Agreed, but it is not an ever increasing function in value. The belief that an old house just gets "better" with age is nothing more than a belief. The frame doesn't get stronger, the roof tighter, etc. Everything ages and nothing lasts forever.
R
*Sounds like a nice job was done. Thank you for posting back with details.
Ditto that. A lot of times there are lengthy threads with a lot of suggestions/debate and then it's off into the ether and we never hear what happened.
BTW, in future, next time you have a question for people to diagnose upload some pictures on a free hosting site and post the links here. It makes it more interesting, efficient and fun.
R
No-one said it necessarily gets better. It MAY become more desireable in the eys of some who have the money to not worry about costs.
in the eys of some who have the money to not worry about costs.
You're not addressing the point I was addressing. Everyone knows there are people who will buy stuff if it is simply the most expensive thing out there, figuring it just _has_ to be better or why would the people be asking that price. That's not the point Blueman brought up that I took issue with.
He said, "One great advantage of vintage houses vs. new ones is that my house only gets better and more valuable with age". You've agreed about the not getting better, now we're just down to the more valuable.
There are the usual fluctuations in desirability of any house as it ages and that goes to price. An old house will not be on an ever- increasing upward trend, leaving the newer houses' value in the dust. It does not work that way.
In my neck of the woods they knocked down a house from 1693. Knocked it down! They couldn't give it away, and believe me, they tried. People didn't w
R
Read Blueman's first line in the quote above. He said it got better _and_ more valuable.
Oops.
People didn't want to pay the cost of moving the house. A relatively local historic village recreation that has been bringing houses to their site for years, didn't want it. The house was in fine condition for an old house. By Blueman's theory, that house should have been in the many, many millions of dollars - and they couldn't give it away. It pissed me off that it was knocked down, but the market had spoken.
R
They may become "comparatively" better as newer homes are "cheapened" with the price relating more to "features" than "quality"
A house with lime plaster walls and solid wood framing, t&G subfloor, etc will ALWAYS be a "better built" home than a house built with tin studs, aspenite subfloor and roof decking, drywall walls, and paper product sheating.
And in our neighbourhood there have been several (smaller) homes (on
1/2 acre lots) built in the 1960s, sold for very close to half a million, and bulldozed to put in a new "McMansion".
Smebody wanted the land it sat on for more lucrative endeavours????
And what about the things that are so far behind the times that they become a problem, and things that become dangerous? Electrical wiring doesn't last forever, and neither does plumbing. Just because you have that really stout looking STEEL pipe, it doesn't mean it isn't rotted to shit inside, right? The insulation on the wiring can just dry up and die, and then the first time it's disturbed it cracks and you have a potential for a short or fire. Insulation, wasteful boilers, etc., etc.
It might be that an old IS better than a particular house, but an older house doesn't accelerate and become even more better unless you do something to it, which makes it less old (at least for the work done).
Not sure if you're purposefully misunderstanding what I'm saying, or what, but that's all I have to say on that.
R
They put up something most people thought was a motel. Aaarrrggghhh!!!!
R
(snip)
I'll offer a big AMEN to that. I love old houses as much as the next guy, and all the Real Wood instead of ply or OSB, etc. I especially love the hardwood floors and interior cabinetry, casings and built-ins. Having said that, however, I prefer modern plumbing and HVAC, modern insulation/windows, modern 200 amp electrical, and so on. And unlike on TOH, most people can't cost-justify retrofitting all that to an older house, much less even finding somebody to do the retrofit. Even a semi-modern like this 1960 I am sitting in gives me fits at times. Assuming I can afford to retire on schedule, I'm gonna look for a 1970 or newer for the next one.
-- aem sends...
Nobody ever said the old houses were untouched. The steel pipe and K&T wiring. The old boilers are GONE. Many are "restored" and upgraded to at least current specs electrically and mechanically, at significant cost - yet the owners virtually ALWAYS recoup their investment at resale time.
I spent some time working for a high end window company a few years back - you'd crap your drawers if you saw the bills for some of the window replacement jobs. One old mansion the bill was in the mid-high
5 figures (pretty close to $60,000 canadian year 1995 bucks)- and when done, you would not have known, looking at the house, that the windows were not "period correct" - Yet they were state of the art high efficiency units.
Very interesting problem and solution.
Thanks!
For what it's worth, I just spent a few years in Europe courtesy of my employer.
Most of the construction was plaster over masonry, even interior walls. Nobody had ever heard of fishing a wire. Standard practice was to route out a narrow slot, add wire, plaster over. Once painted it was invisible.
It left the wire pretty close to the surface and uncautious Americans often put a nail through it hanging a picture, etc. But since they always honored the conventions about where to put the wire, the locals never had that problem.
Pray tell, what were those conventions?
R
Sigh. So you're making the old house into a new house piece by piece. Gotchya.
R
Well, not everybody can get the 'This Old House' crew to come do it for them.
I've seen several old houses in my lifetime that I would love to own, from a layout and ambiance standpoint. However, the upgrades would cost more than building a new house of similar layout and features, with modern materials. Sadly, the fine quarter-sawn hardwoods on many of the interiors now fall into the 'if you have to ask' category on price. Something about 95% of all the old-growth hardwood within 2000 miles being cut down already, I think...
One thing seldom mentioned about older fancy houses- in most towns, the neighborhoods where the rich people lived 1890-1940 or so, have had a demographic shift. Not much point in having a fine old restored house if you have to have window bars, motion-activated lights, and wear a sidearm to walk around the block. Blue collar houses from that era are mostly gone, in this part of the country, at least. ( But some of them have some keen interior features as well.) No colonial-era houses around here- I think the oldest standing house in town is from 1860s or so.
-- aem sends....
Not what I meant. I meant that the ever-increasing-in-value old house that clare was talking about, is also increasing in value because it's being updated, which makes it That Not So Old Anymore House.
I took out a piece of blocking the other day from a house built in
1928. Just a tubafor. The growth rings were so close I could hardly count them and I was wearing my reading glasses. Had to be about 30 per inch. The cy-boards you get nowadays. you're lucky if there are more than five or six rings per inch.Yep, what were stately houses on stately streets, serviced by streetcars, are now inner city housing serviced by buses. Life marches on.
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