Saving the ‘Burg: A 100-Year-Old Old Southeast Bungalow, Rebuilt to Stand Another Hundred

The clients came to Revolution with a full interior and exterior remodel needed on a hundred-year-old wood-frame bungalow in Old Southeast. A new roof. A good amount of electrical work. A good amount of plumbing work with layout changes. Structural issues that had to be both replaced and reinforced before any of the finish work could even start. A frame house with old wood windows, original siding, and the kind of bones you cannot find in a current catalog.

That’s the brief.

The Frame Underneath

You don’t get to put a heavy kitchen island on a century-old floor and just hope. Before any visible finishes happened, our crew worked through the home’s structural problems methodically — replacing what had to be replaced, reinforcing what could be saved. The kitchen floor needed reinforcing for the heavy island the new layout called for. The attic needed structural framing with new trusses, and the floor system above the main level needed work on joists and supporting piers.

The rest of the house came along the same way: structural repairs and improvements throughout, so the new design could live on the existing frame instead of fighting it.

This is the unsexy part of historic restoration. It is also the part that decides whether the house lasts.

Windows — What to Keep, What to Match

The wood windows got the case-by-case treatment. We kept some of the originals and replaced others with windows that had the same size and a similar muntin grille — close enough that a passerby would not see a mismatch and an architectural historian would not flinch.

This is the standard we apply on every historic remodel: keep what’s still doing its job, match what isn’t.

The Fireplace, Re-Cast

The single biggest design move on the project was the fireplace.

In the original layout, the fireplace was, as Brent on our team put it, “kind of just buried in the kitchen.” Our crew opened up the walls around it — which required new structural framing, because the walls coming out were doing load work the original builder counted on. The fireplace now sits between the kitchen and the living room: a central feature, a hearth in the literal sense, separating the rooms but tying them together.

It’s the kind of move that reads as obvious in the finished house and is anything but obvious before the first wall comes out.

Historic Finishes, Not Historic Pastiche

The finishes do the work of tying the renovation back to the home’s period without pretending to be original.

We matched some of the old historic flooring. Trim and cabinets got what Brent described as a “rustic flare” — pulling the new millwork into the same family as the original woodwork rather than dropping a sleek contemporary kitchen into a century-old house. Siding repairs and replacements were matched to the original profile so the house reads continuous from the curb.

The goal on a project like this is never to make a new house that looks old. The goal is to repair an old house honestly and let the new work — where it has to be new — sit comfortably alongside the original.

Why It Got Recognized

Preserve the ‘Burg recognized this project with their 2025 Whole Home Remodel award. The recognition is meaningful because Preserve the ‘Burg’s mission is exactly the line we tried to walk: keeping St. Pete’s historic homes intact and useful for another generation, not turning them into period dioramas and not bulldozing them for new builds.

The award is for what the house is now: a hundred-year-old Old Southeast bungalow that still has its frame, its windows, its woodwork — and a kitchen, a fireplace, a roof, and mechanical systems that will carry it forward.

See more projects on our case studies index.