Hooked on Houses

Julia from Hooked on Houses is hosting house tours today. There are so many beautiful homes, interiors & exteriors, from which to get inspiration! Click on the beautiful button, designed by Laura from Fifi Flowers, to go to the list of all the participants and check them out, too. Don't forget to leave a comment!

I don't have any interior pictures, but I live in a town full of historic homes. Most are maintained beautifully, with classic paint colors and gardens, and are still single-family homes, even though they are large. I decided to focus on homes from the Victorian era for this tour.

A group of very large, Victorian-era homes sits above this rock retaining wall. The homes look down on a small local college, which is also made up of many beautiful old homes that are now offices, classrooms, etc. What I find very interesting is that from this side of the homes, there are no driveways, only steps from the street to the homes. Carriages would drop people off out front, and go around back to put away the horse and buggy. This means that the people who live here now, have driveways that go right up to their back doors/kitchens. How easy to bring in the groceries!

This house sits on a fairly busy street, as do most historic homes in my area. In the early morning when I am driving to work, the homeowners are out having their coffee on the porch. As an historic Victorian home, this doesn't have a lot of scroll work or other interesting architectural details. BUT, if you look at the two windows on the left of the side of the house, you will see giraffes peering out at you! There is no window there, it is just painted to look like a window. At some point they must have reconfigured the inside of the home and not wanted those 2 windows. All of the others seem to be replacements that were done in the last 20 years. The family that lives in this home is very fortunate. They are on a side street which is pretty quiet, and they still have plenty of land behind the house. Often, historic homes have newer homes built very close to them as families sold off their land over the years.

This home was a DUMP and the current owners have worked on it for over a year. I'd love to see what they did with the inside. I like everything about the outside except the star. They are really getting over used in our area of the country, plus it's not very Victorian.Wouldn't you love to host a garden party in this house? Or sit up in that tower reading & writing? Even though this is technically not just a home, the family lives on the top 2 floors and the business is on the first floor. Can you guess what the business is?For my final home I have 2 pictures so you can really see the beautiful millwork. This house sits right on Main St. across from the town common. It has been for sale off and on for 2 years.
Again, don't forget to visit Julia at Hooked on Houses to see her house tour as well as that of the other participants. And, you might also want to take some time to visit Laura from Fifi Flowers, the artist and decorator who painted this awesome button from a picture Julia gave her!