and the door on the right leads to the kitchen. I thought I had a better photo of the rear door, but I forgot to take one. The fluted columns and trim on it were stunning.



Garage detail. I would assume that the two fan windows currently removed on the main house (for ventilation?) have the same shape.







This house sits right on water front property with a beautiful view.





Believe it or not, but apparently the previous owner's children had no interest in the house after they moved out (or died - I can't remember, but they were very old), and the house was possibly going to be torn down before the current owner bought it. He also owns another beautiful Victorian house directly across the road. I forgot to photograph that one (it wasn't as interesting) but I snatched this photo off Google Maps:



I did get to go inside, first for the sofa, which was in the basement, but also afterwards, too. I wanted to take photos, but I would have needed to ask permission, and I had just met the guy. The entire house is like a time capsule. The main hall (and most of the house) was still covered in VERY old wallpaper, some of which was peeling, and showed signs of water damage. There were old radiators with exposed pipes going up to the second floor. I did notice that some incorrect strip oak floor was laid down on the main floor. I didn't really get to tour the house, but I had peeked in some windows, and one back room was a library/study with wood & marble fireplace and original built-ins, the main staircase had a very old urn shaped newel post (mahogany but later painted white), with the hand rail still in the original mahogany.

The owner also had a ton of beautiful antiques, including early American Empire pieces, art, and all sorts of other furniture & accessories. I was told that he also has old cars.

I did go up the stairs, and this is where I was really confused, intrigued, and surprised by the layout. Up the main staircase (which is on the left side as you walk in the front door), you end up in a hallway with a bathroom in the centre (to the front of the house), and then 4 bedrooms. Two smaller rooms to the front of the house, and two rooms at the back. Here's the interesting/bizarre part. Both interior walls to the two rear rooms were done in large louvred panels around a large decorative casing. Basically the entire walls (floor to ceiling) could be folded away to create one large room out of essentially 3 rooms (both rooms to either side of the staircase and the centre hall). The main doors into the rooms were part of these panels. I drew up this line drawing to show the layout of these. The entire thing was done in thick hand-planed wood, with pegged joints. They were painted white, but you could see the plane marks (facets in the surface), and the peg locations.

My boss said it might have been an Inn originally.



Lastly, this was another beautiful house just 2 doors down.

Cornwall Homes

I seem to have found a temporary (?) workaround to the problem I am having with Picasa.

This post will feature a follow-up to a house reno I've been following with you guys, as well as a handful of "pretty" Cornwall homes. I still have a large stock of fresh photos I took of other old homes, but I want to post them gradually.

About a week ago in this post, I posted a photo of the "Adams Sherwood Swabey & Fallon" lawyers' offices (reposted below), and I wanted to share with you guys a night shot. I don't have the best camera for night photography, but it's one of the best lit homes in town, and worth sharing.



It's a bit hard to make out, but if you look at the centre window over the main door, you'll see that each window is fitted with a custom shaped lit frame of small white lights. In addition, the house is lit with flood lights from below.



Next up is another of my favourite foursquares. This one sits on one of the main historic streets in town, and across from one of our high schools.

I especially like the robust columns, and porch railing (which you can see farther down), as well as the front door.



The following photos are more recent (the one above was taken in the summer). The house has an amazing side porch which is very hard to photograph because of a large lilac bush (on the left) and the fence. The screens were added later. Note the railing on the right.





Note the scroll appliqués on the door, the stained glass panels, and the original light fixture on the t-g ceiling.



This home (a few blocks away from the previous home) has some beautiful and unique Gothic details. The front doors are typical mid-to-late 19th century examples with deep mouldings. There is a very simple centre beam decoration over the central peak. The house has the original windows.



What really makes this house unique, however, is the Gothic detailing on the roof sides, and the original tin roof with dentil peak details (which I haven't seen on any other Cornwall homes).





Lastly, here's the reno house I mentioned. This is a house I've been following for quite some time (since it's on my street farther down, and part of my neighbourhood), but I haven't posted any updates to it in ages. In fact, the original photos I'm reposting are so old that they predate my switch to Picasa (back when I was still using Photobucket).

My first post about it was back in August 2011. For the longest time, it had been boarded up and abandoned, and in the past few years, they've been fixing it up. The following photo was taken shortly after the house had been opened-up again, and I noticed they were making repairs.



Fast forward a bit, and last fall, they had repaired and repainted about half the exterior. I took these shots a few weeks ago. I'm not thrilled with the new colours, but I don't hate them either. I'm ecstatic that this home is being saved. I'm also happy that it's being saved in a historically accurate way (rather than slapping-on some new siding). I assume that they're having the stained glass window repaired, since it was removed.



The roof still needs to be replaced (badly!) and the chimney needs repointing, but they're getting there! I *REALLY* should write them some kind of "you guys are awesome" letter/note.



They haven't done this side yet.