Floors, walls, trim and paint in Horsham

Horsham's oldest house is the Keith House at Graeme Park, built in the early 1720s for Sir William Keith, Pennsylvania's colonial governor. Most of the township is far newer. After the war, building spread along Easton Road and County Line Road, and the population more than doubled in a decade, from about 3,700 in 1950 to nearly 9,000 in 1960. The northwest end, out toward Prospectville, stayed largely rural until late in the century and then filled with newer subdivisions and townhome communities. The Navy's Willow Grove air station took up a large share of the township from 1942 until 2011. So a Horsham house can mean a 1950s ranch near Easton Road or a much newer colonial in the northwest, and the work is different in each.

In the post-war ranches and splits, ceilings are usually eight feet and rooms are modest, so trim has to be scaled to the room: the seven-inch baseboard and heavy crown that look right in a two-story foyer will crowd a ranch living room. Many of these houses still have original oak strip flooring under the carpet, and most were built before 1978, so the year gets confirmed before any painted trim comes off. In the newer colonials the problem runs the other way: big rooms, tall ceilings and builder-grade trim that is too thin for the space. That is where a paneled wall, wainscoting in the dining room or a coffered ceiling earns its place. Either way, we start from what the house already is and design the room to fit it.