Preparing a Historic Home for Renovation

Start with the building, not the design

The most productive thing you can do before a historic renovation begins isn't to pick finishes or browse cabinet hardware. It's to understand what the building is actually doing — structurally, mechanically, and historically — before you touch it.

This is especially true in New Orleans, where the housing stock includes some of the oldest continuously occupied residential buildings in North America. A shotgun double on Esplanade, a Creole cottage in Tremé, a raised bungalow in Mid-City — each carries a century or more of layered decisions that affect how you can responsibly renovate it. Reading that history before you begin is what separates a renovation that feels right from one that fights you at every turn.

What to assess first

Foundation and structure

The pier-and-beam foundations common in New Orleans are generally forgiving and repairable, but they need to be looked at with a good set of eyes before any serious work begins. Signs of differential settlement — doors that no longer hang plumb, floors that slope noticeably, walls that have separated from the ceiling — should be documented and, in some cases, addressed before interior renovation work starts. Opening floors and walls over a compromised foundation can accelerate problems.

We typically recommend having a foundation specialist walk older homes before we begin work. Not because every house needs foundation repair — many don't — but because understanding the baseline means the structural work and the renovation work can be sequenced correctly.

The original framing

Longleaf pine and cypress are the framing materials in most pre-WWII New Orleans homes, and they're genuinely exceptional. Longleaf heart pine is harder than modern kiln-dried pine and largely resistant to rot and insect damage. Old-growth cypress is similarly durable in wet conditions. When you open a wall in a house like this and find that the framing has held for a hundred years without significant deterioration, that's not an accident — it's a material performing as it was designed to perform.

That said, earlier work done on the house may have introduced complications: sistered studs, notched framing for pipes, headers that don't carry load the way they appear to. We document what we find as we go.

Mechanical systems

Pre-1960 homes often have some combination of original galvanized plumbing, knob-and-tube or early cloth-wrapped wiring, and gravity-based HVAC (or no HVAC at all in homes that predate central air). None of this is automatically disqualifying — much of it can be retained or replaced incrementally — but it needs to be assessed honestly as part of the project scope.

A common mistake is scoping a kitchen or bathroom renovation without accounting for what's behind the walls. The cost difference between "we discovered this mid-project" and "we planned for this from the start" is substantial.

Permits and the HDLC

In New Orleans, work on contributing structures within a local historic district requires review by the Historic District Landmarks Commission (HDLC) in addition to standard building permits. The specific requirements depend on what you're doing and where the work faces — exterior modifications that are visible from the street receive the most scrutiny, while work on rear additions or interior changes generally doesn't require HDLC review.

We've navigated this process many times and have a clear sense of what requires a Certificate of Appropriateness, what can be permitted administratively, and what's exempt from HDLC review entirely. A few things worth knowing:

• Window replacement in a historic district requires HDLC approval if the windows face the street. The commission will generally require preservation of the original window profile and material type. This affects specification and cost.
• New additions — including rear additions that are common in shotgun homes — are subject to design review. Setback, height, and material compatibility are the main considerations.
• Decorative exterior elements like porch railings and cornices are reviewed carefully. Replacement-in-kind with similar materials is the standard pathway.

The HDLC process adds time — typically four to eight weeks for a standard approval. We factor this into our project scheduling and start the process well before demo is scheduled.

Common surprises in historic renovation

Even careful pre-renovation assessment leaves room for discovery once the walls open. The ones we encounter most often:

• Plaster that's lost its key. The original horsehair plaster in many New Orleans homes is beautiful and worth preserving where possible, but sections that have separated from the lath will need to come down. Patching historic plaster to match existing texture is skilled work.
• Evidence of earlier alterations. Older renovation work — subdivided rooms, dropped ceilings covering original height, added partitions — may not have been permitted or may have introduced structural complications that need untangling.
• Inadequate insulation. Homes built before air conditioning was common weren't designed with vapor barriers or cavity insulation. Adding insulation to a historic home in a Gulf Coast climate requires careful attention to moisture management — the wrong approach can trap condensation in walls that were designed to breathe.
• Lead paint and asbestos. Both are common in pre-1978 homes and require testing and, where present, proper abatement or encapsulation. We handle this through licensed sub-contractors and include the testing cost in our pre-construction scope.

The preparation mindset

The best historic renovations we've worked on have one thing in common: the homeowner and contractor had a realistic picture of the building before the scope was finalized. That doesn't mean predicting every surprise — it means building a project budget and schedule that can absorb reasonable discovery without going off the rails.

A historic New Orleans home is an unusual thing to steward. The materials are often superior to what we'd build with today; the proportions and character are products of a regional tradition with real depth. The goal of a thoughtful renovation isn't to update the house away from what it was. It's to repair what needs repair, update what genuinely needs updating, and leave the rest better than you found it.