A Dutch Colonial without a Gambrel roof

[Don M]

How about going with a temp electric heater while waiting for the gas or consider a tankless water heater? Our house only had a 100 amp service when we bought it & it had an electric water heater. We upgraded to a 200 amp service as there were several small subpanels & we ran a 100 amp service when we did our barn renovation. I'm sure your service would support an electric water heater for the time being even if it required a temp subpanel to do it. I agree skip the oil heater; with the big drop in natural gas prices I wish I could convert my high tech oil fired boiler but there is no natural gas in our area.

[LTParis]

Only real problem (other than possibly overloading the panel) is wasting money on the electric when I would get the NG hooked up within a year. If it was a 5 year plan then maybe. Maybe I need to just make it a 5 year plan. LOL.

There is the other issue where the run costs on electric would be higher than oil.

[Don M]

You could learn to like cold showers & use paper plates & cups in the meantime! Is there no way the old oil heater can be fixed to use until the NG install occurs?

[LTParis]

I've gotten some suggestions from friends to put a sediment filter on, but I fear that would get clogged in a day.

With all that aside I wanted to talk a bit on the general consensus on some renovation ideas. As I noted earlier I am not aiming for a 100% restoration to the 1920s-1930s when the house was built because of some interesting characteristics of the house, namely that the house was built as a pseudo-duplex by two brothers. If you split the house in half, the house would be nearly identical. Also an interesting characteristic is nearly every entryway in the house has a door.



Click here for a PDF of the ground floor plan



Click here for a PDF of the 2nd floor plan

(The plans are still missing a couple doors. Punch Home Design keeps on killing them).

To the right of the ground floor, which is a library/sitting room that we have dubbed "the Peach Room" thanks to it's wallpaper, seems to be historically another kitchen. There are holes in the floor (now covered by the hardwood floor) that were the conduits for the pipes. It would be interesting to see what that side looked like pre-rennovation sometime in the 50s-70s.

#1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5

The existing kitchen has a bit of a organizational flow problem, with cabinets that at inaccessible by the stove and refrigerator. The fridge is quite small, and any replacement will cover up most of the dishwasher. The built ins are beautiful but damaged and generally in a bad spot (the fridge would be better situated there from a non-modified floor plan size.

What is the general consensus on floor plan redesign? Again I want to keep the character of the house, without sacrificing usability. I had thoughts of expanding the kitchen with a passthrough design with double sided cabinets, or opening up the room to allow part of the Dining Room built ins to function as part of the kitchen. I could go smaller, but I am trying to accommodate a family of four. Plus I really can't go totally back to the original concept since the house was built as a pseudo-duplex so it's hard to know when lines should be followed, crossed, or just forgotten.

[Don M]

That's a very interesting floorplan; I can easily see how it was a pseudo-duplex; I imagine the library was likely laid out exactly like the existing kitchen right down to glass doors on what is now bookshelves. One suggestion is move the dining room door over near the dining room cabinet to give you more wall space along that wall in the kitchen. Go ahead & put the fridge in the area where the glass door built-in is since it is water damaged anyway; fill in with pantry cabinets for more storage. You could move the glass doors to the library cabinet if you want to re use them. What are the two spaces on the second floor between the bedrooms? Are they closets with windows? No doorways visible there so simply omissions?!

[LTParis]

Sorry, that space is supposed to have a wall in between. It's a pair of closets.

[onthelake]

Catching up on my reading and came across your post

(1) It is NOT a Dutch Revival Colonial. Those were built in the 1920-1930s. Original (as in long before 1800) Dutch houses could have gambrels or could have conventional gables but by the time of the Colonial Revival craze, a gambrel-type roof was mandatory for it to be a Dutch Revival

(2) WHat it is is a straight Colonial Revival of the styles of around 20 years either side of 1800 for simple farm houses. It is a smaller version of the John Jay house. That makes is a Colonial Revival subgenre Federal. GO here to see photos of it. http://www.johnjayhomestead.org/

Have to wonder if the porch was always enclosed or if it originally was open with a railing. Enclosing the bottom 1/2 of porches was a fad of the 1940s and 1950s.

[LTParis]

Good question. Unfortunately there is no documentation from that time of the floor plan or pictures to know when things were done. I do feel confident there has been at least some moderate renovation if not significant sometime between the 50s and the 70s.

The house was built sometime between 1925 and 1930. When I am finally settled in some, I am going to partially transcribe the write ups that were transferred to us when we closed. It goes back to the late 1800s when the area was a farm property, then it got broken up into lots, and then changed hands to the brothers that built the house, changed hands a couple more times in a short span, to the last owners in the late 40s.

I have found some pictures in the national archives of some buildings in the same area, but there seems to be so much diversity in the houses in the area it's hard to say "this is what it should have looked like circa 1930". The area is littered with Dutch Colonials, Colonial Revivals, Victorians, etc. Just down the street from me is the corner of John and Crown streets which has the only standing Dutch stone houses on all four corners. We considered buying some time ago on John street but the house was pretty rough shape.

[onthelake]

The area is littered with Dutch Colonials, Colonial Revivals,

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Yep even in the pre-WWI and through the 1930s there were developers throwing them up in batches as spec houses..... somethings never change.

All of Shaker Heights (stunning architecture) and most of Cleveland Heights were planned community right down to the house styles. Fairmount Blvd is breathtaking with the Tudor Revivals, Italianiate Revivals etc. You get into the southern edge of Clveland Heights near Coventry Road and the side roads are jsut filled with Colonial and Dutch Revivals.

[Sombreuil_Mongrel]

Judging by the symmetry and layout of the floorplan, it looks as if the builder had a set of duplex plans and modified them a tiny bit to create a one family. If you look at the center, there would be enough room for a party wall and twin staircases. And upstairs it work as well.
Casey