Living in History

This weekend I spent almost all of my free time working on home renovations. Doesn't sound too exciting at first, but a couple of things that are unique to living in Saint John actually made it really interesting.

My current challenge is my living room (or our "Ball Room" as I call it because with such high ceilings and our limited furniture the room echoes) which has original lath and plaster walls, wooden mouldings and original fireplaces. I grabbed a book from the Saint John library about rehabilitating old buildings to make sure the contemporary practices I was familiar with weren't going to ruin the historic nature of the property, or the original construction materials. From this book I learned a couple of things:
a) don't assume that you can apply current renovation practices to old properties - nine times out of ten you'll do yourself more harm than good!
b) researching history when you live in it is way more fun than my high school history class was - using the photos of mouldings, cornice work, fireplaces, etc. I was able to date the house more accurately than anything else we've found yet, and it was more like a personal treasure hunt than an assignment!
c) doing the work yourself can be rewarding as well as frustrating (not to mention cheaper) - had I hired a contractor I would never had found the scrap of newspaper in my wall dated 1892 (they used anything for insulation back then)!

Everyone talks about the historic nature of this community. I'm told we have the highest concentration of historic properties in Canada in our city. Since I'm living in a home that was built at the turn of the century, as were almost all of the homes on my block and my neighbourhood in general, I think that's probably true.

If you haven't experienced it I think it would be weird to read about how it was fun to spend a weekend crack-filling (covered in plaster dust), and reading about old mouldings. But when you're sitting in the middle of a room where materials were hand selected, cut and transported, and you read about how someone spent hours shaping a single ornamental piece by hand, how it was installed without the aid of aircompressor equipment or hydraulic lifts... let's just say I now have a lot more appreciation for that skill, and wish I'd paid more attention in history class!