Detach subdirectory (that was renamed!) into a new repo

I have a repository and I would like to detach one of its directories into a new repo. This is a perfect place to get started, there is one caveat, however: the directory that I want to detach was renamed at some point. And if I follow the solution from that post with the new name of the directory then it seems I'm loosing the history before the re-name. Any ideas of a tweak to make it work in this situation?