First Impressions

 

 

"The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built." Frank Lloyd Wright

 

 

March 1988, a week after purchasing the Hubert Savage bungalow

 

 

My initial feeling on seeing the house for the first time was one of relief. A glance towards it from road-level showed an intact front exterior - no obvious signs of dilapidation, no unsympathetic expansions. Just an elegant verandah perched on tapered stone piers, sitting on folds of bedrock, beckoning me to have a closer look. Emboldened, I set off to join the gaggle of prospective buyers busy poring over what the ad in Real Estate Victoria called a '1920 character residence.'

 

 

A house ensconced in the landscape, rooted to its site with stone

 

Four weeks of viewing character homes in Victoria had dampened my optimism about finding one that both spoke to me and was rescuable largely with paint and imagination. Many of the places I'd seen had hosted years of hard living, often with long-neglected maintenance needs and, frequently, had been subject to some jarring updatings. There were typically issues to do with services not having been upgraded too. Problems in adapting older character homes to meet new needs often seemed to result in ungainly additions that clashed with original building lines. Awkwardness in the result seemed a frequent fate of these poor structures (inset photo, below right). Thoughts like these closed in

as I made my way up the rising front path, along the smooth folds of exposed bedrock, towards a flight of stone steps set comfortably into the land's contour, before finally reaching that elegant verandah. I thought it was quite special to travel the entire length of the facade before gaining the front door!

It was then mid-March 1988, still sodden here on the island, though not raining that Friday afternoon. I was there attending the first showing of what had apparently been architect Hubert Savage's lifetime home. I hadn't heard of him before, but was intrigued to see an architect's handiwork applied to his own circumstance. Scanning the considerable natural realm between the verandah and the road below, I noted clumps of yellow daffodils poking through carpets of moss and other early spring growth. The house was set well back from the road, on rising ground. A modest parking pad – sufficient for one vehicle only – had been inserted into the landscape, with no sign of a garage.

 

 

A few months on, truck on the parking pad, drought now firmly in charge

I crossed the threshold through an open front door featuring a brass lion's-head knocker on a painted plywood panel (clearly not original) and entered a small vestibule with a clothes closet. There was an original wall sconce with two small bulbs, period wallpaper, and elaborate fir wainscots and plate rails stained matte black (I couldn't quite believe that no one had painted it all in white). Once inside, impressions flowed in steady succession, sparked by the remarkable complexity of decor. In the kitchen directly ahead, the realtor was offering to guide tours for prospective buyers. To avoid sharing my reactions in a group, I ducked left into the living room, and found myself entirely alone. I preferred to stay aloof anyway, so I could form my own impression of the existing conditions.

 

Foyer with dark stained wood, original wall sconce

 

The living room immediately made a lasting impression. Spacious for a modest house, exuberantly detailed, evidently still mostly original: fir flooring, beamed ceilings, more stained wood panelling and plate rails, a trio of intact windows in a projecting bay, fixed panes of leaded glass in an unusual honeycomb pattern, a large fireplace with asymmetric shelves surrounding it - there was far more to be seen than the eye could readily absorb. Overall the ensemble seemed convincing, as though these particular features all somehow belonged together. Overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of detail, my eyes finally came to rest on a colourful printed frieze band, running along the walls just beneath the ceiling, depicting pastoral scenes from an earlier time. I had never seen anything like it elsewhere: the look of original art imparted a magical quality to the entire room, rendering it utterly atmospheric. 

 

 

A frieze by Lawson Wood added an atmospheric touch to the living room

 

Asymmetric shelving, beamed ceilings, plate rails, matte-black woodwork

 

From here I wandered into the dining room, which I also had to myself. Someone had evidently been painting over the darkened wood in a rich cream colour, as there was a ladder and paint tray with brushes and a roller. Although less generously scaled than the living room, it continued the same elaborate decor: another large fireplace, more wainscot and ceiling beams, a pair of original wall-mounted light fixtures, incised shelving, plus a built-in window-seat with leaded glass casements that actually opened. 

 

 

Original dining room wall sconce, one of a pair

 

Incised shelving, high wainscot

 

Leaded glass casements

 

 

All this variety was subtly combined in a room of modest proportions, the overall unity marred only by a mock-crystal chandelier someone had felt necessary to complete the scene. I experienced a ripple of excitement at how intact the original decor was thus far, all the while steeling myself for the excesses of renovatory zeal that almost certainly lay ahead.

 

Leaded glass in fixed panes and casement windows, set into roofed bays

 

 

Next in the sequence of rooms came the kitchen, where I encountered other prospective buyers for the first time. The kitchen seemed open and roomy enough, with three large west-facing windows. A striking room structurally, it ultimately disappointed due to some unimaginative renovations that had been imposed on it: a tier of bulky cupboards occupied the end wall, with a counter of cupboards opposite faced in unfinished wood (run vertically, for a modern touch) and a faded brown counter top. There were also avocado green and harvest-gold appliances (fad colours from the 1970s that hadn't

aged well - inset photo, right) detracting from the appeal of what was otherwise a spacious, well-lit country kitchen. The overall shape of the room was intact, as were its patterned ceilings, windows, recessed shelves and much of the original trim. Afternoon light streamed through the ample windows, diminishing the tastelessness of the modern decor to insignificance. I noted that the windows looked directly out into a sheltered garden with mature oaks, centering the building in a natural landscape. 

