The Rural Voice, 1993-10, Page 40Rural Living
Polishing
the jewel
Restoration architect
John Rutledge tells
how to keep the faith
with your classic
farm house
By Keith Roulston
How many times have rural
people said it when thcy
looked at an expensive
antique table or chair, an
old crock or a delicate old dish with a
fancy modern price: "I used to have
one of those .... if only I hadn't
thrown it out."
When it comes to old farm homes,
whether elegant or stolid, many
people arc still throwing out their
precious antiques through a lack of
knowledge about the true story
behind the building of houses like
theirs.
John Rutledge, a Goderich
architect, has worked all over Ontario
restoring early -Ontario houses and
public buildings. His work has been
featured in Century Home magazine.
Recently he talked about how you
can make your home comfortable for
modern times while preserving the
original beauty.
Most of the older houses that
grace western Ontario's farm land,
Rutledge says, date from a time of
the "master carpenter", craftsmen
who had a strong knowledge of
architectural principles as well as
how to do carpentry.
The homes of the era were
indirectly professionally designed, he
says. There were catalogues and
books of home plans and pattern
books available to builders that not
only gave house plans, but also
outlined each specific style and gave
details on how to enhance the style of
the house. (Eatons even had complete
36 THE RURAL VOICE
packages of houses that would be
sent with the lumber already cut.)
Most builders of the period knew
enough about the basic architectural
traditions to stay within the
boundaries, he said.
People renovating or adding to
their traditional house today should
respect tradition and not get too
involved with fashion. "A well built,
well designed and well crafted
building will hold its own for a long
period of time," Rutledge says.
People who use items that aren't true
to the original period of the building
will date their house. He notes the
popularity of semi -circular windows
at the present moment which, he
says, are being overused and
misused. These windows will, in
future when they are no longer in
fashion, date a renovation to the early
1990s. "When you apply fashionable
items you start muddling up the
original character of your house."
Instead, Rutledge says, work with
what you have. Often samples of the
detail work that will spruce up your
house are already on your house
somewhere and you can build on
that. "Then it looks like it belongs to
the time period when the house was
built rather than today's fashion."
Rutledge has some surprising
advice for people he designs
additions for. Often, he says, modem
owners want to make their houses too
perfect. In the early homes there was
a definite hierarchy of style in the
house from front to back and lower
John Rutledge: classic designs last.
floors to upper. While the tendency
of the modern owner is to make an
addition the same quality outside as
the front of the original building, that
actually isn't true to the period of
most homes. In an early stone house,
Rutledge says, the front wall might
be made of impeccably finished
dressed stone while the sides and
back were less finished with cut
stone. That was because most people
didn't have money to do everything
perfectly at the time so they spent the
money at the front of the house
where it would show. While there are
a few houses that have the same
quality of work on all parts of the
house, for most houses "it's not
historically appropriate to have
everything perfect".
That's one of the reasons he also
discourages people with brick
houses from putting on brick
additions. For one thing, there's a
practical problem with matching the
brick used in the original building.
For another, there's the original
hierarchy of the building. Generally
as you went to the back of the
building the surfaces became less
expensive. At the back of the house
might be a kitchen, then a smaller
and plainer summer kitchen, then a
woodshed and so on, each becoming
smaller and more like an outbuilding.
The back part of the house might be
board and batten or wooden shingle
on the outside. Using these