WHEN IS A HOUSE MAGAZINE-READY?” Matthew Corso asked, with hesitation. He’d shared some photos while inquiring about a salvaged mantel. His kitchen was just about done, and we couldn’t help but notice the integrity of the design. Corso has spent the past four years rehabilitating and restoring a 1925 Dutch Colonial Revival house in Westwood, New Jersey. • “It’s coming along as I’d dreamed, and it will be worth it in the end,” he said. “I’ve been working like a dog on the kitchen. The Hoosier cabinet needed painting and adjusting, new linoleum shelf liners needed to be cut from the massive roll I got on FB Marketplace, and I painted the 1946 refrigerator.” • A few months later, he was working on getting the house furnished. Through much of the project, Corso lived with his parents in a town not far away. Motivated by a power outage there, he moved in during the pandemic shutdown. We got a call from him: “Three years, four months, 24 days—and I finally slept here!” He promised the house would be shelf paper-ready by the time of our scheduled photoshoot.
“I FOUND IT CHARMING,” Matthew Corso remembers, “except for the garage and landscaping.” Built during a housing boom in the Twenties, the Dutch Colonial is in an eclectic neighborhood of working-class, Depression-era houses: Colonial Revivals, a few bungalows, and Tudors. Infills tend to be postwar traditional.
This story is from the November - December 2021 edition of Old House Journal.
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This story is from the November - December 2021 edition of Old House Journal.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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THE Villa RENEWED
This house in Greene County, New York, has been faithfully restored, from its foundation and structure to exterior elements and trim inside.
walls & ceilings
BY THE 1870s, the tripartite treatment was fashionable: walls divided into dado (or wainscot) below the chair rail, fill or field section, and frieze at the top of the wall.
lighting + hardware
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CRAFTSMAN PATINA
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furniture & decorative accessories
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wall & floor tiles
TODAY WE FIND TILE from small studios . . . carved relief tiles, subway tile and mosaics, glazes matte and iridescent . . . plus encaustics and California revivals.
A TRANSCENDENT BATHROOM IN OJAI
A seamless addition allowed for this timeless primary bath, which has been re-imagined as an upgrade dating to ca. 1930.
CRAFTSMAN DETAILS IN A KITCHEN
An excellent layout and period motifs distinguish this midsize kitchen in a bungalow-era house.
home design - HOUSES HAVE A PAST - AND A FUTURE, TOO
THE BEST RENOVATIONS TOE THE LINE BETWEEN NECESSARY UPDATES AND ENOUGH SENSITIVITY TO ASSURE DESIGN INTEGRITY.
a farmhouse RESCUE
Using a cache of salvaged finds, the homeowner, architect, and contractor together rescued a tumbledown farmhouse in Vermont.