 

 

Inset shelving beneath a Tudor arch, kitchen

 

My thoughts were interrupted by a couple excitedly imagining how easily the magnificent sash windows I'd just been admiring could be torn out, to accommodate a sliding glass door that would open onto a new deck. Apparently, they hadn't noticed that the kitchen sits virtually at ground level, nor that there was already an elaborate patterned patio just outside the existing rear door. I kept my thoughts to myself however, moving on instead to other parts of the house.

 

 

Two of those kitchen windows, back at the time of the first restoration 

 

Elaborate patio pattern viewed from the kitchen

 

Venturing into a diminutive central hallway, perhaps fifty square feet all in, I counted seven individual doorways opening from it. Three accessed bedrooms, one the sole bathroom, another the attic, one facilitated movement to and from the kitchen itself, while the final one turned out to be a shallow cupboard with shelves the depth of the wall. The central corridor itself was outfitted in grey shag wall-to-wall carpet - clearly the worse for wear - that continued into the bedrooms.

 

Tiny central corridor with seven door openings

 

At the end of this hallway lay the master bedroom. It sported a twin of the trio of sash windows and the fixed-pane leaded glass I had noticed in the living room, likewise set into a projecting bay. I tried the sash windows to see if they still worked, which they did. The windows overlooked some mature oaks fringed by blue sky – a real forest, it would seem. Obscuring the top of these windows was a heavy wooden valence with a pull cord, intended to hold the curtains that once draped the windows (I

longed to see this valence gone so the full beauty of those substantial window frames was revealed). The master bedroom faced east, so would receive morning light during winter months. In the far distance I could just make out the tip of what turned out to be Christmas Hill. The room's overall decor felt in need of a bit of a refresh, but here it truly was a matter of paint and elbow grease. The walls were papered in a large floral pattern (hydrangeas and an unknown flower) that seemed likeable enough. Finding myself alone once more, I discretely lifted a loose corner of the wall-to-wall shag to confirm the presence of intact fir flooring beneath.

 

Just off this bedroom, through a plainly framed opening, lay a curious little room that turned out to be an elaborate walk-in closet, complete with him-and-her built-in cedar cupboards with a built-in dresser between them. The room was painted a discordant peacock blue, yet I nonetheless found it charming. A step up from the bedroom level (a novel idea that, I thought) it came well-appointed with small diamond-paned leaded-glass casements that opened (inset photo, right, above). This room also connected through to another bedroom on the west side, entered via a second framed doorway. Something about the design of the walk-in closet suggested it may have been a later addition to the original house; but its presence certainly reinforced the cottage-like feeling in the bedrooms. 

The adjoining bedroom, less generous than the main one, was nonetheless still a decent size. Similarly intact, it sloped diagonally towards the far corner. Clearly something had caused the building to settle in that way. Initial feelings of alarm at potential structural flaws gradually subsided as I realized that there were no visible cracks in the floor, walls or ceiling. Whatever had caused the subsidence obviously had happened long ago, and things had not deteriorated further since then. Abstractly, the floor's lack of level recalled the charm of antique Tudor buildings that have wandered structurally but remain sound after centuries of use. I resumed thinking positively about the room, focusing again on its assets. Among these were windows on two walls, one a generously proportioned sash window facing west with great views to more oaks, another of diamond-paned leaded glass capping a pretty incised shelf. Once again, I was impressed by the ensemble of features. 

 

 

Fixed-pane leaded glass caps another incised shelf

 

From here I re-entered the central hallway, briefly poking my head through the open door to the attic, an unfinished space accessed via a steep staircase. I could hear people going over it with the realtor, so I opted to move on to the bathroom, which had just been vacated by other potential buyers. I checked my rising enthusiasm in anticipation of this room quite possibly being a scene of considerable error and excess. This was wise, as the updating couldn't have been more nightmarish. A small room, perhaps five by ten (standard for the era) the entire setup now said do-it-yourself, with fixtures, fittings and overall decor purchased from some budget home centre. It was done up in lamentably poor taste: nondescript vinyl roll-tile flooring, straight-backed prairie-motel-type shower tub with no shower (unfathomable), cultured marble vanity (concrete, surfaced with glossy plastic) with fibreboard cupboards under, unpainted cork-board ceiling tiles, plus a toilet too small to be comfortable for anyone with real legs. The piece de resistance, however, was a vaguely art-nouveau-style wallpaper featuring a repeating image of a woman lounging dreamily while smoking, which (to add to the charm) was vinyl-coated. This all made for a truly hideous muddle. "Oh my!" said a deeply shocked woman's voice from somewhere behind me, upon catching sight of the wallpaper.

 

 

Wallpaper after an Alphonse Mucha poster, for effect

 

Editing out the chaos of these compounding errors, I searched for positives. One was the original full-size, west-facing window, its trim boards intact, sitting mid-wall above the motel-shower-tub sans shower. Admitting oodles of natural light, it connected to a meadow scene of mature oaks fringed by tall firs. I had caught a version of this scene through the window in the second bedroom, and prior to that, through the kitchen windows. This brought home the realization that on the west side, the house was actually ensconced in a natural meadow in a mature woodland. From the bathroom, you could just make out another dwelling beyond the perimeter, but it was set low enough in the landscape that the eyes were naturally drawn to the fence between the properties. I couldn't help thinking that in spite of all the manifest errors in the bathroom, the tub (were it not straight-backed) was actually well-placed to capture views for a bather.

