I also have a Queen Anne Federation in Melbourne and had the same problem. I wound up buying a whole lot of vintage Murano chandeliers and Murano ceiling lights and love the outcome. (I have very decorative plaster ceilings and lead light windows and the Murano glass works well.) Good luck.

Thanks sc42355 - you'd think enough of us are doing the same thing that there would be a bounty of options! I'm finding the focus is so heavily on midcentury modern and industrial that it is hard to get much on other styles. It sounds like your place ended up beautifully and I am hoping ours does too - will aim to post some pictures when we are done. Do you have any tips for places or resources you found useful for your place (whether for lighting or beyond?) Thanks Caro

Hi Caro. I haven't extended the house yet (one day hopefully this will happen), but have done a lot to the existing house (fingers crossed that the current bathroom and kitchen renovation is finished in the next week or so!). Some ideas based on what my house needed and I found useful (specifically for a house of this era):

1) Lighting - your house (like mine) will have predated electrification. So if you want the very "original" light fittings you will be looking for gas fittings that were then subsequently electrified. I found that these light fittings and the early electrified fittings that followed them were a bit on the brass/ugly side and also did not give enough illumination (usually only 1 globe or a max of 3 globes and this is not enough to fully light the rooms).

A. My (murano/Venetian glass vintage) lights came from a variety of places:

1) Gregs Antiques in Fitzroy North (tel 9489 5053, 147 St Georges Rd). - Greg also repaired some other lights I found on eBay etc. Greg has a lot of vintage lights (he usually doesn't carry any Murano, but went on the look out for me). There a lots of Art Deco options if this is of interest.

2) Designage in Windsor (90 High St, tel 9525 1228). Gorgeous vintage italian lights and decor.

3) Antique Lighting in Abbotsford (tel 9428 3498, 511 Victoria St).

4) ebay (international) - look for Barovier, Venini, Seguso etc murano lights or chandeliers.

B. My original (french) terracotta tile roof (which has a lot of beautiful details) needed a lot of work. This was done by Total Roof Restoration - www.totalroof.com.au). They were brilliant - they replaced the broken tiles and some of the missing finials and other details with original exact matching french terracottas (they scoured Melbourne's reclaimation yards to find them). They also replaced all of the roof gutters and valleys and repointed the roof (as well as giving it a really good clean). The roof looks amazing and I cannot recommend them highly enough. (FYI - I found most roof companies would not touch a heritage listed roof or had no idea what to do. (My house is heavily heritage listed.) The Total Roof guys were fantastic and really quick and also knew exactly what the roof needed and how to get it. I also thought that they were really good value price wise.)

C) For bathrooms and tap ware - English Tapware Company - www.englishtapware.com.au). They do traditional or modern styles and the quality is great.

D) For the kitchen - the lacanche stove (just gorgeous and a dream to cook with) and Fireclay sink came from Manorhouse in Malvern. (Phil and Julia (the owners) are wonderful to deal with too - www.manor.com.au)

E) I had all of the sash windows (and casement windows) restored, repaired and weatherproofed (and a couple fully rebuilt and, or reglazed) by Sash Window Restorations. This was very expensive, but they do a brilliant job and matched everything exactly to the original house - Scott and his team are real craftsmen. www.sashwindowrestorations.com.au I haven't had any of the leadlights repaired yet (a job for down the track), but Scott did recommend someone who could do this.

I would love to see some photos or your renovation and to get any recommendations, tips or resources that you find useful through the process. (I am learning that these beautiful houses are a constant work in progress or aka "money pit").

Hi sc42355 - that is great info, thank you. We bought a Queen Anne in Eaglemont that had plenty of room but the house needed TLC, updating, and repurposing of rooms (so for example there was a very large formal dining, separate sitting, and then another separate large billiards room - but a back-of-the-house not-very-functional kitchen...). What started as a small reno has become pretty significant - our own money pit! - but not an extension.

We are replacing the heating, going back to floorboards, redoing all the paint and paper, shifting the kitchen and doing a full new kitchen, new bathroom, two ensuites and powder room, creating a pantry and a linen room, and redoing the upstairs into a master suite. We also have an original French tile roof which isn't yet on the agenda but that tip for tradies there will definitely be useful.

We wanted to update the house also - so the style is more transitional than restoration, so we are removing the heavy curtains which should give us better access to the beautiful windows. I will dig out some photos.

1 - In terms of the coordination of building work, we are using Dale from Genjusho Building Design, who has been great, particularly as we have been pretty organic in terms of having a locked down plan on the work required (it evolves...).

2 - The heating that has gone in is hydronic (we had to go all the way down into the floors to sort the floorboards, so were able to take advantage of that process to get the piping in for the heating).

3 - Lighting as you know is the current challenge but early on we identified a pendant manufacturer called WEP who we wanted to get one (possibly two - Lora and Renata styles) from - http://www.weplight.com/ although these are more modern lights they sit well in the space. Lighting continues and with the high ceilings we are also putting in LEDs just about everywhere and relying on pendants more for the aesthetics. Generally BrightGreen have been the uniformly recommended LED to provide the truest light quality.

4 - depending on the age of your property you might eventually find like us that the gas line (ie the one that links out to the mains on the street) needs to be upgraded. Not a big deal but as always extra cost and good to integrate with any significant garden redesign work if you are digging up a fair bit (or jackhammering up concrete as we are) to get the new pipe in.

5 - We didn't have enough of the original baltic floorboards throughout the downstairs to use - they'd been cut through over the years unfortunately - so we ended up getting replacement wide boards for the floor. We ended up going for a hardwood rather than the soft baltic, and are using spotted gum which means we won't need to stain it, just seal it. We found Urban Salvage in Spotswood good for the wood searching, also had Shiver Me Timbers recommended.

6 - The kitchen and cabinetry we are using Peter Gill who has been very good and spans the traditional-transitional spectrum well. http://www.kitchensbypetergill.com.au/

7 - The paint and paper work has been a challenge for us also - the walls are fragile and a lot (A LOT) of prep work required to get either paint or paper (or both) to come out looking high quality given the age of the building, and the tendency of the walls to keep shifting. We are using JN painting & decorating. We also had to put in a picture rail to avoid banging hooks into these walls - both because patching isn't easy and because the walls wouldn't necessarily hold a hook in the same way modern plaster does. The labour on this takes a while. The rails are from classicarchitraves.com.au.

8 - We are putting back in fireplace mantles to match the era, sourcing these from Agnews.

9 - We had to source a lot of tiles given the refit of bathrooms/kitchen/laundry and these comes from a variety of sources - Lifestile in Camberwell, Tierno Tiles in Prahran, Urban Edge Ceramics in Richmond (where we found a particularly great pale green handmade subway tile), Artedomus in Richmond and Schots in Clifton Hill.

We are also getting a garden plan done - this will be a much longer exercise than this reno but the plot is 1500 sqm so we wanted to have an overall plan to guide us.

cheers C