I have learned the hard way to go very slowly in making irreversible decisions about modifying the original materials in houses, or the spaces themselves. It used to be that whenever you bought an old house, the first thing you did was tear down as many interior walls as possible and paint the whole space flat white. But then the energy crisis made heating such spaces more expensive — and perhaps, too, people began to miss the privacy and isolation that are so difficult to find in most settings today.
The trend seems to be changing back to having more rooms with specific purposes. Not long ago, for example, you would have had trouble finding a separate dining room; today’s buyers, however, consider it important. Yesterday the home office was a corner of the kitchen or dining room; today, like the day before yesterday, it is once again a distinct, dedicated space.
Apart from design considerations, substantial alterations in a house also raise the question of craftsmanship. The important question for you is not whether the remodeler should have done what he did, but whether he did the job well. Did he even know how to do it well? Remodelers whose trails I have come across have too often cut short the steps that can’t be seen — as though that made them less important.
I remember one house I saw that had been remodeled several different times; someone had even torn out the front yard to make a parking space. One owner was a mason who knew a lot about bricks. He had built a huge hearth in a tiny kitchen and set a lovely wood stove on it. His problem was that he hadn’t bothered to leave enough room between the stove and the door, so that while the stove was cranking, the door was blistering. It appeared to have been the same do-it-yourself who put a bathroom in off the kitchen without bothering to install a plumbing vent — the safety valve that carries away sewer gases.
Another owner destroyed his perfectly reasonable dining room by covering its wails and ceiling with an imitation stucco product that was wholly at odds with the atmosphere of the home. It was like iron to take off. Another owner-artisan decided that the upstairs screened-in porch would make a swell bedroom, so he closed it in without bothering to notice that the room hung on simple posts resting on stone piers. Within two years it had slipped away from the house, and major work was needed to make it right.
Beware the house that has had too much creativity lavished upon it, and not enough consideration and craftsmanship. If you have the soul of a remodeler yourself, hold out for an original.