Restoring a century home

I moved around a lot as a kid, so making a home has meant a lot to me. My wife and I found ours: a century-old house in Morehead Hill, a historic district in the heart of downtown Durham. Bringing it back has been a passion project for both of us.

After: the house painted a deep green-gray with white trim, Hurricanes flags on the porch, and a planted front yard. — Same porch, same brick piers, same rooflines. Drag to compare. Before image: Google Street View.

Before: the same house in white siding with a bare dirt yard and a truck in the drive. — Same porch, same brick piers, same rooflines. Drag to compare. Before image: Google Street View.

Recognition

In April 2026 the Durham Historic Preservation Commission recognized our restoration of the Bishop-Christian House, built around 1904.

The work

Keep the shell. The house was falling apart when we bought it. We kept the exterior walls and the roof, and gutted most of the interior.
Reuse what we found. Taking it apart turned up a lot of original material, including tongue-and-groove wood on the ceilings and walls. We refurbished the ceilings, and the wall boards became the new floor in one of the bedrooms.
Add room to live. Later we built a garage and an accessory dwelling unit behind the house.
Uncover the original siding. Finally, we pulled off the vinyl siding and windows and found the original wood siding underneath. We stripped the lead paint from every board, put new structural sheathing and a water barrier on the walls, added insulation, and reinstalled and repainted the original boards. The house got its character back, along with the insulation and structural strength it had been missing.
Choose period colors. We picked a palette from historically appropriate schemes for a house of its age and style.

Why restore

Most of what made this house worth saving was still there, under the vinyl and under the paint. The work was finding it and bringing it back instead of writing over it. It's the same instinct I bring to data: the signal is usually in there somewhere. You just have to be patient enough to recover it.