Last winter I spent two weeks inside a narrow courtyard house while the carpenters decided which scars deserved daylight. The most persuasive room was not the cleanest one. It was the tea room where smoke-blue roof shadow crossed a sanded oak wall and stopped just short of a century-old post.
Repair is a design position
The best new rooms in the lane were edited, not erased: glass set between rafters, brass pulls kept small, paper-screen panels given enough air to breathe. Nothing shouted preservation. The work simply refused to make age apologize for itself.