Our Back Porch This is our back porch when we bought the house in 1986. Probably in the 20’s they enclosed the porch and stuccoed the building. They moved the wall with the window on the left out five feet to enlarge the kitchen for one of five apartments. The wall on the right of […]
When Bob and Beth Tierney bought 375 Prairie it needed a lot of work. The porch was rotting off and the paint was peeling. They applied for and got a grant to rebuild the front porch. I made all of the pieces they needed matching the originals exactly – rails, balusters, apron frame, post bases, […]
The David C. Cook mansion at 105 N. Gifford was built in 1885 for David C. Cook, the son of a Methodist minister and prominent Elgin publisher. It cost $10,000 to build. The wonderful porch as seen in the old picture below is one that we hope to have a chance to get to […]
396 Division had its original front porch taken off some time ago as shown below. Luckily there are old pictures of the home available showing a front porch. An appropriate porch was put back. Here is the home before the paint was stripped off. Taking the paint off made an incredible difference as shown below […]
In the 50’s the home shown below was moved across the street to make room for parking and an addition onto Elgin High School. There is an old picture of the house that was found at the Historical Society Museum. It shows that the tiny parade porch above the main porch had a curved balustrade […]
This home is next door to ours. In the 25 years we have lived here it was filled with too many people with too many cars and too many kids. It was foreclosed upon and put on the market in 2010. We decided to buy it to improve our quality of life. We had to […]
A young couple bought the house across the street from us in 2003. Shortly after they bought it they painted it and got a 50/50 grant to put a cedar shingle roof on it. It is heartwarming to see newcomers to the world of old houses do things the best way. As you can see […]
Adding an appropriate porch for an 1870’s home A single woman owns this house. She knew the porch and picture window did not go along with the 1875 date that her house was built. She was determined to do right by her house even getting a second job to pay for it. A 50/50 architectural […]
Recreating an old house porch from a picture The owners of this home knew their porch shown below was not original to the house and wanted to put back an appropriate one. They put a lot of time into coming up with a new design and got it approved by the Design Review Committee. They were […]