Renovating an older Park Cities home

What these houses actually are

The Park Cities — Highland Park and University Park — are two independent municipalities entirely surrounded by the City of Dallas. Much of the housing stock dates from the 1920s through the 1940s, with substantial later infill and a continuing pattern of renovation and rebuilding. Preston Hollow developed somewhat later and at a larger scale, with bigger lots and, often, bigger rooms.

What that means practically:

• Nothing is square, plumb or level. Not as a defect — as a consequence of age, settlement and hand construction. Cabinetry, tile and millwork all have to absorb it, which is why custom millwork so often makes sense in these homes.
• Rooms were built for a different life. Closed kitchens with a service entrance, small closets, one bathroom for several bedrooms, no family room. Most renovations are, at heart, an attempt to reconcile that plan with how people live now.
• The construction quality is often excellent. Old-growth framing lumber, real plaster, solid doors. This is the reason to renovate rather than replace, and worth respecting.
• Several previous renovations have already happened. Each left something behind — a rerouted pipe, an added circuit, a wall that used to be somewhere else. This is where surprises come from.

The four things to establish first

1. Foundation type

Pier-and-beam gives you a crawl space, which makes rerouting plumbing and running new services comparatively straightforward. A slab — and particularly a post-tension slab — means any drain relocation involves cutting concrete, with care required to avoid tensioning cables. This single fact changes the cost of moving a toilet or a kitchen sink by an order of magnitude, so establish it before drawing a layout that depends on moving either.

Foundation movement is also a normal feature of North Texas clay soils. Doors that stick and hairline cracks are common; significant differential movement is not, and is worth a structural engineer's opinion before you spend money on finishes that will crack again.

2. Electrical service and wiring

Look at the panel. An older home may still have a service sized for a household with far fewer appliances, and adding a modern kitchen, a media room and HVAC can exceed it. Also identify the wiring type: knob-and-tube in the oldest properties, or aluminum branch wiring in some mid-century work, both of which have implications for safety, insurance and cost. Old two-prong outlets without a ground are a reliable sign that at least part of the house has never been updated.

If a panel upgrade or rewiring is needed, plan it as part of the project rather than discovering it mid-build, because it affects the schedule of every trade behind it.

3. Plumbing material

Galvanized steel supply lines corrode from the inside and restrict flow long before they leak; cast-iron drains have a finite life. If you are opening walls anyway, that is the cheapest moment you will ever have to replace them. Ask for a camera inspection of the main drain line before finalizing the budget — it is inexpensive and it prevents the single most disruptive mid-project discovery.

4. Whether previous work was permitted

An unpermitted addition or converted garage becomes your problem when you apply for a permit. Check the city records for your address early. It is far better to know at the planning stage, when the scope can absorb it, than at inspection.

Common surprises, and what they cost you in time

None of these are reasons not to renovate. They are reasons to plan a contingency and to open walls for investigation early, rather than discovering everything at once on demolition day. On a house of this age, an exploratory opening during design is money extremely well spent.

Who issues permits in the Park Cities?

This trips up homeowners and out-of-area contractors constantly. Highland Park and University Park are separate towns. They issue their own permits, set their own requirements and run their own inspections. A Preston Hollow or North Dallas address falls under the City of Dallas, which is a different process again.

What to confirm before you schedule anything:

• Which jurisdiction your address is actually in — confirm rather than assume, as boundaries are not always obvious
• What work requires a permit, and which trades must be separately permitted
• Current review timelines, which vary considerably through the year
• Whether contractor registration with that municipality is required
• Any rules on working hours, street parking, dumpster placement, tree protection and construction site conditions — these are enforced in the Park Cities and fines are real
• Whether the property has any historic or conservation-district considerations

Your contractor normally handles the applications, but you should know what was applied for and see the approved permit. Ask for it.

Modernizing without stripping the character out

The characteristic failure in older-home renovation is not ugliness — it is erasure. The house ends up perfectly nice and no longer itself. A few principles that prevent it:

• Open selectively, not comprehensively. Removing every wall produces a large room with no rooms in it. The usual sweet spot is connecting the kitchen to one family space while keeping formal rooms defined.
• Match trim profiles. Take a section of existing trim to the millworker. Replicated profile plus matched paint is what makes new work read as original.
• Respect the proportion system. Older houses have a consistent relationship between door heights, window heights and ceiling heights. New openings that ignore it are the detail people notice without knowing why.
• Keep the plaster where you can. Real plaster has a depth and slight irregularity that drywall does not. Repairing it is a specialist skill and worth sourcing.
• Update the systems ruthlessly, the surfaces respectfully. Nobody has ever regretted new wiring, new plumbing, insulation or a properly sized HVAC system. Character lives in what you see, not in what is inside the walls.
• Let the new be new. Where you are adding something the house never had — a large glazed opening, a modern bathroom — a confident, deliberate contrast usually ages better than a fake-period pastiche.

What is worth keeping, restoring or replacing?

That last row is worth dwelling on. A great many Park Cities renovations turn out to be, in large part, the removal of a previous renovation. Before designing anything new, find out what the house originally was — sometimes the best move is uncovering rather than adding.

Jan Revels

ASID Allied Professional Interior Designer · Chateau Concepts, Dallas

Jan has practiced interior design in Dallas since 1997 and founded Chateau Concepts in 2001. She holds a BFA in Interior Design from the University of North Texas. She designs and general-contracts residential and commercial projects across the Park Cities, Preston Hollow and North Dallas. Read her full profile →

Written and reviewed by Jan Revels before publication