The neighbouring house that was built on the original grass tennis court

 

"The house you see through the window is built on what used to be a grass tennis court before the land was subdivided." The voice was that of the realtor, who had edged into the bog in her quest to appear useful. "The land behind that house is part of Marigold Park, so it will never be developed." I thought she seemed genuine enough but, as I wanted to be alone with my perceptions, I didn't respond to her prompts.

 

 

The third bedroom, which has two large windows and two doors

 

Across from the bog a third bedroom awaited inspection. Basically a generous square in shape, with a couple of ample windows facing the verandah, the room was light and airy with interesting scenery visible. There was some hideous wallpaper in a forgettable pattern covering the walls, also vinyl-coated. A second doorway opened off this bedroom into the vestibule, which caused me to realize that every room in the house (except for the bog) came with more than one doorway. I realized that, as a result, there was none of the boxy feeling that's typical when smallish rooms have a single door. Also, every room, again apart from the bathroom, came with multiple windows, often on different walls, and usually with real views. The light inside the house was thus exceptional, reinforcing my confidence that real creativity had been exercised in design.

 

 

Great light, good views through many windows

 

I wanted to be sure to see more of the house, as by this point I was seriously intrigued. I made my way to a long corridor-type room lying just off the kitchen, tucked in under a lifted extension of the main roof line. It wasn't immediately obvious how this room was originally intended to function, but it connected a north-facing glazed door accessing the back garden to a utility area at the south-west end of the house. It came with a barrel-vaulted ceiling (the likes of which I had not seen anywhere) that allowed it to fit under the lifted roof extension. This meant it was a foot or so lower than the other rooms, which appeared to be about eight feet or so high. My eyes came to rest on a bulky washer and dryer set - basically the oversized cubes associated with modern capacious basements - which occupied the corridor room's length and width substantially. In order to creep these behemoths closer to the electrical panel (I supposed) someone had ripped out what had once been a wall containing the utility closet. This change had not been well done, with little effort made to tidy up the ensuing damage. Scattered bits of this and that were simply left dangling, excavated channels remained bare and open. Overall the room's original purpose was unclear, suggesting a need for serious re-imagining: from a pair of cheap aluminum storm windows facing the back garden, to the badly worn floor tile that called out for replacement, to the ripped out utility-closet wall with the dangling bits, to the bare sub-floor exposed in the utility area where the power came in (abandoned plumbing holes open to the crawlspace, a recipe to invite rodents to set up shop) – the entire thing seemed to have been treated as an afterthought. I wasn't sure what to make of the room, but a few of its elements – like the gracefully curved ceiling, the light pouring in from the garden through the windows, and the unusual glazed back door – had distinct charm despite the current disorganized state of affairs. Like the house itself, the room radiated possibility. 

 

Eighteen years later, the utility closet was restored by craftsman Vern Krahn

 

Next, I wandered out through the rear door to have a closer look at the building from the outside. The exterior paint was old and faded, though still fairly intact. I didn't love the blue and white combo but felt I could live with it for the time being. There were some missing downspouts, and a section of ancient wood guttering had detached from the fascia.  An ugly cat door had been crudely skived into the wall beside the back door. The crawlspace entrance lacked a door and seemed too small to admit a person my size. The roof was evidently ancient too, thick with roofed-over layers of asphalt shingle. 

 

 

Overgrown foundation plants, ample windows, original terracing, cat door

 

In addition, there was a dilapidated shed that had been plunked down in the back garden, with a seat that tilted. Many things obviously needed immediate attention, but as I toted up the pluses and minuses, I was somehow not put off by the building's current condition. My overall impression was in fact strongly positive. There were many assets on offer, beginning with the distinctive originality of the floor plan and the quality of the intact finishing. This was decidedly not a one-size-fits-all sort of house, more a one-of-a-kind house that simply felt unique. Evidently it had fallen on hard times recently, so there was a lot of deferred maintenance needing to be faced right away. But the structure itself was evidently well-made, with really good bones and a certain design-quirkiness that I responded strongly to. I could feel the potential for renewed greatness. In short, I was optimistic enough about the possibilities to minimize the challenges involved in getting there.

 

 

Dilapidated shed, missing downspouts, rampant ivy, pair of stumps

 

Back inside, I waited for the realtor to be done with the now-thinning crowd, returning for another look at the living room with the magical frieze. By this point I was certain of wanting to own the characterful Savage house. So when the realtor was free, I took her aside and asked to meet somewhere for the purposes of making an offer. She suggested a nearby restaurant, The Brass Duck, at Tillicum Mall. Over coffee there, I said I was prepared to offer the full asking price, subject to inspection by a qualified building consultant (I also stipulated that the current owner stop all repainting of the dark-stained woodwork, in case their plan included redoing the living room - which, it turned out, it did). Financing the purchase wasn't going to be an issue, as I had a job and significant savings, so was confident of qualifying for a mortgage. The realtor wrote up the offer, which the principals accepted later that evening. Seasoned building inspector Patrick Cutts (by then no spring chicken) crawled around under the building a few days later and his report declared the basic structure sound. It did note the subsidence I'd seen in the second bedroom, attributing it to a large fir root whose parent tree had long ago been removed. He found no other substantive issues, apart from a leaking hot water tank that needed replacement. Once I removed the condition of inspection, the sale completed. In March 1988, I bought a heritage house designed by a local architect for his own family's use. I couldn't have been more pleased!

