Painted Woodwork

For some of you this may be the most trivial of arguments. But for those of you who love historic homes as much as I do, I hope to receive your feedback!
First off, let me begin by saying I don't want to make a case against painting woodwork while sounding like I'm ranting or anything of the like. That's not what this blog was meant for. Therefore I will simply state my opinions and the reasons behind them.
I'll got for the blunt approach: I cannot stand painted woodwork. Every week I receive listings from a site called oldhouses.com. I enjoy these listings because, well, I love old houses! Lately I have seen houses that have every inch of woodwork painted. Why? Why in the world would you want to paint over the beautiful old grain and texture of the wood? Not to mention the crown molding and other intricate details historic homes so often possess?
The popular color for painting woodwork seems to be white. Now perhaps I'm biased against white itself because I prefer darker colors in a home. Sometimes in older homes the natural woodwork is covered with heavy varnishes that only dampers their appearance and makes the wood darker, but instead of painting it white you could simply strip off the old varnish and lighten the wood up.
This leads me to another point. Sometimes people want a 'fresh' look to a home. Such as bright wallpaper or paint, light colored furniture and yes, painted woodwork. I can understand wanting to bring light into a historic home. Many of them were originally very dark and unappealing. My response to that is: you can lighten up everything else without touching the woodwork. Tear down the old wallpaper, bring in light colored furniture and window treatments.
I typed the question of painted woodwork into Google and came up with answers on both ends of the argument. One website boasted that painted woodwork offers a better resale value when selling your home, while another said it would inadvertently cause untold suffering for people who buy the house later on. Still another website said "if the wood has never been painted, it most likely was never meant to be painted".
Sure, I can see it from both points of view. Houses built in the 1600 and 1700's customarily had painted woodwork, and I'll admit, it looks good. But with today's historic homes, it seems that I can't find a single one that bears the original, natural woodwork. To me, and this may seem completely crass, painting a historic home's woodwork strips the home of its character. I have always enjoyed looking at old woodwork, knowing that most of it was hand carved and hand milled. When people paint over it, yes, perhaps they're making the home their own, but it takes away from the home itself. To me, that house is no longer old but instead a carbon copy of all the others on the block with painted woodwork. To me a historic home is supposed to stand out from the monotony of painted, look-a-like homes lining today's streets. Painting the woodwork modernizes a historic home more so than it should be. And by that I mean a historic home is supposed to have modern conveniences such as: kitchen appliances, electrical and things like that, but painted woodwork? That's not modernizing a home or making it airy and light per say, it's simply covering up what makes that home unique.
If an owner's historic home has details such as: fretwork, crown molding, wainscoting, bead board, and the like I can't see why they would want to cover up such elaborate details with paint, and for the sake of what? Lighting up a room? Covering up imperfections? In my eyes, I guess I can't ever see painting woodwork because I know there are hundreds of ways to achieve a 'lighter' room without doing just that. As most of you have probably guessed by reading this post, I am the type of person that when I buy a historic home I want to leave as much of the original details and aspects of the home untouched as I can. I want it to look like I live in a historic home.
If you're reading this and you live in a historic home with painted woodwork, whether you did it yourself or bought it that way, feel free to drop me a note! And if there's someone out there that feels the same way I do, feel free to drop a note as well!