Dec. 30
This New “Old” House
By Lynn Byrne. Those of you who have read my “About” section know that my house burned to the ground in 2001. It happened just 6 days after 9/11 and 10 days after our closing. Of course, it seemed as if the whole world was caving in. Fortunately for us, we hadn’t moved in yet, so we didn’t lose our stuff. Still, it was a big deal. We lost the top 2 floors to fire and the bottom 2 floors to water damage (the fired burned for 4+ hours and we had 5 feet of water in the basement.) The hard part was arriving at an insurance settlement. It took until the following spring.
Once we did get our settlement, however, the whole building process became very exciting. The original house had suffered though lots of “remuddling” over the years and lost a lot of detail. Paul Osmolskis, our fine architect, and I had a lot of fun re-imagining how the house “could” have looked when it was built. We fixed the terrible remodels and added a lot of detail made to look as if it had always been there.
Here is the house as it looked c. 1915. 
This is how the back of the house looked pre-fire. 
Here is the house after it was rebuilt. We have since done a lot of landscaping. 
We added the stone arches to support a new kitchen addition. 
Things looked bleak shortly after the fire. That’s me wearing the mask–there was a lot of small debris in the air. 
This photo is blue because the house was covered with a blue tarp. 
That is me out front right before our builder, Rick Marino, started the big process of demolishing the damaged parts. 
This is what we were left with after the damaged sections were cleared out and our builder was ready to put the place back together again. The view from the back is the most dramatic. 
Here is the house as it was being framed. 
Building the stone arches. Most people today can’t tell that they are new.
About the only thing from the house pre-fire that survived is the stone fireplace. The stairs in the background were temporary. 
Those objects lying on their side are my new stairs before installation. 
Here is how the fireplace and new staircase looked shortly after we moved in. 
Take a look at my kitchen before the fire. It was number one on the list for a redo. The shot afterwards is how the kitchen looks today. I certainly made out on that one. 
Another wonderful improvement is this fireplace wall. The first shot is the before. The second is after construction. 
In the end, we were able to take a terrible event and turn it into a wonderful home for our family. For more shots of my house you can click on the “About” section and follow the link to my portfolio. Paul Osmolskis also has shots of the house on his website. Click here to be redirected to it. There are a lot of other cool houses on his site too.
Most photographs are by Paul Osmolskis. Builder, Rick Marino, and I also took some of the photos. We thank the previous owners of our home for passing down the c.1915 photograph.
