The Faller HO Swiss Lake House is a Masterpiece of Mid-Century Modernism

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
41

But the same thing could be said of anything else ‘restored’ – particularly railroad equipment built of certain types of steel: MP54s and GG1s coming particularly painfully to mind.

My experience with Hudson River Heritage and rebuilding Soldier’s Fortune alone indicates that you can, in fact, cost-effectively ‘restore’ wood historic fabric. (The original roof framing in the 1756 part of the latter house is partially framed in tree branches… and remains so behind the ‘improved’ plastering and new physical systems we installed in the late '80s.)

I successfully saved a number of wet-rotted panels by carefully removing the worst of the internal sections, carefully jigging for straightness, and baking dry, disinfecting, and soaking in “wood hardening” material – the result is still accurately dimensional, and more than technically “historic fabric” in the sense that any painted wood is, but will never, ever suffer rot issues again. Cost was not particularly excessive considering what would have been needed to replace ‘in kind’ with new material and fabrication.

The main part of the house was assembled by (we presume) carpenters who worked for the owner’s shipping line in the 1850s – it is all carefully adzed and joined with dowels instead of metal fasteners. Even in areas where the siding had failed over the years (yes, some of it had been carefully caulked and recaulked to ‘close the gaps between the boards’!! [:O]) this was solid after ~130 years, and this on little more than a dirt foundation with brick footings.

A more difficult restoration comes with longer neglect. The Richardson house on Lily Pond Lane in Easthampton had a kitchen set on 4x4 cedar posts … many of which had in fact rotted and sagged, so the kitchen

42

Amen to that, Dave! And not all modern construction can hold a candle to the craftsmanship found in some older homes.

43

[Y]

I wonder if restoring old locomotives is not rational? Or old people for that matter.[(-D]

44

No, the interior of the house will be 100% modern and contemporary.

Before they sold their roofing business near Orlando a couple of years ago, they lived in a brand new luxury community and really loved the interior fo their house, but hated the neighborhood and architecture.

They moved to a small town in Illinois and bought the biggest house in town that was in poor shape with the plan to do exactly this.

The exterior will be beautifully restored as a Queen Anne should look, but the interior will reflect their lifestyle and preferences.

Right now the basement is being excavated a few feet deeper so the finished basement rooms can have eight foot ceilings.

She has asked me not to share the in-process pictures with anyone, but she has only sent me two, so I guess she is not sharing with me either.

They also bought the house behind them and tore it down to have a huge back yard. They plan to buy every house on the block as they become available and eventually rebuild the entire street. They live within driving distance of an affluent community if Wisconsin, and hope they can sell to people that work there.

When finished, the house will be a four bedroom five bathroom home with an attached two car garage and a carport on the side. It already has the carport, I guess it was for carriages when the house was built.

From the sidewalk no one should be able to detect any of the changes.

-Kevin

45

The sad thing is you can make old house function well for today’s life styles without gutting them and loosing all the history and details.

46

I am a strong proponent of interior and exterior remodels that are stylistically consistent. Things can be upgraded in a way that still reflects the period and aesthetics.

I live in a mid-century modern neighborhood, and since the pandemic, I’ve had lots of time for long walks and explorations. It is so sad to see what various owners over the years have done to these houses, lots of bad 70s and 80s remodeling choices.

Our own home had both good and bad upgrades over the years. The terrazzo was all covered with ugly tile. We restored the terrazzo in the bedroom suite when we moved in, and recently restored the terazzo in the kitchen/living room/dining room. We still have to bedrooms to go.

There was a house on our block that was untouched by time: terrazzo floors, original bathrooms and kitchen. It was like a time capsule. The owner could have sold it as-is, and would have made more than his asking price. There would have been a bidding war.

Instead, he gutted the place and remodeled everything with generic stuff from Home Depot. I talked to the workers. They said it made them sick to destroy something in such perfect shape, but they were paid to do a job, so they did it.

Another thing that cracks me up is mid-century ranches on which an owner, in the post-Dallas and -Dyntasty era, erected stooopid looking Greco-Roman columns on either side of the front porch. Talk about kitsch.