 

 

Post-purchase: ramshackle shed, burn barrel, rampant ivy, ecstatic new owner

Before visiting Grange Road I had toured quite a few other heritage homes, typically coming away dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs: buildings were rarely oriented optimally for light and often came with too few windows. And typically there were few genuine views available through those windows. Buildings also tended to be placed on smallish lots, gable ends facing the road, in order (presumably) to maximize property yields for developers. Inside, remodelling exercises frequently came at the expense of original character, rendering houses less period-specific, thus more generic and less unique. Many houses were dark inside too, a combination of having too few windows and the use of dark wood trim. In others the woodwork had been painted over (often with undercoat white) in an effort to brighten things up. Most houses did not have even the beginnings of a garden environment around them. Often they came sited on lots lacking intrinsic character (not that you couldn't have done something with them, rather that it would all have to be invented). Happily, none of these structural limitations applied to the house on Grange Road – in fact, the situation there was exactly the reverse. My inner gardener was as intrigued by an environment I knew intuitively I would never exhaust as my inner designer was by the building's obvious architectural complexity. The lot came with natural contour and a number of mature trees, and it hadn't been mauled by development, so had unique potential for gardening. The building was (to my eye at least) spectacular, alive with light and views, and possessed of genuine aesthetic character. I felt there was unlimited scope for renewal and further development, and I became convinced while looking it over that I should try to secure it. Yes there had been mistakes, some of them quite serious. But no, I wasn't put off, as setting them right was simply the price of admission.

Postscript, September 2023

 

"Yet impermanence makes house calls wherever we happen to be sitting...it urges us to take nothing for granted, and savour what we can, while we can." Pico Iyer, Globe and Mail, August 26th, 2023

I drafted the notes above shortly after purchasing the Savage bungalow in March 1988. I had an inkling my initial reactions to the place were somehow significant, though I didn't really know why at the time. The notes I made sat in a folder from then until quite recently, when I chanced upon them and realized they offered some fresh perspective on the house. They were a bit incomplete as written, but captured the way the choice to purchase the place unfolded - so I decided to touch them up and am reproducing them now as part of Century Bungalow. 

It so happens that thirty five and a half years after purchasing the Savage bungalow on Grange Road, I found myself having recently sold this gem of a house to others. Hopefully they will be as discerning and respectful in their handling of it as we have tried to be. We are now frantically downsizing our household for an imminent move, preparing to inhabit a condo-townhouse that comes with no garden responsibilities. And that's just as well, because I'm getting to an age where the will may still want to tackle the list of chores, but the body is starting to have serious doubts about doing it. I think that all of us reach this point sooner or later in life. However, I remain deeply grateful for the entire experience of living in and managing this significant piece of local heritage. Above all, for the opportunity it gave me to build a compatible garden around it, on a site with unlimited potential. I was lucky to see

Making a new garden, year one

this garden evolve through many phases of growth and development, marking parallel changes in my own thinking and values. An aspiring gardener couldn't have hoped for a better, more complex opportunity. I am deeply grateful too for the broad range of experiences Grange Road afforded me – from restoring and renewing a remarkable heritage asset (with the help of some highly skilled craftsmen) to fully remaking that poor benighted bathroom (with a lot of help from my good friend Robert Drislane), to designing a unique garden shed as an eye-catcher seen from the house, to restoring the botched corridor room to its full potential, to learning how to work with stone and make steps, paths and a garden patio. You have always been entirely special (as I said at the time of my first visit back in 1988, one of a kind) 3862 Grange Road - and I will always be enamoured of you. Thank you so much for all the opportunities you afforded me!

 

The Devil's In The Details

 

Once curtained, now equipped with blinds, this room attempts to balance old and new

 

The goal of restoring a heritage house to good order presents challenges to the homeowner, especially one resolved to honour the building's original spirit. There will always be some need to accommodate change. The question is where we draw the line, so the updated bits feel like they fit into, or at least don't flatly contradict, the original program. For unless we are prepared to inhabit a museum (where the original look doesn't ever change) a house has to evolve to accommodate new living patterns, changing tastes and ongoing technological innovation. For example, in the photo above mini-blinds now stand in for the fabric curtains the room started out with back in 1913. This new arrangement better modulates the superabundant morning light that would have overwhelmed those flimsy curtains. However, the iron rod the curtains hung from is still there, an unobtrusive token of the way things once were. The photo also depicts light falling across a modern stereo speaker, and further to the right the edge of a television screen can be discerned. Both speakers and television mark changing use of the room: the television sits in the place once occupied by a built-in radio cabinet (shown on both the 1933 and 1951 floor plans, but gone when I arrived in 1988). The built-in radio was itself an evolution from whatever had originally occupied the alcove, as radio didn't become widespread until the 1930s.

