Victorian or Victorian?

Victorian is not exactly our preferred style.  It, like every other style, is beautiful in its own way, but it’s not our favorite.  We never looked for any particular style of house when shopping, just one that we both loved and saw great potential in.  And in spite of Victorian not being our favorite, we both fell in love with this house right away.  It didn’t make sense to me at the time, because at the time, I didn’t realize that there were many types of Victorian homes.

Once I learned what type ours was, it made perfect sense.  What I always pictured as a “Victorian” was actually the Queen Anne type of Victorian.  The beautiful, highly detailed, ornate, rich-looking homes.  Like Nicole’s at Making it Lovely, or this:

I’ve mentioned it before, but ours is a Folk Victorian.

The difference, in a nutshell, between a Queen Anne Victorian and a Folk Victorian is that the Queen Annes were built by the upper class and the Folks were built by the middle class.  Hence, the smaller size, less ornate details and lack of towers in the Folks.  This suits The Hubs and I much better (except for the tower–I’d really, REALLY love a tower).

Queen Annes were often designed by actual architects, but since the middle-class had a smaller income, they generally hired a local carpenter to mimick the look of a Queen Anne in a simplified and affordable way.  This is why our house had things like 4 inch floorboards, whereas a Queen Anne often has boards between 2 and 3 inches, and simpler, more Craftsman style moulding, verses fluted moulding and rosette corners.

Folk Victorians are also sometimes called Victorian Farmhouses.  And in the area we are in, ours was likely a farmette house.  But the more and more we uncover of the original architecture of our home, the more it feels like a farmhouse.  And that, we love.