Buying a historic home can be a leap of faith; many people are unfamiliar with the particular challenges of an older building.  Do you know what you need to know before jumping in?  Here are a few things you should know as well as some things you should and shouldn't do.  Give it a read before you buy and renovate a historic home.

What, you thought it was that easy ?  Nope.  Those were just the basics.  What, you've already bought the house?  Well, good for you.  Time to get serious about this.  Unless you want to just hand the project off to someone else (like Work5hop!), historic preservation and renovation are hands-on, in-depth projects.  Once you get deeply into it, you'll run across situations that you never imagined.  I've tried to lay out a few of them here.

220 West Fair Oaks is an Alamo Heights home built in the 1940s.  Work5hop collaborated with with Homes by Estate, a local interior design firm, on a comprehensive renovation and addition.  Click through for photos by CraigMac Visuals.  Plan by Work5hop.

A lot of people these days are reconsidering where they live in the city and what the tradeoffs are for choosing center-city living in terms of affordable space.  If you're thinking along those lines, read on for our thoughts about what's important in a smaller home.

Maybe you've read our articles on right-sizing your house, renovating a historic property, or table design and thought to yourself "these guys sound like they know what they're talking about.  I want them to work on my [fill in the blank]."  Well, great.  We're in.  Please contact us.  But if you have questions about the design and construction process, then this series of articles is for you.  We're going to walk through the process of hiring a designer, designing your project, hiring and working with a contractor, and completion.

We're a very design-centric firm, but part of design is a deeper understanding of concepts at work. That sometimes leads us a bit further afield than "look at this pretty picture" into the realm of numbers and analysis.  The intersection of design, home ownership, and economics is an interesting one.  First, let's talk about economics and owning a house, then we'll look at ties between design and the latter two concepts in a future post.  Homeownership has declined nation-wide in the past several decades.  As owning a home remains a dream of many and the level of homeownership is viewed as an indication of economic conditions, this is an important metric.  We're going to evaluate that situation from the construction and real estate side.