 

Once a cooler, now much-modified for storage

Another example of how arrangements change over time: before the advent of standalone refrigerators (or even the ice-box era that preceded them) there was a time when a simple-yet-effective device, known as a cooling cupboard, offered a way to keep food from spoiling (see photo above). Today the original built-in cooling cupboard in our bungalow remains intact, in modified form, but now used for storage rather than cooling. As originally designed, the cooling cupboard was of uniform width from floor to ceiling, with a door that opened towards the south wall of the house. There were also two screened vents located in the wall adjacent the back door, to enable the airflow that caused cooling to happen (courtesy of the stack effect, which exploits the tendency of hot air to rise). Today the base of the cupboard reflects the original width of the cooler while its upper tier has dramatically shrunk, which allowed access to the base via a lid. Since our renovation of this room, the lid has been fixed in place and four new matching doors now open towards the kitchen. The space the original cooling cupboard door opened into is now occupied by a built-in seat, marking a sea change in design of the room. The process of adapting rooms to changing times and uses without fully displacing the original program involves seeking a balance of old and new elements. Each room in the house raises unique issues for the person doing the choosing. How far one goes in restoring a feature, or in adapting it creatively to new ends, is a judgment that you, the current homeowner, get to make. Far too many people, however, opt for casual updating to contemporary standards, which frequently show as cheap and nasty incongruities. This rarely works in character houses and never in those with real pedigree.

 

 

How a cooling cupboard is intended to function

All objects in daily use wear down to some degree over time, even if they have been well made and are designed to last. As, for example, most of the doorknobs and escutcheon plates in our bungalow (photo at left): still gamely working 110 years on, but showing a degree of surface wear or patina as it's sometimes called. There is one knob, however, located on the inside of a cupboard where it gets little use and no exposure to light, that offers a glimpse of how these knobs looked while still new (photo, right below).

It's often easier (and certainly cheaper and far less involving) to fully replace things that have worn down rather than to renew and restore what has been subjected to continual use in daily life. Yet I feel that restoration is truly worth all the extra time, trouble and cost if it contributes materially to an authentic period look, one that is central to the meaning of your house. 

This essay chronicles my own efforts to strike a balance in an important room in our heritage bungalow in Saanich. Designed by Victoria architect Hubert Savage for himself and wife Alys, this small-but-artistic home's rather complex personality is defined by its strikingly original living room. Virtually a square in shape, it is certainly the most highly featured (and largest) room in a modest 1500+ square feet. With abundant windows on its east- and south-facing walls, and furnished with built-in features like coffered ceilings, wooden wainscots, plate rails, bookshelves and even a signed art-frieze, this room is obviously intended to make a lasting impression. Yet for all its fancy features, it revolves around a brick fireplace and central tiled hearth - a program typical of bungalows back in their era. 

 

 

Coffered ceilings, wainscots, plate rails, bookshelves, all centred on the fireplace

 

Keeping faith with the spirit of the bungalow is what I aspired to do throughout the house. My quandary in this room was how best to accommodate necessary change while restoring the fireplace and its hearth. Fireplaces were central to the North American bungalow conception, and in this house the fireplaces in the living and dining rooms had once been the main source of heat. The conundrum was thus how to renew the fireplace without transforming it into something it was never intended to be. Some principal rooms, bathrooms and kitchens especially, have been modified fundamentally over the years. Kitchens, for example, have evolved from being mostly unadorned work rooms where the job of food preparation was carried out using movable objects, to today coming equipped with built-in cupboards, continuous counter-tops, and other special presentation features that make the room into a more consciously social world; yet, one that still accommodates - if now on a far more-grand scale - the workaday labour of food preparation. 

 

 

1921 kitchen: workspace with a hoosier, table and stool, range and sink

Today there is every incentive to substitute modern components for authentic materials, often resulting in additional muddying of any residual period feeling. Fashions do change over time, ditto technologies, and as a result some rooms tend to be remodelled increasingly frequently. Sometimes this process can be insensitive to the original look to an extreme degree. Kitchens may be redone as often as every thirty or forty years, after which subsequent renovations are invited to compound what started out as simple errors of fashion. Plus, humans seem to want to always be resetting some clock or other to zero, in whatever choices we happen to be making. Often, we are simply chasing after novelty. 

 

Our home's latest kitchen remake, as shown in the photos below, attempted to rescue it from the compounding impacts of earlier modifications (a remake from the fifties that wasn't a complete affront, perhaps carried out under the direction of the Savages themselves; and a second from the late 70s or early 80s that compounded the discordance). For example, the 80s updating removed a pair of the original low cupboards and an archway defining a small galley kitchen off an eating area, and which accommodated both the sink and a fridge (arguably making for too much activity on a single counter). The eighties remake displaced this arrangement with bulky new painted cupboards that made no attempt to fit in, while adding a new counter and cupboards jutting from the west wall (and a hideous brown counter top) with stark white linoleum flooring with an abstract pattern thrown in for good measure. This remake turned its back on previous designs in favour of current fashions, which included the then-trendy avocado and harvest-gold appliances. Little more than change for its own sake, the remake gained little in overall cupboard space, and effected no new separation of cooking activities (sink and stove were now made to crowd the same counter space occupied formerly by the sink and fridge). Why the sink wasn't at least removed to the new counter top, where it would have rationalized

1951  plan: low cupboards, archway intact

cooking operations better by dint of greater separation, remains a mystery. Old was in this instance simply displaced by new - and not a well-thought-through version of new either. And then quite quickly, fashions changed and this ensemble immediately felt severely dated. At least that's how it seemed to me upon arrival: poor taste from the outset, aging poorly. The entire shemozzel called out for integration into a more coherent whole. 

