One can indeed go home again, especially if the new owner of your old house respects the age and character of the house and plans on keeping the moldings if not the mold.

 

By Robin Jovanovich

One can indeed go home again, especially if the new owner of your old house respects the age and character of the house and plans on keeping the moldings if not the mold.

Lotte Meister and her husband David like older homes. But Lotte also likes a project. After fifteen years living in an Indian Village Colonial, she’d done everything to it and started looking at other old houses that she could renovate and restyle.

“It’s unusual to move to a bigger house at our stage of life, but we fell in love with this Victorian because it’s cozy, yet has great entertaining space,” she said of their 1870s home on Hillside Road.

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In less than a year, she’s made some transformative changes by adding modern accessories — “turquoise spoke to me.” Her older pieces were found at tag sales, the antique mall in Stamford, Pottery Barn, and through the Wisteria mail order catalogue. She said it’s funny that old friends ask if she’s bought all new furniture because her old things look so different in her new home.

“When a house has this much architecture, you don’t need to do all that much,” said Meister, who has made a number of cosmetic changes, primarily removing wallpaper and changing paint colors with the aid of affordable cladding painting services.

The living room has two defined seating areas. “Surprisingly, my old living room furnishings fit perfectly in the back half. The front half is all Nest,” where she’s been the shop manager for eighteen months. “I had to get a job in the store so I’d stop styling my bookcases at home!” she joked.

Now that the Meisters have a sense of how they use the house, Lotte said she’s planning on redoing the kitchen, which was last renovated in 1992 [by the writer for full disclosure]. “And I’ve figured out how we’ll connect the decks,” she said excitedly.

One of the things the Meisters love about their home is that it has a garden feel. “I didn’t appreciate the beauty of all these hundred-year-old trees and the mature flower beds until we moved in. It was the tall windows and high ceilings that sealed the deal for us.”

They’ve started opening up the views to the various gardens and are working on a long-range garden plan.

What warmed this writer’s heart is that Lotte said she’d invite me back as soon as she’d made a few more changes. I can’t wait.