Monday, October 7, 2024

Curb Appeal for a Second Empire House

After driving around and seeing lots of second empire homes in the area, I was really excited to see what was hiding behind the aluminum and vinyl that cover our house.  Would we see fancy woodwork?  Would we see the shadow of antique corbels?  What would we find?

Kyle climbed out on the roof and started pulling everything back, while I waited impatiently to see what emerged.  


The answer.  Nothing.  Not one bit of fancy trim is on these windows - and it doesn't look like there ever was anything there.  Was the house always this plain?  Or did it get changed when the house was moved in 1960?  We've been unsuccessful in finding any good photos of the house, so it will probably remain a mystery.

As a reminder, this is the kind of window trim we have seen on other homes in the area.  Such gorgeous detail!


So how do we move forward?  Well, I'd like to give it a bit of Second Empire style, but don't want to go overboard, since it doesn't seem to have been an ornate home.  This sketch is a great overview of typical features found on Second Empire homes from the folks at Historic Salem.  

We have some of these things.  We have dormers (although not as fancy as most that we've seen).  We have deep eaves.  We have corner boards (thin vinyl ones) and remnants of sill boards - and our windows are nicely paired.  We don't have a portico on the front of the house, but we have a nice side porch.  

To make ours a bit more typical, I'd like to add some corbels on the dormer windows and also along the frieze board under the roof edge. We're going to use these corbels that are on the existing porch as inspiration for the new ones (however they need to be much slimmer, because there is far less space for them on the windows).


I had hoped to save the siding and just repaint it - but it's in really rough shape.  So we will be replacing the siding and trim.  I plan on using LP Smartside, which is an engineered wood siding that comes in a smooth finish to look like traditional clapboards.


 I've read that Second Empire homes typically use 3-4 paint colors.  The body of the house is accented with a trim in a darker shade of the same color.  The other color/s will be an accent color on the front door and we may use some of those accents to highlight the trim.  Many of the homes in this area don't use multiple colors - I don't know if that's a historic approach or they just wanted something simpler.  I'm trying to decide if I am brave enough to use additional accent colors, which it typical on Victorian homes of the era.  I'm going to agonize over that for a bit! 

I'm using a pre-finished, engineered wood clapboard siding from LP.  They've recently started making a smooth finish, which is more historically correct.  And it only needs to be painted every 5-10 years, rather than the typical 3-5 years with regular wood clapboards.   I've chosen 'Summit Blue' for the color and will paint the trim two shades darker.  


One very exciting add will be this double tombstone (named for the shape of the windows) front door that I found at Portland Architectural Salvage.  This is a perfect door to compliment the house (very similar to the one in the detailed sketch above).  And a much better style than the current colonial style door.  We hope to get it installed this week!



The door will hopefully go in this week.  Stay tuned as we get moving on this! 
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3 comments:

  1. Love the door!! Love the color!!

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  2. it's going to be amazing. Can't wait! And the right door makes such a difference. We finally got ours replace and its a chef's kiss over here.

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