ABOUT US

About us

Old House Specialists, LLC., started in 1998 when Hilda Dent turned her lifelong love of living in and working on old houses into an independent contracting business. Since 2007, she has presented and demonstrated on window preservation at numerous gatherings around the country for Preservation Trades Network, the WPA (Window Preservation Alliance), and is a Council member of the Window Preservation Standards Collaborative.
Dent’s love for vintage structures dates back to her childhood. She can remember studying the floor joists under both of her grandmother's houses at around five. In the fifth grade she learned to hammer and nail while building tree houses. When she was 23 she bought her first old house, becoming an urban pioneer in an 1888 Victorian cottage in Cottage Hill, Montgomery's first historic district. She later renovated a 1910 Queen Anne house, a project that she worked on for 22 years.

The same passion that Dent puts into her own personal renovation projects is manifested in Old House Specialists, LLC. 
Old House Specialists, LLC., works extensively on the refurbishing of weathered windows and doors that would otherwise be replaced with modern disposable vinyl windows, and in result sending old growth wood to our landfills and initiating an unending replacement cycle. 

OHS has worked with numerous individual, commercial, historic societies, university and municipal clients, both as a General Contractor (AL GC License #45832) and as a subcontractor.  Among others: the Doctor-Up division of WK Upchurch Construction Co., Inc.;  the Sadler Plantation, c. 1838 in McCalla, AL; the Dexter Avenue United Methodist Church Parish Hall c. 1946; 101 Tallapoosa St., c. 1895 windows; City Hall for the City of Montgomery, a DOE ARRA energy efficiency upgrade to all 225 c. 1937 steel windows in 2010; 82 Commerce St. in 2011, again for the City of Montgomery, a c. 1888 façade renovation with 30 original double hung arch-topped sashes; Alfred Saliba Family Services Center where the City of Dothan used CDBG funds to restore the c. 1921 windows; the Train Depot for the City of Opp restoring the c. 1920s windows and doors; the Holman House for the City of Ozark c. 1920s window restoration; the c. 1907 Lowe House for the University of Alabama at Huntsville's presidents home; the Historic Bell Lofts' 824 windows in a 12 story building  which was Alabama's first steel and concrete skyscraper in 1907; and ongoing restoration of the Maxwell AFB officers houses which were built in the 1930s. We work with numerous residential clients as well.
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