 

 

A subtle, built-in look fits the new cupboards into the pre-existing format

 

Fortunately, we were able to distill a few design-rules from close scrutiny of the remnants of the original format, which helped us immensely to reintegrate the space. We elected to return to the original high baseboards with low quarter-round mouldings that were the norm in the rest of the house. We also replaced the cumbersome 1980s cupboards with a more pleasing configuration, made of markedly better materials. We opted to show off the solid wood construction by having these cabinets finished in clear stain, which dramatized the wood they are made of. We also wanted to give them a built-in look, in order that they jibe with the bones of the house (the bungalow era was mad about built-ins). To achieve this, we extended the band running around the room immediately beneath the panelled ceiling along the top of the cupboards too (see photo above). This gave the new cupboards the built-in look that helped to achieve a more convincing blend of old and new. The photos above and below depict the kitchen's new mixture of features: original ceiling treatments in freshened colours combined new marmoleum tile flooring (in essence, a type of linoleum) in a quasi-retro pattern; original double-hung sash windows and wood trims now mated with restored baseboards (along with the original

New cupboards framed consistently

ceiling panels, retaining this ensemble of elements helped restore a vibrant continuity with the past). A new central island feature replaced the former awkwardly angled counter jutting from the west wall, with its unfinished vertical wood facade and ugly brown counter top. We took advantage of the spatial gain the new island afforded to sequester sink and stove in separate counters, while simultaneously gaining added space for a dishwasher, storage cupboards, plus a two-sided overhang for bar stools so that meals could be taken there. The three of us now eat in the kitchen unless we happen to be entertaining, in which case we can add in the dining room space. Also, we introduced three banks of recessed pot lighting, along with shielded lights under the principal cupboards, for night effects. The banks of pot lights are individually switched, optimizing their versatility.

A blend of old and new ingredients in our 2005 rendition of the kitchen

 

 

But to return to the living room: in bungalow idiom, convention has it that this is typically the most masculine of all the principal rooms. Often furnished with darkened wood wainscoting, beamed ceilings and built-in bookshelves (supposedly after the image of a male hunting-lodge) it also included a prominent stone or brick fireplace capped with a thick wooden mantel. Far from being threatening however, this ensemble was intended to be a cozy retreat from the more demanding world of the downtown office (this was when only one member of a household worked remuneratively). It was imagined as a place where family and friends would gather of an evening (in winter, around a crackling fire) to share stories of daily life.

 

 

Integrating new features with an older program is the goal of restoration

 

As it happened, this living room had been decoratively mugged a number of times after the long Savage tenure. These assaults mostly involved tacky substitutions of ultra-modern finishes for the more-convincing original materials, so thankfully they could often be addressed using cosmetic surface treatments. For example, the stark-white ceiling panels between the flat-black wooden beams could simply be repainted to an off-white biased subtly towards yellow. And the equally intrusive stark-white wallpaper suffocating the original Douglas fir panels sitting beneath the frieze band turned out to be dry-strippable. And even the mis-sized mirror crudely inserted to replace an earlier built-in mirror could be rectified by remaking the original (given access to skill, knowledge and knot-free old growth fir, all of which came to us through Vern Krahn's masterful agency). To my eye, all these hapless mistakes of decor merely diluted the design-consistency of the original living room. We were fortunate that so much of it could be set right so straightforwardly, even if this did at times involve using some sleight of hand. For example, once stripped, the wallpaper had evidently left visible residue on the original wood panels of Douglas fir. But our painter (Mike Abernethy, of Double A Painting) suggested we deal with this by mixing course sand into the paint, which he felt would give the appearance of plaster. Plaster bands were a common living room feature back in the bungalow era, so we agreed to try this method (it had worked before, on the outside of the bungalow, between the Tudor boards). The subterfuge worked so well that we embraced the new look unreservedly. By this point we had addressed sufficient errors to perceive the corrective effect of remediation in renewing the unity of the whole: each restored component palpably strengthened period-feeling in the room. And because it had been conceived and executed as an Arts and Crafts unity originally, this was obviously the right direction to be travelling. Once these problems were en route to resolution, I felt free to engage with the more vexing question of how best to approach the brick fireplace surround.

 

 

Lawson Wood frieze, hexagonal leaded glass, plaster and dark-stained wood

Restoring the ensemble of fireplace components to again be the focal point of the living room was tremendously challenging. There were, after all, some serious issues of deterioration needing to be addressed. The fireplaces -  heavily relied on for heat through the first four decades of the house - only came into the relaxed use more typical of California-style bungalows with the installation of powerful Wesix electric wall heaters in the early fifties. Subsequent owners would have continued the more celebratory use of fire this conversion enabled (as have we during our time here) because a fire burning in the grate has a mesmeric effect on social gatherings. When I acquired the house, the firebox floor was crumbling after seventy-five years of burning - so much so that I hesitated to even have a fire. Also, some of the surrounding inner bricks had loosened from the long-exposure to intense heat. And somehow too a few of the hearth tiles had also come free, and a number of these were now either chipped or broken.

