In with the Old

The first two seasons were a breath of fresh air because it was every day people who were passionate about history and wanted to update the home to look like the home it was originally and stay true to the history, with a few upgrades in functionality for modern convenience. The third season is almost an advertisement for professionals, where they want an old home and make it modern, which seems to go against the title of the series, with the exception of Jeff Devlin, as he does respect the history and does it professionally and has a show that highlights it. Making old homes modern is a delicate balance, which most people get. Hopefully season 4 will go back to that.

While this show doesn't show the slow, arduous process and pitfalls, they do acknowledge the drudgery of it multiple times. Old homes are hand built and there wasn't standards like today, but that's what gives them character. This show does a decent job highlighting that.

The show is nicely paced, the hosts are the homeowners, and it's divided into 3 distinct sections. It's a calm show to watch on weekends, though hearing more about the history would be nice.

Watched this expecting to see old/historic homes being renovated with an eye toward retaining the historic look and feel of the house, similar to This Old House projects. Instead, for example, I see them destroy every bit of charm from a beautiful Cape Cod brick house and turn it into a shame to look at. Typical to a lot of shows, it starts talking about how horrible the shape of the house is and really all you see are a house that needs the trim stripped/painted, new roof, and landscaping cleanup on the outside as well as minor reno on the inside. The example house winds up the host's personal vision of a modernized style-less thing. If you want to see someone retain all the charm of truly old homes, watch Nicole Curtis on Rehab Addict.

The first episode was a real missed opportunity in what they shared about the adobe bricks. That is a technique created by indigenous people and the expert they had teaching them about it made it seem like it only came from the pioneers. I'd have loved to see some history there and not just a white-washed version. There is a whole lot of rich history in the US and I'd love to see more than just a narrow perspective of wealthy white influencers, we already get so much of that perspective all of the time. No shade to the designer, just thought this was a missed opportunity and wanted to voice this somewhere.

It's a shame to watch something that's outlined as being sensitive to old houses and their history, yet the show is filled with trendy, wanna be influencers who destroy so many perfectly good original features of all of these places. Original beadboard, tile, plumbing fixtures, windows and more is all destined for the landfill so these hipsters can get the latest Chinese made trend they've seen on Instagram and purchased at HHome Depot. Painful to watch as you realize that most of these girls are eyeing a potential hosting gig with Magnilia Network who produced the show. You see them creating look and learn projects for no other reason than to play TV host. No husbands, partners, or other experts/consultants seem to be willing yo say anything to slow these girls down from their own, personal old house destruction. This is original fabric that cannot be returned. The hippest, greenest way to restore a house is to KEEP as many original fixtures, finishes, etc as possible.

I literally made an IMDB account just to write a review on this show. It passes itself off as a revivalist/restoration home renovation show. But honestly all it does is exhibit obnoxiously pretentious people that basically modernize beautiful historic homes into these ugly Pinterest-esque monstrosities. I love historic homes and vintage/antique things in general and this show is insulting. The only reason I gave this show a rating of 4/10 rather than a 1/10 is because of the beginning of each episode that shows the original state of the featured home and the history behind it. Other than that it just aggravates me.