Cause of loss: a fireplace that started a house fire. Style direction: a classical feel suited to a home built in the 1880s.
Restoring a house from the 1880s after a fire is a different problem from restoring a modern one. The measure of success is not how good the new work looks — it is whether anyone can tell which work is new. Two custom fireplaces and the metal ceiling in the ballroom all had to come back as they were, not as close approximations.
That is slower than replacement and it is most of what this project was. Much of the house was returned to exact pre-fire condition, detail by detail, while the fire and smoke restoration work went on around it.
The compensation for that patience is what happens behind the finishes. A fire opens up walls and systems that a century-old house would otherwise never have reason to expose, and everything the work reached was brought up to current code on the way back through. The bathroom was the one room allowed to move forward rather than back, with new fixtures, tile, and a shower replacing what had been there.
Restoring historic homes across the city — see our St. Paul restoration services.
Before & After
Before
After
Before
After