How Old Is Your Old House?

[arwalden]

Poll question: How Old Is Your Old House?

Our current home is 6 years old. The oldest house I've ever lived in was about 50 years old. Seems like the older ones were built with more pride in craftsmanship. Square corners were ACTUALLY SQUARE back then. The word "level" actually meant LEVEL and not "within tolerated variances standards".

[Aristus]

1. Five years old last month.

My wife and I bought it brand new. The contractor is an old friend of hers.

[supernova]

2. 1954

50th Anniversary coming up. This is the year of the great plumbing makeover. I :loveya: my plumber.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

5. 1978

My mom's house was built in 1978 by the high school wood shop class...I swear to God. It's just begging for a remodel...
Duckie

[supernova]

13. I live in my parents' home also

Now, I'm Mistress of the Manor. I would love to do a complete remodel all at once, but I am having to do it piecemeal because I'm not wealthy.

[DemExpat]

3. 103 years old.......and a solid beauty.

Love my turn of the century house!

DemEx

[arwalden]

19. My Brother's "Turn-Of-The-Century" House...

... is just 3 years old.

[DemExpat]

21. lol......

good one!
:D

DemEx

[kmla]

4. Our current house is 6 months old...

... but the one we sold to buy it was 101 years old.

It would have been nice if it had a lot of charm and history, but basically, it was just an old house. Neighborhood was pretty good, neighbors were pretty nice, but I just got tired of correcting 101 years of other peoples screw-ups.

I want to create my own screw-ups in my new house. Now I will know who to blame when things go awry.

[newyawker99]

38. Congrats kmla!! 300 posts

:toast:

[Booberdawg]

6. Almost 100 years old

Just had some renovations done before I bought it last year from my mother. Beautiful house.

[ret5hd]

7. 64 and counting...

currently going thru major remodel, but no structural changes

[BurtWorm]

8. I grew up in a house

the oldest part of which was built in 1789. Nothing was level in that baby! There were no door knobs--just catches and latches. Ship's knees in the bedrooms upstairs. When we'd take the walls down or the floor up during some home improvement project, there would always be some treasure behind the facade, like a 100 year old newspaper clipping or a board from a tea crate.

[DianeK]

10. our house is well over 100 years old...

so old we don't even really know what year it was built...but some of the oldest pictures of the town in the town hall show it..and i hear what you say about nothing being level..talk about living in a crooked house! we are also in the historical registry for my state but that was only because of the carriage barn in the back which we have now sold to an antique lumber harvester and it is being removed as we speak. a couple of years ago we went through major renovation..torn off one part of it to put in full foundation and rebuild it...also major renovation in the part of the house that actually had a full foundation...much better now..at least i don't hear the wind whistle through it anymore

[BurtWorm]

16. How can they remove something in the historical registry?

One thing my mother loved about that house was doing research on it in the historical society or from people who she found out used to visit the long-time owners many, many years before. I loved the smells--the musty, wooden, smoky aromas. I didn't even mind the draftiness. It was just a great house.

[DianeK]

20. when you own a house they can't tell you what you can do with it

if we had taken money from the state to preserve it they would then have a say in what we did with it...we almost went that route until we found out that they really had a lot of say and we were not comfortable with that..and this way it lives on..just not in it's original form

[Sagatious8]

9. 1847 colonial

really cool old house but unfortunately it was completely "remodeled" in the last 10 years. It LOOKS great but the previous owner used modern crappier construction standards so in many ways it's not any better than a new construction. *sigh*

[DemExpat]

11. Luckily our house had been kept up in the 'old' style

and decorating techniques.
It still needs work, but it is a fine, beautiful house.
You could always re-do your home! :D

Here it costs 100 -200,000 Euros to completely renovate an old house.
:wow:

DemEx

[VermontDem2004]

12. Does anyone live in a house 500 years old?

:shrug:

[kmla]

14. Probably not in this country...

But I am sure there are some castles in Europe that would qualify.

[VermontDem2004]

15. oh your right

I was limiting my thinking to only in this country, but who at DU lives in Castles?

[BurtWorm]

17. They don't have to be castles.

There are plenty of ancient farmhouses still standing all over Europe. I've never stayed in one that old, but I once stayed in a gorgeous little 300-year-old farmhouse in the Dordogne region of France.

