As Good as Old

The most common -- and least dramatic -- form of antiquing wood floors is hand-scraping, he says. The process requires the kneeling scraper to gouge out, by hand, the so-called "spring wood" on an individual hardwood plank to mimic the natural weathering that would result from many years of being trod upon.

It's slow and grueling work, says Lynn, who says that "a good scraper can hand-scrape about 100 square feet per day," and adds that "you don't see too many large hand-scrapers. They're usually pretty skinny guys."

Hand-scraped floors, he says, are not for people who are into perfectly pristine surfaces, or "floors that look like a tabletop," as Lynn puts it. But they're just the thing, he says, for "people who are adding onto a historic home and don't want the new floors to look out of place with the old," or for customers who desire a more rustic feel.

Faux finishing and hand-scraping must be done by experienced artisans; these aren't simple do-it-yourself projects. And, in truth, most forms of antiquing don't come cheap or easy. Urban Revival's Campbell says that prices of faux-finishing jobs, for example, vary greatly depending on the complexity of the detailing, the types of glazes used and other factors, but estimates that the typical job might cost anywhere from two to four times what regular house painters would charge for a room.

For other projects, however, stylish and economical shortcuts do exist. Kate Moloney had always dreamed of owning an old rowhouse with the sort of tin ceiling she remembered from her grandmother's place, built well before the turn of the 20th century. When she finally found the circa-1900 rowhouse of her dreams near Capitol Hill, she was heartbroken to discover that a previous owner had put in popcorn ceilings as part of a disastrous "modernization" project on the ground floor. She shopped around for standard 2-by-4-foot tin-ceiling panels but was unable to find any for less than $70 apiece.

"At that rate, I thought, I'd only be able to do the kitchen," she says. Then she found a company in Minnesota, Surfacing Solution ( http://www.surfacingsolution.com/ ), that made panels out of white styrene that were practically indistinguishable from genuine tin panels -- and for only $12 apiece. She bought 400 square feet worth, enough to cover all the ceilings on her ground floor, and had her contractor put them up straightaway.

"You can cut it with scissors ," says Moloney. "But it looks just like the real thing."

Now Moloney feels like her house has the turn-of-the-century ceilings it cried out for, and perhaps once boasted, long ago, before someone's idea of progress so rudely intervened.

"I just felt it was something the house should have," she says. "This fit my dream of what an old rowhouse should look like."