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[OT] Anyone live in a hundred year old house?

Maxim

Stainless
Joined
Apr 29, 2005
Location
Colorful Colorado
So having successfully moved out west (btw, thanks to all the people who answered my "how to move my shop" questions previously.). I am looking for a place to rent.

There is a 100 year old house that has been made to have four apartments. Its pretty big and has hardwood floors and is in a good location (for me at least. Basically accross the street from a liberal arts college ;) )

Rent covers all utilities too, since the house is, according to the owner, a little drafty.

So the question is, anyone have experience living in a really old house? Is it charming? Or a little too adventureous. I'm going to go back and look at it this week, so any tips as to what to check out would be greately appreciated.
 
Maxim...I didn't get where "out west" was...Arizona (the Wild West
) or western NJ?

Reason I ask for clarity is drafty in NJ is probably more disconcerting than drafty in AZ.

The last super-old house I lived in as such in Mich had an ancient "octopus" furnace likely converted from coal to natural gas. It had a burner but no blower, it was just a natural-convection heating system...as such some rooms were piping hot and others were ice cold, and this changed seemingly by the day. I had a fairly warm room and my buddy was always wondering if the "heat fairy" was going to show up that day :D
 
I live in a 160-yr old house, most houses in my neighborhood are 19th century, a few 18th century, and a very few 17th century.

Upkeep matters more than age. Amount of money people have spent on past maintenance matters. Quality of original structure matters (crummy builders are not a recent invention
).

In other words, there's no simple answer. A well-maintained old house that was well-built originally will have some nice features: it will probably be well-sited for drainage, light, wind protection, because there was more land to choose from, people were more conscious of these things when they spent more time outdoors. It can have some very high-quality old slow-growth wood in it. It will be a PITA to insulate though, and modernizing heat, electricity and plumbing may be a challenge. Replacing windows, trim and siding can be weird and expensive. Chimneys can be a real pain to keep safe.

It takes a special mindset to really love them. Kinda like old American iron
 
My house is dated to the 1870's. Not a fancy southern plantation style mansion, but originally a one room, two level stone foundation miners shack.

As it is today, its got 3 stories and6 rooms. The lumbar in the walls is AMAZING. The original wood shingles are still on it.. under the tar/asbestos shingles added in the 50's.

I am tearing of the plaster and lathing to get rid of the last of the old tar paper wiring. Other than that no real issues.
 
Yep, our deed says 1895 was the build date for
our 'mansion.'

The roof is original slate, with cedar shakes
underneath. They didn't have plywood in those
days I guess.

Porous stone foundation with brick up to grade,
if you get six inches of rain in a day it will
show up in the basement, about three inches of
it anyway.

Balloon frame construction, the original owner
was a plumber and did the work "good enough for
a while" and it's lasted nearly that long.

Jim
 
My current house was built in the 1830's and is a hybrid of brick, timber frame and a 1970's era conventionally built addition. The older portion is poorly insulated - very apparent in the winter because I have zoned heat and the addition and one room in the original house are on the same zone with the thermostat in the older room - by the time the older room is up to temperature, the addition is at least 5-10 degrees warmer. The original house was built well before indoor plumbing, let alone wiring was even thought of so both of these systems are routed in semi-goofy ways.

Since moving to the house 6 years ago we have insulated the attic, replaced the roof, which meant pulling off 3+ old roofs, repointed much of the brick, rebuilt parts of the foundation, rebuilt the chimneys, replaced the entire single pipe steam heat system with a new hot water boiler and retrofitted radiators, replaced a lot of the wiring, upgraded the electrical service, drilled a new well, replaced the water softener, replumbed the upstairs bath - the cast iron drain pipes weren't pitched properly and had rotted away and the supply lines were hacked in with pvc pipe, and probably a few more things.

Still on the list is rebuilding or replacing all of the 6 over 6 sash, repainting all of the trim and wood sided portion of the house, drying out the basement, repainting/updating the interior of the house, slowly jacking up some of the sagging sections of the floorre, rebuilding the first floor bath and the kitchen, grading a portion of the yard to improve drainage away from part of the house, residing the parts of the house which are now sided with masonite clapboards, replacing some 1970's era windows in the addition which have rotting sash.

With all of this, the house has some unique features which at some point will be enjoyable - most of the hardware - hinges, door latches, etc.. . is original, there are four fireplaces including one with a beehive oven and another with a herb drying chamber, much of the old woodwork is still intact.

Buying and maintaining an older home is a labor of love, it isn't practical or cost effective. If you can't do the work yourself, in most areas it will be difficult to find someone with the skills and experience to properly repair the house. That said, they can be fun to live in, especially if you enjoy tinkering and are OK with the fact that the floors may not all be perfectly level, that some walls may be out of plumb and that there will always be a few projects hanging over your head.
 
I live in a house that was built in 1903. In my area you can get an old house in decent condition for $70,000-$100,000 with 3-4 bedrooms, 2-3 baths. A new one the same size would be $200,000 with three times the real estate tax. You really need to be aware of the condition of the house. You can buy a real disaster, or a real jewel. One of the best books on the subject is "Old House Journal Guide to Restoration". The house I'm in now has replacement windows, but I very much preferred the original ones in our last house. Older windows can easily be repaired/rebuilt. When new ones go bad, you almost have to rip them out. Watch for serious cases of "remuddling"...remodeling jobs poorly or even dangerously done. Those can be worse to fix than things that are just old and in bad condition. If you want the old place to be liveable, it's usually not that tough. If you want perfection, be ready for a big job.

