Does anyone have a historic (very old) house?

What are some problems you have faced and what do you do for regular maintenance?

Re: Does anyone have a historic (very old) house?

My dad does - it's about 110 y/o. He bought the house with a huge hole in the kitchen ceiling

So far (he's owned it for about 13 years now) it's been typical stuff - electrical upgrading, small and/or lack of closets, poorly insulated windows (but they're leaded and he won't part with them so he put storm windows on all of them), working with plaster walls. Nothing major (thankfully).

Re: Does anyone have a historic (very old) house?

we have a 100 year old house.
there's a lot of work we need to do
the electric is all cotton and needs to be replaced, the house sags in some spots from the way it settled, the windows you can hear everything from. The fireplace is probably going to have to be rebricked. Since the walls are plaster, we've dealth with cracks and bumps etc.


any questions just let me know.

Re: Does anyone have a historic (very old) house?

Our house is 102 years old- it's in very good shape except we had to replace the windows (very old) and we have asbestos shingles. The shingles don't bother me once they will be painted.

Our house is very solid and the basement is extremely water tight- we have hard oak floors throughout and some cool built-ins like china cabinets and bookcases. But, the kitchen REALLY needs to be updated.

ETA: We have plaster walls too but they are in good shape- so is the fire place. Forgot to add, we eventually should upgrade our electrical system too...

Message edited 9/1/2006 9:53:51 AM.

Re: Does anyone have a historic (very old) house?

Our house is about 110 years old too. It needs to be rewired and we're having some of the walls replastered too. We do have some damp issues int he back of the house, but we'll be extending soon, so the trouble spots will be ripped out anyway.

We were lucky with some stuff - like the previous owner had the fireplace and the bay window replaced - apparently, it had started to cave in. She replaced it with really nice, new doubleglazed windows.

We're also missing some original floorboards - they've been replaced with odd bits of wood here and there. It's not too bad in the living room, but the bedroom ones are, plus they're painted, so we're most likely going to carpet over them.

Other than that, it's pretty structurally sound.