[radwriter0555]

23. Town I stayed at in Italy was settled in 03. The were foundations dating

to the 1100's that are still visible (Lucca), near Florence. One of the few intact medieval towns still standing. Lovely, horrible people though.

House I grew up in, upstate NY, was built in 1823.

House I live in now was built in 1923.

[VermontDem2004]

26. I knew you were going to respond like that

I meant, is are there any DUers that actually live in castles?

[BurtWorm]

27. My home is my castle.

And I'm king of the castle. And you're just a peasant. You got that, Alice?

[sangh0]

18. A lil more than 100 y.o.

and still has the original windows.

[bleedingheart]

22. I have a friend whose house is over 220 years old

it is a gorgeous fieldstone home built around the time of the revolutionary war.

I love old homes...one day my husband and I hope to retire to a fixer upper and play all day!

[radwriter0555]

24. Yeah it's playing until the roof IS leaking and the walls ARE crumbling,

LOL.
THEN it becomes the MONEY PIT FROM HELL.

Bitter? Me? Nahhhhh........

[bleedingheart]

28. my sister had one of those...she loved it even more

after she finished...

[ScreamingMeemie]

25. Little brick fifties plat ranch. You know the type.

boring boring boring. But it does have hardwood floors and beautiful coved ceilings. It just looks like every danged house on the block. The only difference is what color ceramic tile was put in the bathrooms.

[starroute]

29. Built in 1927 in an amazing hodgepodge of styles

Its kind of an arts and crafts bungalow crossbred with a 1920's-style colonial, with a Japanese roof and the type of door and window frames that were originally designed in the 19th century to look Egyptian. Nothing is symmetrical and no two rooms have the same size windows.

Before that, we lived in half of an old roadside hotel built in the 1880's. And before that, we rented a renovated carriage house built in the early 1800's on a farm that went back to the middle 1700's.

Old is good.

[5thGenDemocrat]

30. 126 years old

Built in 1877 by a finish mill owner (James Wylie) for his mother- and father-in-law. Only 840 square feet (two-thirds the Michigan average), but has oak floors and woodwork, nine-foot ceilings and some of the original lead glass windows. It is located within three blocks of the geographical dead center of the city of Saginaw.
John
My family moved in here in 1961, when I was four. I bought it from mom's estate when she died in Nov 1994 (for $14,000!).

[damnraddem]

31. Mine is an interesting age: 60.

Consider: it was built in 1943, during WWII. And it's not temporary war housing, but part of a development (identical floor plan to the house next door). Until we were buying the place and saw when it was built, I didn't know that they were building houses, other than temporary housing for war industries, during WWII.

And, yeah, it was fairly-well constructed -- I wonder how many houses being built today will last for 60 years. And it even has a Star Trek feature: transporters in the bathrooms. (Laundry chutes to the basement.)

[noonwitch]

32. 1948

A good, brick house. All the houses on my block are similar in appearance and age, and all have stood up to time well.

[LibDemAlways]

33. I live in a 24 year old poorly built

tract house in a So. Cal. suburb. It wasn't worth what I paid for it new and it certainly
isn't worth what it would sell for today. There's a lot of truth to the old real estate adage
about the value of a good location.

[populistmom]

34. 1951

I live on a street with cookie cutter 1950's ranches and a few capes, but its a good, solid house and a nice neighborhood (close to school, lots of kids, safe, semi-diverse) for the kiddos.

[sinkingfeeling]

35. Built in 1858 and survived the town being burnt in the Civil War...

been restoring since 1995 and am only half way done. It's a huge Victorian (added on to in 1880's) and labor costs are too high to have much help. Fell in love with it the first time I ever saw it and bought it 2 years later.

[mvd]

36. 7 years old

It's been ok. There were some heating and cooling things we had to fix - and the refrigerator had to be replaced.

[Bombero1956]

37. 100 years old

Just 2 weeks ago had to tear down the old rear porches which were sagging badly and in danger of falling and put up a new porch. Replaced the back door that allowed the cold air in and put up a new insulated door. Replaced the vinyl kitchen floor with new hardwood. Repainted the master bedroom,kitchen,bathroom and living room. The electrical service was inadequate for the size of the house(60 amp) and replaced with 200 amp service, replaced the light fixtures with energy efficient new ones. Now we have to seek bids on exterior painting before the cold weather sets in. When do I get to enjoy the house? When I sell it I guess.