There is a strange idea that sometimes comes with owning an old house: that respecting its history means preserving everything exactly as it was. It doesn't work that way, and treating it like it does usually does the house a disservice. A home built in 1889 was...
I have some exciting news! Studio Olio has received two honors in BUILD Magazine's 2026 Architecture Awards. Studio Olio was named Historic Home Renovation Design Firm of the Year 2026 – Colorado, and our 1889 Victorian Bathroom Renovation in Richmond, Virginia...
If you read Part 1, you know what this bathroom became. What you don’t know is what it took to get there. This is the part that doesn’t make the reveal photos — the decisions, the pivots, the trades that are harder and harder to find, and the work that happened before...
A Victorian kitchen renovation that feels original to the house doesn't announce itself, and that's the point. It doesn't have a moment where you walk in and register that something dramatic happened here — no before-and-after reveal energy, no design feature reaching...
There is a particular quality of clarity that comes from a room stripped to its studs — not emptiness exactly, but honesty. You can see how the house was built and what decisions were made along the way, which ones were careful and which ones were expedient, which...
The biggest surprise for most homeowners isn't the cost of finishes. It's what happens when walls are opened and a century of previous decisions are revealed. Knob-and-tube wiring that someone once extended with romex and electrical tape. A drain line running through...
This Victorian home renovation began with understanding why the additions never quite belonged. An 1889 Victorian home in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood had everything going for it — ten-foot ceilings, intact millwork, and a layout that still largely made...
Historic home renovation in Denver · Kitchen design There's a moment in every renovation when the room stops being a project and starts being a place. In this kitchen it happened somewhere between the first morning I sat at the island with coffee — made with actual...
The Build: What It Actually Takes to Renovate a 1911 Kitchen There is a version of a kitchen renovation that exists in renderings — clean lines, finishes selected, everything in its place. And then there is the version that exists before that one, where the walls are...
Before anything gets built, there's a period where the room exists only on paper — and the job is to find the layout that stops arguing with itself. For this kitchen, that took five iterations before I got to two concepts worth presenting. A room with three bay...