A Century Old House

[ducks4you]

Kindred Spirit--MY house is 100 yo (maybe a little bit older than that), TOO!!!
My house has a full, cement basement, 3 bedrooms on the first floor, and 3 bedrooms on the 2nd floor. I have a walk-in attic on the 2nd floor, and I'm flooring one of the cubby-holes off of the east bedroom. Next year I'll do the other one off of the east bedroom. From Google Earth you can see a cross on my roof, which is a style common to around 1910. The second floor windows start at the floor. My daughters named them "suicide windows" when we moved in.
Ah, man, I'd love to replace my windows. They are ancient and the storm windows are probably 40 yo now.
For NOW, I'm just fixing plaster and I started repainting rooms in 2011--the bathroom was first.
This year I'll be repairing the repainting the walls in one of the downstairs bedrooms.
The appeal to me house was
1) I could move my horses in the back yard (10/1999)
2) house, garage, barn + 2 outbuildings--ALL in good shape and most had vinyl siding
3) fun with the yard, like--IDK!!!!-G a r d e n i n g, maybe
Now that everybody except our youngest daughter, who is in her 1st year of Law School, has moved out, I'm spending the next several years de-cluttering everywhere.
The next $10K goes to reroof the house and the barn.
I love this house, however, even with things to fix.

 

[peteyfoozer]

Our house isn't quite that old, it was built in 1940, but it is made from indigenous rock on the ranch. It was the cookhouse for all the cowboys here and is made of rock and concrete. It got electricity, which comes down from pipes in the ceiling...one plug per ROOM! The old farmhouse sink is original, there are no cupboards, closets or counters. They added on a bathroom for us a couple of years ago. It's a small house, but a BIG yard...250,000 acres...so I won't complain!

 

[digitS']

. . . SURELY there's some *real* info out there.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com.../how-get-eichler-look-without-energy-pricetag

If this doesn't answer your questions, it might give you better keywords to augment your Google-fu.

Wow, Joz!

You sure knew how to hit the nail on the head with finding that article! It offers all sorts of information that I never even thought of! And, "faking it" . . ? What was it Groucho Marx said? "I've got my principles, and if you don't like them. . . well, I have others."

Hey! Ducks & Petey you both have loads of room! Ducks, it seems like I just spend nearly half that much to re-roof the house, alone :/. Yeah, am I going to get where maintenance is just way too expensive?

The idea of a ranch kitchen house reminded me of being in an old ranch kitchen many years ago. The kitchen's "indoor plumbing" was a hand pump to a sink that sat in the middle of the room. A spring-fed cistern was under the house .

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

Steve, at 54yo I refuse to climb up there and roof myself!!!
Unless,...you work for food?!?!?

 

[digitS']

No, I didn't do the work, Ducks . . .

What I meant by "alone" was that I spent nearly half of your roofing budget, having a contractor put new roofing on the house. The house ~ alone.

There is no barn and I did the garage by myself "alone," 3 years ago . . . I did get a gutter off the deck roof .

Steve

 

[momofdrew]

Steve... My house was built in 1908, it has an attached barn... It is an old mill house... we had lots of mills and shoe factories in town back then... The Kitchen pantry and bath are an addition with a trap door in the pantry to get to the cellar basicly it is a root cellar... the rest of the house has a crawl space...3 bedrooms the living and dining rooms have been opened up to make one room...we took out the front hall wall to enlarge the living room...we have replaced all the windows and added a front porch to a side porch so now it wraps around 12 the house...Reroofed the house but not the barn...taken down horse hair plaster and put up drywall...I was fortunate to have an in law who did platering.... He did it for us cheap...I live in the same town as ChickieMomma and have a 1/2 acre of land which is rare here.... her full acre is even rarer... We both live very close to down town...We have lots of Farms in the town but they are more or less on the outskirts...we bought the house because of the yard...It was and is full of old fashion charm...

 

[digitS']

A lot of work, Pam.

And, I was just happy to have replaced some window molding this month !

... The Kitchen pantry and bath are an addition with a trap door in the pantry to get to the cellar basicly it is a root cellar...

See, that's about the same as what must have been in this house except the trap door would have been in the dining room. There wouldn't have been room for a pantry. I can imagine a China cabinet where there is now a built-in 2nd closet in the dining room/now bedroom. On the other side of the door to the kitchen was the trapdoor in the floor.

Under THAT part of the house is still just a crawl space and I had the floor completely insulated. It wouldn't make any sense to remove the insulation to satisfy my curiosity about evidence of a trapdoor. Besides, I don't crawl very well anymore.

But, I've still got the closet and Shuttlepod One behind my shirts !

Steve

 

[momofdrew]

the pantry is only 4 foot wide x 10 foot long with the sink in there... not conducive to great storage...but it has it's charm

 

[ducks4you]

Steve, I'm gonna get some more estimates, thanks.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

Momofdrew, we're in the process still of tearing up the floors in the kitchen and dining room but there is a small room my FIL was using as his laundry room. it is right over the root cellar and i have to wonder when i get to those carpets if i'll find a trap door hiding under it!

i need to take a pic of the back end of the house so i can get a few opinions if part of it might be an addition or if it is just part of the style from about 100+ years ago. plus, at the moment there are 2 doors leading to 'nowhere'. one door is coming off the kitchen and there should be a deck but my FIL let it rot away and never got to rebuilding it. the other door is hidden from the inside with 1970's wall paneling so it is not accessible. but if you are in the backyard and looking up you can plainly see it is still there with the doorknob still on it too!

a neighbor across the street told us that there was originally a barn behind the house at some point when she moved in around 1965. she said it burned down before my DH and his family bought it in 1977. she said the upper door connected to the upper level of the barn since it was attached to the house. i wish i could find some old pics from before my DH's family owned it to help me trace it's 'heritage'.