 

 

 

This four-bar Wesix wall heater made relying on fires for heat redundant

 

The job of renewing the fireplace really began when heritage carpenter Vern Krahn - busy healing the abused wooden features around the fireplace - recommended seasoned bricklayer Udo Heineman to sort out the firebox floor and its surround. I trusted Vern totally by this point, so I immediately ran with his suggestion. And in short order, Udo had remade the floors of the fireboxes compatibly using new heat-proof bricks, then carefully conserved, and skilfully reset, the original curved bricks that give the inner fireplace its fitted look (these bricks are no longer readily available commercially, so I was anxious to see them reused in order to retain the original look). The picture below shows the dining room fireplace after Udo rebuilt it (it shares a chimney stack with the living room fireplace). Note the fitted look obtained via reuse of the original interior bricks.

 

 

 

New firebox floor, inner bricks carefully remortared

 

Once the firebox issue was in hand, another big problem loomed: at some point the brick fireplace surround had been painted over a first time, in what I had discerned (from chipping paint off the bricks) was a very compatible buff tone. I speculated that this first act of painting may have been triggered by surface spalling of the bricks at the mouth of the fireplace, attributable to the intense heat. The bricks comprising the surround, however pretty they had once been, showed poor interior composition and inferior firing (by their pattern of wear) which over time rendered the exterior inherently unstable. I would also wager that a downstream owner had made the regrettable decision to bury the aging buff-colour beneath an unsubtle undercoat-white (visually akin to the icing one sees on an angel-food cake, with the effect shown by the photo below). I invested considerable effort trying to clean this paint-mess from the surface of the bricks, thinking I might possibly get back to the original finish. But the bricks weren't having it (the interior of the brick was of an entirely different composition from its surface layer) and eventually I realized that this approach wasn't going to fly. So, I made the fateful choice to patch instead any bands of mortar disintegrated by heat, then fully repaint the surround in a colour more consistent with the scheme now evolving in the living room (yellow/gold and off-whites toned yellow, which we felt showed well against the matte-black look of old-growth fir). This decision made, I was free to focus squarely on the challenge of restoring the original tiled hearth, which needed to happen before any painting of the brick surround.

 

 

Angel-food-cake-icing coating surround, hearth-tiles being gingerly loosened

 

Job one was loosening those tiles still gripped by the original mortar, taking care to avoid further damage. Once loosened, it was apparent that these tiles would benefit from a thorough cleaning. I decided to soak them for a few days in a bucket of water laced with TSP (trisodium phosphate, a grease-cutting cleaner that removes residual grime, smoke and soot). Next I removed all the softened mortar and any remaining stains with a gentle abrasive (fine steel wool) coupled with an under-the-sink, non-abrasive cleaner.

 

 

After soaking tiles in TSP, cleaning residual stains with fine steel wool

 

My next challenge was replacing all the broken tiles (roughly ten percent of the total) with accurate reproductions. It took a long time to find an exact colour match, at a workable thickness, for the replacement tiles (they didn't have to be exactly the same depth as the originals, but in my mind they needed to be close to it). Once I had found appropriate material, it proved challenging getting the replacement tiles cut to exact size. Complicating matters, I also needed a handful of partial tiles to fit under the base course of the fireplace surround (note the recess beneath the foot of the brick surround, photo below) a feature that gives the hearth its built-in appearance (the built-in look is central to the bungalow idiom - literally, one of the principal ways of achieving a period-look).

 

Built-ins are central to bungalows: things should feel fitted into their surroundings

 

Next came a job that I found really ugly at the time I did it: excavating sufficient old mortar for a fresh bed that would hold the reset tiles firmly. The old mortar bed was by this point brittle, which caused it to fracture into chips when chiselled out, releasing clouds of fine dust that travelled everywhere (photo below). I took to masking up with a quality respirator in order to keep this noxious dust out of my lungs.

 

 

Chipping old mortar out to a depth sufficient to secure new tiles properly

 

The ugly job finally over, now it's time to re-tile this hearth compatibly

 

 

After investing serious sweat equity in excavating the old mortar, I was finally positioned to begin resetting tile on a fresh bed. The finesse here would be that back in the bungalow era, hearth tiles were placed literally right against one another, with only a hairline width of mortar separating them (this is why cutting to exact dimension was so important, an act that proved difficult to get done exactly). The close-fitting of tiles formed a key part of the period-look, so I was anxious to retain it for the finished effect (a wooden moulding along three sides of the hearth also predisposed the outcome). But setting tiles in the right way complicated my placements (the wide grout lines in today's predominant style of tiling serve to forgive minor errors of placement). 

 

 

Cleaned with TSP and elbow grease, the tiles can now be reset as before

 

The narrowness of the grout lines is obvious from the photo below. However, it would also turn out that I was not setting the tiles uniformly level (if you only rarely tile, you are somewhat unready for the flow of choices in real-time, so the more finicky aspects of tiling tend to suffer as a result). On the other hand, minor flaws in the setting probably don't leap to the eye of anyone other than the person who does the job.

