Guides
Part of Rehabilitation case studies: four lessons for owners of old houses
How US homeowners should sequence a historic renovation
A five-step order for US homeowners on a historic renovation: establish status, research the building, consult early, then write the description before design.
What to take away
- Start with status and research, not with design. Find out what the building is before deciding what to do to it.
- Early consultation with the reviewing office is standard practice and prevents most later rework.
- Research is cheap and available. Deed records, Sanborn maps, old photographs and local archives all cost time rather than money.
- Write the description before the design. It disciplines everything that follows.
A well-run project follows a different order than most US homeowners use. The usual homeowner order is idea, contractor, discovery, revision. The order that survives review is status, research, consultation, description, then design.
Each step makes the next one cheaper to get right: the status answer narrows the research, the research narrows the description, and the description decides the design.
Step one: establish what the building is
Before any design work, projects establish the property's status: is it listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is it in a historic district, is it contributing. A listing is documented on the National Park Service's nomination form, NPS Form 10-900. Owners can do the same in an afternoon by asking the state preservation office and the local planning department.
The National Park Service sets out the sequence for anyone considering the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program on its before you apply page, which leads with eligibility, qualified expenses, program regulations and building-type introductions. The order is instructive even for owners who will never apply: status, then rules, then building type, then work.
Step two: research the building
- Deed and title records for dates of ownership and transfer.
- Sanborn fire insurance maps for footprint and material changes.
- Local newspapers for construction and alteration notices.
- Historical society and library collections for photographs.
- Neighbors and long-term residents, whose memories fill gaps records do not.
Half a day in a local archive frequently changes a project. A photograph showing an original porch settles a debate that would otherwise run for months.
Research also protects you from your own preferences. It is much easier to give up an invented detail when a photograph shows the building never had one, and much easier to defend a repair when the record shows the feature has been there since the house was built.
Step three: consult before designing
Reviewers say the same thing everywhere: come and talk before the drawings are finished, because a sketch is easy to change and a set of construction documents is not. The yardstick they apply is the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, the National Park Service standards for work on historic buildings. The National Register of Historic Places' own guidance page collects the forms, bulletins and sample nominations that professionals use, and the advice attached to the process is consistently to contact the state office early.
For a homeowner, early consultation means a conversation with the building department and, where relevant, the district commission, before money is committed to a design. Settle who pulls the permit in the same conversation, because responsibility and liability follow the permit holder. If a federal permit, license or funding is involved, the project is also reviewed under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, with the state preservation office at the table.
Step four: write the description first
| Write this | Before you write this |
|---|---|
| What exists, feature by feature | What you propose to change |
| Which features are character-defining | Which will be altered |
| What condition each is in | Which need repair or replacement |
| What evidence supports each claim | What the work will cost |
Doing it in this order is what separates a project that survives contact with reality from one that gets redesigned twice. The description also becomes the scope document, the bid basis and, eventually, the record of what the building was before you touched it.
The general first-year routine for a house is in our homeowner checklist, and the method for using documented projects is in how to use renovation case studies properly.