47

My family bought a brand new ranch house in Gainesville, Florida suburb up-scale neighborhood in 1971. It was a 2,500 SF brick ranch house on a 3/4 acre lot, and the porch had four of these columns on it.

Yuck.

-Kevin

48

Absolutely. Any art form is by definition not rational.

I believe art came first, before tool making even. No way to prove that but idle musing has resulted in more great inventions than all the directed and dedicated research.

So, if you love that house (or car or brass locomotive) then you have no choice but to spend the money (or effort or both, more usually). But then creating any artwork is just as irrationally pleasing. It’s why we do it.

I mean, just why did I spend so many hours and so much money (relative to the inherent value) finishing the Athearn BB F7A from its pristine undecorated black to pre 1963 CPR livery, complete with windows (even if oversized)?

For the fun of it. To see if I still could. Who knows really?

49

As for renovating or, for that matter, building new in an old neighbourhood what really gets my goat is building something that really doesn’t fit the existing styles or incorporates nonsensical architectural features like columns in front of a wood frame house that are not made from wood. Usually these don’t hold anything up either. Like a bridge to nowhere.

Brick or stone facing is a particular bugbear of mine. Wood frame requires no brick or stone. Hanging a real full depth brick wall on an angle iron sitting on the concrete foundation wall is just so pointlessly out of place.

By all means build a brick house but don’t build a fake house.

50

“I wonder if restoring old locomotives is not rational? Or old people for that matter.”

Even if I could be restored I’d be wary of how far it went.

51

Not sure how drunk the handrail installer was, but code probably would say those posts need to be verticle and not at 90 degrees from the sloping railing.

Looks like they may have been installed by Alf and Ralph Monroe from Hooterville.

52

When I was a teenager and wanted to be an architect, I did my senior English paper on passive solar houses, researching the stuff you speak of. That was about 1980.

Are people building that stuff for real, and does it actually work?

I mean, you know, without incurring similar heating and cooling bills as if the house was a simple well insulated box.

53

You mean like this? Sorry, it’s all I could afford with my high school education.[(-D] Real brick on a wood frame house and the crawlspace still has the extruded foam on the walls. I’m still a dead man.

Have you checked out Vancouver real estate prices? My picky wife was happy enough with it though, she still married me after she moved in.[(-D]

Fake house.[:O]

54

Before our mods tell us to move along…

For 20 years I lived in a fake house in Indiana. The suburb I lived in grew in the 1990s and early 2000. Nothing but tract builders building simple homes, some some with a few choice options allowing them to be called “semi custom” homes.

Poored concrete basements…a partial basement was free if you built in January when the ground was frozen and the market slows. Silent floor engineered joists. OSB flooring GLUED and SCREWED to the joists (no nail squeaks). Basic vinyl windows. Basic vinyl siding with a choice of about 6 colors, 3 of them a variation of tan. Full brick front in front of wood frame (ya don’t have to paint brick…so its good for something). Vinyl shutters that probably cost 30 bucks a piece at Home Depot. Trim boards made of rough sawn (read…no time spent sanding) cedar. Standard 25-35 three dimensional shingles.

It was a cookie cutter…architecturally challenged… house.

In 20 years, we spent no money on maintenance or repair. Zero. Nothing fell apart. Nothing rotted…nothing to rot. Paid somebody $200 dollars to paint the shutters on the fancy brick front after 18 years of the plastic fading. Replaced the sump pump, the HVAC, and of course the carpeting, as those things wear out after a while.

I love pretty houses.

But I’ll never OWN another house unlike the national-builder tract house we had in the low cost Indiana suburbs.

The hand built custom hou

55

The humdity has nothing to do with it. The wood available today is farm grown, very quickly, and is not rot resistant. Nobody with any real knowledge of construction is using wood outdoors anymore.

120 years ago houses were built from “old growth” lumber which had plenty of natural rot resistance. I’m not writing a book here, so look it up if your interested.

BUT, that does not mean you need to settle for cheap vinyl siding and crappy vinyl windows, cardboard doors, and lick and stick stone…

PVC trim lumber and moldings, commonly known by the brand name AZEK, cement board siding, commonly known as HardiePlank, and a host of other products look and feel like traditional materials and will last way longer than vinyl siding.

