Homestead

Rejuvenation

Best new old-house fixtures

Our family has owned three houses in the past 12 years. All have been older homes. Our current home was built in 1911. As you’d expect, old homes take some work.We’re fortunate enough to live near the Portland, OR, Rejuvenation storefront (there’s one in Seattle, too), which stocks everything that’s in the catalog, and then some. They’ve even got a decent selection of architectural salvage like old doors, mantelpieces, and other old house ephemera.

If you’re a little farther away, you’ll want to get your hands on a copy of the Rejuvenation catalog. The catalog is primarily focused on period lighting products, but also has a solid selection of period hardware, bath items, and other fixtures for old houses. The company takes great pains to recreate authentic pieces and assembles most of their lighting pieces in their Portland factory. Their range of recreation runs from the Victorian era right up through the funky 1970s. I’ve long loved their Sunset fixture (pictured), but have never quite been able to convince my wife that it fits our house.

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The fixtures and other parts manufactured by Rejuvenation aren’t cheap, either in quality or cost. These are the real deal, made with painstaking detail. In addition to awesome old house lighting, the catalogs contain a wide range of hard-to-source doorknobs.

In addition to being an excellent supplier of new old house parts, Rejuvenation is an outstanding corporate citizen. The company started back in the ’70s as an architectural salvage store, with just a couple of guys tearing apart old houses and selling what they could to folks fixing up other old houses. Today the company employs over 200 people from 21 countries, and they donate 10% of their after-tax profits to help support the communities where their employees live.

Rejuvenation supplies what I need to fix up our old house, but it’s also a company that I can feel really good about patronizing. Be sure to check out their blog for some good project inspiration.

-- Brendon Connelly [also recommended by Erik Knutzen] 04/22/10

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