Eric
 
In a house that old, the plumbing and electrical might not be all that nice. But if you can get over that, who cares? My grandparents own a house pushing 200 years old, and it's real drafty, the stairs are now crooked, the electric is a bit outdated, but it's still a roof over their head, and it's not all that bad.
 
My house is somewhere over a hundred years old. The only thing I can't fix is the smell of mouse pee when the humidity goes up. And my house suffers from severe cases of all the above. WWQ
 
Lived in one in Maine, started but didn't finish a remodel. I liked it, had hot water hear and radiators. Middle of winter shoot for the upstairs bathroom with a big radiator in it. Wonderful. Had friends there who lived in a house over 300 years old and liked it just fine. It got pretty drafty one time when they stripped about an inch of wallpaper off the walls. Seems that was the insulation.
 
"a little drafty"

i had lived in fitchburg, ma on the top of a hill, in an old (ex-condemned) victorian, on the third floor. the house had its original windows, which were drafty. this was most noticable during winter storms (rather cold breeze), after we had already taped plastic sheets over the windows to stop the wind.

later that winter it got so cold (-10 or so) in conjunction with some gas supply malfunction, to sort of freeze the gas supply for the city, the hills did'nt get full gas pressures, so i turned up the stove full blast to get a pitiful 1/4" flame... it was cold.

that old house had too much character.
 
A lot of houses over here are over 100 years old, my parents still live in one but hope to move on soon (nearer to me not ON!).

I would imagine that in this day and age most improvements would already be done, i.e wiring, heating, replaced windows.

Something I would bear in mind is that if you have to make any improvements, nothing will be straight forward. Modern techniques do not necessarily go hand in glove with older ones therefore you'll either have to pay to do stuff the 'old' way or rip it all out and do it the modern way. Replacing original features such as windows 'in keeping' cost money and it is best to have your eyes open as to prospective costs before you purchase.

Just my £0.01

Al

Edit: Sorry just reread original post and you're looking at renting. I'd say crack on, you'll soon learn where to put the furniture to avoid the drafts.
 
My house belonged to my great-parents, who bought it "used" in 1892. It was built in 1888, with later additions around 1910, 1925, and the last major update in 1947. When they say "they dont build them like they used to", that's a good thing! Talk about tough to repair: try to address one thing and five others need attention before the first can be tackled. I'll never get done.

The collective "they" also claim a house wears out in approx 50-60 years, at which time major things need to be repaired. I think it's pretty well true.
 
We bought a bit of a 'lunatic asylum' called St Nicholas's Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne which was built in 1865 but we also had a bungalow built facing the farmhouse which fed the staff and inmates then.
OK, the farmhouse belonged to a Mr Dodds who turned out to be my wife's great whatever uncle's foreman. Recent rebuilding has shown that it is all from Saxon days.

That is nothing really! We have Bronze Age skeletons and a Roman Bridge or two.

100 years? I am exactly three quarters of that!

Normans' start at 1066AD!
 
Half of my House is about 100 and the other half is around 140 years old.

I know one thing i would like to have a fully equipped wood working shop.

The House is drafty but i cut and haul my own fire wood so the gas co. is not getting rich off of me.
 
If the rent includes the utilities shouldn't be a big deal. As noted above, old houses can be drafty but if you're not paying the heat bill, just crank it up! Of course, the landlord must have that figured into the rent so you're paying anyway.
I like my 147 y/o home despite all of it's little issues. In the winter when it gets cold and drafty, I build a bigger fire!
 
Mine's 93 years old..... there is a saying that was told to me when we bought it

If you buy a house a 100 years old in 10 years you will have to do major work on it....

If you buy a house a 10 years old in 10 years you will have to do major work on it....

If you buy a house a 1 year old in 10 years you will have to do major work on it....
 
Gazz, I am rather fond of older homes they have character They tend to grow on you.

After you live in one for a while you get to a point where you don't like to go into a new home. they smell of formaldehyde.

As far as heating theres always a week or two in the dead of winter that no matter how high you build the fire you have to practically sit on top of the stove to stay warm.

However the wood cutting helps keeps me in shape.
 
Just to clarify, I am renting an apartment inside the building. Rent is quite reasonable, only thing I would have to pay is internet.

The landlord, he asked me if I was a quiet person. Apperenalty, there were some problems with noisy renters before (undergraduates probably). I'm wondering if that means that you can hear your neighbors really easily (or vice versa). Is there some way to test that? I'm thinking of having my friend come with me and scream inside the apt while I listen downstirs.

It has central hear but no central A/C, just blocks inside the windows. An an old claw tub.

Matt, I have successfully escaped from the ravaged frontier of central NJ to the lovely wooded central Missouri. Though I'm back in school, which has its plusses and minuses. But, except for the scant paycheck, it beats a real job.
 








 
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