Okay, so I need to be upfront about something – I am definitely not a restoration expert. Like, at all. I work in social media marketing and live in a 400 square foot studio with one sad window. But I’ve become completely obsessed with historic home restoration content on Instagram and TikTok, and last month I finally got to see some of this work in person when I visited my friend Sarah upstate.
Sarah inherited this 1920s colonial revival house from her great-aunt, and she hired this restoration specialist who has been documenting the whole process on social media. I’d been following along for months, watching stories about finding original climbing hydrangea buried under years of overgrowth and working around Virginia creeper that had basically claimed the entire front of the house.
Standing in that overgrown garden with Sarah, I finally understood why all these restoration accounts I follow are constantly talking about “working with what’s already there.” The property had been empty for three years, but nature was doing its own thing – wild roses everywhere, vines climbing up the chimney, this massive hydrangea that somehow looked better than any of my carefully tended houseplants.
The restoration specialist Sarah hired – let’s call her Maria – has this whole philosophy about not fighting against what’s already established. She told us about another project where the homeowners kept apologizing for all the “weeds” in their yard, when actually they were native wildflowers that were helping improve the soil quality. Made me think about how many times I’ve seen people on Reddit asking how to get rid of plants that are probably doing important work.
What really struck me was how much patience this kind of work requires. Maria mentioned a Victorian farmhouse project that took eighteen months, and that’s apparently normal when you’re trying to work with both building systems and living plants. You can’t just install everything and expect it to look perfect immediately, which is so different from the instant gratification transformation content we’re used to seeing online.
Maria explained how she always spends days just observing a property before making any recommendations – watching how light moves through spaces, where moisture collects, how existing plants interact with the building structure. At Sarah’s house, she discovered that some “improvements” from the 1970s had actually disrupted the original ventilation system that the builders had designed into the foundation. Instead of installing expensive mechanical systems, they restored the original airflow patterns.
This is apparently what makes green restoration different from regular historic preservation – you’re not trying to create a museum, you’re creating a space where people actually live while respecting both the building’s history and environmental needs. Sometimes that means making compromises between authenticity and sustainability.
The window situation is a perfect example. Original single-pane windows are gorgeous but terrible for energy efficiency. Maria works with craftspeople who create custom storm windows that maintain the original look while improving thermal performance significantly. Way more expensive than just replacing everything with vinyl, but they’ll last another century and keep the character that makes these buildings special.
What really fascinated me was Maria’s approach to landscaping. Instead of researching what would have been historically accurate and starting over, she looks at what’s already thriving and builds from there. At Sarah’s place, the previous owner had been a gardener decades ago, and her plant choices were still revealing themselves through the overgrowth – lilac hedges still blooming despite years of neglect, peonies coming up through tall grass, this massive copper beech tree.
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Rather than imposing some Pinterest-perfect design vision, Maria worked with these survivors. The lilacs became natural privacy screening, the peonies got divided and relocated to create focal points, and that copper beech became the central organising element for the whole backyard design.
The restoration took eighteen months total, and Maria warned that it looks kind of rough for the first couple of seasons while everything establishes itself. But the results were incredible – the house felt like it had been exactly that way for decades, even though almost everything had been carefully restored or thoughtfully added. Sarah’s energy bills dropped 60% compared to the previous year, and she says the house just feels peaceful in a way it never did before.
I think that’s because this approach creates harmony between human needs and natural systems instead of fighting against the environment. The building stays cooler in summer because of strategic shade plantings and improved ventilation, warmer in winter because of windbreaks and thermal mass from natural materials.
One detail I thought was genius – they installed a rainwater collection system that looks like original gutters and downspouts but channels water to underground cisterns that irrigate all the planted areas. Sarah hasn’t had to use municipal water for landscaping since it went online.
Maria told me that every project teaches her something new about the relationship between buildings and their surroundings. Sometimes it’s technical discoveries, like certain native plants actually improving soil conditions for foundation stability.
Sometimes it’s aesthetic, like learning how stone surfaces change colour as lichens establish over time.
What she aims for is restoration work that feels inevitable, like you’ve simply helped the property become its most authentic self. When visitors assume everything has looked exactly the same for a hundred years, that’s success.
Obviously this kind of work isn’t cheap, and it requires way more patience than most renovation content suggests. But seeing Sarah’s place come alive – literally and figuratively – made me understand why people become obsessed with this approach to restoration. It’s not just about preserving old buildings; it’s about creating spaces where human needs and natural systems actually work together instead of competing.
I’m definitely still going to be following these restoration accounts obsessively, but now I have a much better appreciation for the complexity and time involved. And maybe someday when I’m not living in a tiny studio apartment, I’ll get to try some of these principles myself.
