This Victorian Home Got Its Historic Look Back for Less Than You’d Think (Goodbye, Dated Stone!)
There’s perhaps nothing dreamier than a spacious porch, especially when the weather’s nice — at least according to Kevin Reid-Morris (@readmorehouse) and his wife, Sarah. “We really just love a good porch and are strong believers that porches and street-facing outdoor spaces are one of the hallmark characteristics of lively, safe, and socially healthy neighborhoods,” Kevin says.
In terms of their own home, which had “big sandstone blocks while the rest of the house was primarily wood siding and ornate details,” he says, “we wanted the porch back!”
An unexpected tool in this transformation? City archives.
He did away with the enclosed stone porch and re-created a “porch [that] looks as if it’s been standing here for 120 years, but underneath it meets and even exceeds code and engineering requirements,” he says. As he puts it, doing so involved becoming “part historian and part detective,” with some help from his dad, an engineer, and a few professionals, along the way.
“It started when I cut into the enclosed ceiling and discovered original tongue-and-groove boards,” he says. “That was the first physical proof the house had once had a proper Victorian porch. From there, I dug into our town and region’s archives and found a 1908 photograph that, while grainy, showed part of the original porch.”
There are historic wood details.
Kevin’s neighbor let him take measurements of her porch, which gave him historic, authentic dimensions to work from. He cut, sanded, and painted 44 decorative brackets and corbels made from scrap wood from the rest of the home.
He referenced architectural catalogs from the late 1800s and early 1900s. He sourced porch posts from a historic home in Toronto that was torn down. He used thermally treated white ash for the porch’s flooring, “a modern but eco-friendly material that gives the look of old hardwood boards,” he explains.
The hardest part was ensuring a firm foundation.
Restoring a 120-year-old porch, of course, involves working with city departments to make sure things are historically accurate and up to code for 2025. “It was intimidating at first, but the process turned out to be collaborative,” Kevin says. “The town staff were supportive, even helping me figure out clever solutions like hiding modern steel brackets underneath the porch so the structure was reinforced but still looked authentic.”
The old fieldstone structure “was strong, but irregular, uneven, and unlike anything used today,” Kevins says. “Figuring out how to anchor a modern structure onto it was a real puzzle.”
After the build, the design details came together quickly.
When they were first painting the porch, Kevin and Sarah used “a basic out-of-the-can white” paint for the posts and trim to match their white vinyl siding, but this fall, they plan to replace the vinyl with real wood siding, “and the house body and trim will revert to a much softer Benjamin Moore White Dove,” Kevin says.
The couple picked a light blue (Farrow & Ball’s Borrowed Light) for the porch ceiling “ a nod to the blue porches we came to love while visiting historic neighborhoods in Charleston, South Carolina,” Kevin says. The door and shutters are Benjamin Moore’s Black, and the porch chairs are from CB2.
“I feel like the house is finally showing its true face again!” Kevin says. “Of course, the best part is getting to spend time out there with Sarah and Joey.” Joey is their standard poodle, and they’ll soon share the porch with a fourth member of the family, their soon-to-arrive baby!
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