 Four words describe the method of this book
The four words are "Spend lots of money".
I suppose it should be assumed that if you want to build a new house that looks old, you have to spend more money than for a comparable 'new' new house. But I doubt any of these houses could be built for less than $1 million and several, much more. More to the point, I suspect the cost per sq.ft is probably triple what a typical modern house would cost. Still, it is nice to see what can be done when money is no object and the goal is to build a home that takes it architectural cues from the past. The pictures are well done and impressive in many cases.
I was surprised how many of the houses are not really new houses at all but were restorations. I would have preferred more of the former since to me, the initial challenge is to choose a floorplan and style that feels old and I would like to see how that is done. Another disappointment was how the kitchens were dealt with since that is the area of the house that has changed the most over the years. In most cases, the functionality of the kitchen was secondary to keeping the room historically accurate. Since many of the periods they were reproducing were before the turn of the 20th century, that leaves a lot of conveniences behind and seems impractical if you are going to actually live in the house.
The book does provide general guidance in the form of the 'pillars of traditional design'. However, most people will not be in a position to follow more than half of them and unless you want to create a museum piece, you probably don't need to.
Perhaps there is a book out there for middle class folks who like older style homes and want to either restore or build a new one, but this is not it.
 Wonderful Architectural Resource
"New Old House" is an excellent resource for any architectural or interior designer that might be embarking on the renovation of an old house! Gorgeous photography and excellent text... I strongly recommend this beautiful book!
 I used this book a lot...
My husband and I recently built a new old house...We were shooting for an 1830 half cape that looked as though it had been remodeled in 1860. We started with some good plans, and then went to work on the 'little stuff'. I found myself flagging page after page to show our contractor. The success of a reproduction is in the tiny details. Add them all up and you get a new house that looks old. (this window trim, this bathroom sink, this eave trim, this mantle, etc.) This book was one of our two favorite sources of ideas. The chapters were broken up into various house styles. Not all of them were applicable to us, but there were plenty that were.
Creating a New Old House...
Very beautiful book, well written, and satisfied my yearning for old houses. I am restroring a 1960 Cape and I was able to cull many ideas from this book. Highly recommend this book, and the photography and room settings are great!
Not what I was expecting!
My husband and I are thinking about building a colonial revival home. I was hoping this book would give more examples of what it really takes to make a new house old. What I found was that there was one BRIEF example of each different architectual style with a very general description. There wasn't much to sink our teeth into. The pictures were pretty, but
the information was too general.
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