That big blue house I posted a picture of, it still has lots of original wood trim with no rot. But the clapboard siding is cement board - fire proof, rot proof, and holds paint so well the paint job lasted over 20 years.

The problem with modern tract home construction is not how it performs when new, it is the fact that in 25 years when it does start to wear out, the only solution is peel off all that crap, put it in a land fill, and put more on. Not very “earth” friendly.

That 120 year old house I just sold has NEVER put a roof in a land fill, and only put wood siding in a landfill once. Most of what we did put in a landfill while restoring it was safe and biodegradable.

The cement board siding I put on it will last at least 60-70 years, maybe longer, and will only need painting every 20-25 years, mainly for appearance.

The things people should know before they buy or build a house…

Sheldon

56

I bought this house with MRR in mind. I was single and had no plans to get married.

The one thing I do not like are the fake wood chimneys and gas fireplaces, but that was something I was willing to put up with and in the end, a gas fireplace in the trainroom is a better choice. The roof is almost 6000 sqft and I did put a steel roof on as those big trees can drop massive branches and a steel roof made it bomb proof.

We have upgraded it over the years, putting much better everything in it. The siding is real cedar and considered high end by the realtors that visit. The windows were/are crap and will be replaced soon.

I bought the place on how useful it is/was to a single guy that wanted a trainroom on acreage. In the end, however it measures up on the hoity-toity scale doesn’t matter as it has been ridden hard for the last 25 years and held up well. The bulldozers are coming this way and it will be gone in a few years and replaced by something three times the size.

57

Kevin, I’ll buck the prevailing trend and I’ll agree with your daughter. I would like the outside look of the older home, but I would like the modern interiors with open spaces and more usable space.

To me (but not to everyone) a formal living room and a formal dining room are just not useful to me in modern home living.

58

John, I would respectfully submit that the typical 1900 Queen Anne floor plan is nothing but open spaces usually connected by very large doorways (often with pocket doors for when you don’t want open spaces), and these houses are easily modified to modern lifestyles without gutting them and loosing all the original features.

You want to see open spaces, I will send you a private message.

Sheldon

59

My mother-in-law is a very vain person that is horrified the formal living room has a big screen TV in it and is decorated with Vancouver Canucks everything and is hockey central. The very nice dining room table has a 5’ x 10’ sheet of plywood on it to accommodate all our friends that show up for hockey night. Having the perfect wife means the train room stays which means the formal living/dining areas are the centre of the action. My MIL has a formal living room that I have been in twice in 25 years, it is most uninviting, not a Canucks beer mug to be seen anywhere.[(-D]

Edit; Oh ya the family room is for the dogs/puppies. The house works for everyone.[(-D]

60

[quote user=“ATLANTIC CENTRAL”]

Doughless

The hand built custom house built here in Georgia in 1994 has been horrible. And anything made of wood rots in this humidity after about 10 years.

The humdity has nothing to do with it. The wood available today is farm grown, very quickly, and is not rot resistant. Nobody with any real knowledge of construction is using wood outdoors anymore.

120 years ago houses were built from “old growth” lumber which had plenty of natural rot resistance. I’m not writing a book here, so look it up if your interested.

BUT, that does not mean you need to settle for cheap vinyl siding and crappy vinyl windows, cardboard doors, and lick and stick stone…

PVC trim lumber and moldings, commonly known by the brand name AZEK, cement board siding, commonly known as HardiePlank, and a host of other products look and feel like traditional materials and will last way longer than vinyl siding.

That big blue house I posted a picture of, it still has lots of original wood trim with no rot. But the clapboard siding is cement board - fire proof, rot proof, and holds paint so well the paint job lasted over 20 years.

The problem with modern tract home construction is not how it performs when new, it is the fact that in 25 years when it does start to wear out, the only solution is peel off all that crap, put it in a land fill, and put more on. Not very “earth” friendly.

That 120 year old house I just sold has NEVER put a roof in a land fill, and olny put wood siding in a landfill once. Most of what we did put in a landfill while restoring it was safe and biodegradable.

The cement board siding I put on it will last at least 60-70 years, maybe longer, a