 

 

Thin grout lines between tiles make the job of setting much more finicky

 

Immediately after grouting the tiles in, excess grout not yet sponged off

 

Above, the mortar lines are now grouted-in but the excess is not yet sponged-off. Getting a grout/tile colour match is essential to the finished look, because a precise match was a given back in the day. Matching tile and grout proved nowhere near as difficult as getting the replacement tiles cut to exact dimensions was. Also key was allowing for the slightly greater thickness of my replacement tiles when setting them in the new bed of mortar. As I said, ultimately it's comes down to the flow of choices in real time.

 

The brick surface shows clear signs of smoke-scorching when exposed

 

 

Once the hearth tiles had been restored, I could return to the issue of the brick surround. What was the appropriate course of remediation here? The picture above shows the result of my attempts to chip paint off and so regain a semblance of original brick, which resulted in an abused-brick-look that didn't withstand my scrutiny. It also reinforced a suspicion I had that there may have been a causal rationale for the original painting of the surround, which I reasoned had been done during the Savage's tenure (looking closely at the bricks above the firebox in the photo above, they do seem to have been stained considerably by smoke, which I can attest was a tendency of the fireplace as installed). Personally, I have never been comfortable with the abused-brick look on display in any number of brick heritage buildings (especially those where paint has been removed with chemicals, resulting in severe abrading of the outer edge of the bricks). So in the end, I elected to repaint the surround. Note (photo above) the patch lines where the original mortar had deteriorated due to heat effects, necessitating in-filling of these bands. Finding a filler that would adhere to the dry surfaces of brick and mortar was tricky, as both of these media quickly draw moisture from whatever compound one uses.

 

 

A coat of paint on the previously stripped bricks improves things enormously

 

Having chosen a colour for the fireplace surround in consultation with my design-partner Susan (also my wife) I began painting the stripped sections of brick in what we felt was a more compatible colour (photo above). I was immediately pleased with the results of this painting, and was keen to see the impact of a full coat (photo below).

 

 

A coat of paint reveals that the fireplace is consciously anthropomorphic

 

A full coat of paint clearly revealed that the fireplace had been contrived to embody facial features - which is to say, it was consciously designed to resemble (however abstractly) a discernable face. In fact, this face is so apparent that once you actually see it, you know it can only have been intentional. Perhaps it is a distant reference to an ancient spirit that was thought to inhabit hearths inside houses (say Vesta, for example, the traditional Roman hearth goddess, who also happened to be the Roman champion of domestic architecture). So perchance architect Hubert Savage embedded some sort of trope into his home's living room fireplace?

 

 

"Vesta is the same as the earth; both have the perennial fire: the Earth and the sacred Fire are both symbolic of home." Ovid, Fasti, 8 AD

 

 

Smiling now that the paint is going up, fully engaged in healing action

 

I drew intense satisfaction from disappearing that blank white coat of paint completely (pure white as a colour greets the eye as if the object has been undercoated, but is awaiting a finishing coat of paint that simply never arrives) the more so as this act served to refresh the appearance of a defining feature of the room. It is painstaking work to attempt this type of rescue - work best approached unhurriedly (say, on Sunday afternoons, during the long winter months, with copious glasses of good beer to grease any skid that requires it). The photo below shows me finishing up the second full coat of fresh paint.

 

 

Sunday afternoons, in winter, with copious craft beers: an ideal work space

 

Fireplace and mantle are once again an integrated whole, especially now that mirror, bookshelves, firebox floor, hearth and fireplace surround are all either restored or renewed. To my eye, the resulting ensemble keeps faith with the original character and feeling of the room that Hubert Savage designed way back in 1913, while accommodating necessary elements of change (painted brick surround, replacement tiles on the hearth, restored built-in mirror, adapted plaster panels under the frieze band, modern entertainment media, and so on). The cream colour adorning the brick fireplace now certainly has, to us at least, a warmer and cosier effect than the strident undercoat-white did. A funny thing about the whole white-painting business is that, as a rule, while white has nothing to say colour-wise, it nevertheless does call attention to itself brusquely.

 

 

To my eye at least, once more a unified whole

 

 

I hope this essay encourages those who care about heritage to try and establish a better balance between old and new in their own homes. As William Morris noted, echoing his mentor John Ruskin, it is far better to maintain buildings as one goes, by anticipating their needs and intervening promptly as needed, than it is to ignore and neglect them for years on end, only to have to find a way of rescuing and restoring them. Timely, discerning intervention is certainly the best response. So good luck to you with all of your projects. And remember, always look to establish a balance between the old and the new.

 

Books for Looks:

The best source of insight into the North American bungalow and its embedded values remains Robert Winter, The California Bungalow.

The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, by A.D. King is a totally informative global history of the bungalow building form, the first universal architecture. 

Homeplace: The Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries, by Peter Ennals and Deryck W. Holdsworth is also a very good read, with a chapter on bungalows in Vancouver and Victoria.

The evolution of the kitchen environment is covered in any number of articles, including: https://dustyoldthing.com/hoosier-history-photos/,  https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/products/the-rise-of-the-modern-kitchen, and https://20thcenturyhome.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/kitichens-1940s/

 

This article first appeared in my California Bungalow blog, in February of 2011. This was before I landed on the idea of a blog - Century Bungalow - to celebrate the Savage bungalow's persistence for one hundred years. The essay has been completely rewritten and edited for current times, and is now being published in Century Bungalow.

Any comments will reach me at cubbs@telus.net.