OldHouseDelco started from a specific frustration. Delaware County's own Heritage Commission publishes a genuinely useful directory of contractors, architects, and specialists who work on historic homes, the Historic Preservation Directory of Trades, Services, and Products. The problem is that it only exists as an 18-megabyte scanned PDF, the kind that doesn't show up in a normal search, can't be filtered by category or town, and is easy to lose track of entirely once it's downloaded. This site takes that same underlying idea, a vetted list of people who actually understand old buildings, and rebuilds it as something that's actually searchable.
Every listing here traces back to a real, publicly available source, most originally compiled by the Heritage Commission itself, then cross-checked and reorganized into sixteen categories with consistent information for each entry. Where a business's Delaware County connection is unclear rather than confirmed, that's noted directly on the listing instead of guessed at one way or the other.
The Guides section is newer, written to go alongside the directory rather than replace it: plain-language explanations of the questions that actually come up around old-house ownership in this area, permits and historic districts, materials, what's worth restoring versus what's worth replacing. It's maintained by people with a background in the county's older building stock and the trades that work on it, not a general content operation covering every topic under the sun.
If you run a business that belongs in the directory, or you notice something here that's out of date, the contact page has a direct way to reach us.