Old Houses
Living in a house that is eighty or more years old presents a series of unique advantages and challenges.
Eighty years ago, there was no air conditioning, so many of these houses were designed to be cool in the summer. They have tall ceilings and plaster walls which seem to remain cool to the touch in even the hottest weather. They have dark, dank, cave-like basements that are a good ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. They may have large, old trees that shade the house and porches that shade the entrances to the house. You might find that except on really hot days you can keep the house comfortable with ceiling fans.
Old houses have the remnants of their previous technologies and owners. You might find leftover knobs from knob and tube wiring or runs of lead pipe from the time before copper pipes. You might have a slate roof or the type of light switch where you turn a knob. You might have the remnants of a gas light system or a small door in the side of the basement where they used to drop the coal for heating. It can be a challenge to work around these things and yet it can be interesting to contemplate life in a different age, when the house was the newest thing on the block.
When you live in an old house, you get used to the advantages of plaster and lathe walls. Lathes are thin pieces of wood that were installed as a foundation for the plaster. Unless you are putting something really heavy on the wall, you can install almost anything without having to find studs: you just screw it into the lathes. The downside of old walls is wallpaper. They made it stick back in the teens and twenties! Getting old paper off is truly a job involving scrapers, warm water in spray bottles, vinegar, and lots of elbow grease.
Floors can be another source of beauty. Often old houses have oak floors downstairs and some form of pine upstairs. Sand and refinish these floors and you will really enjoy them. Bathrooms and kitchens, in contrast, might have several layers of old linoleum to remove before you install a more modern flooring but you also might run across a bathroom with old ceramic tile floors.
Workmanship in the time of plentiful and cheap wood can be amazing. You can be sure that anything carved in an old house was not simply put through a computer-operated laser woodworking machine. It was hand-carved by someone long ago who probably cared about what he was doing. The doors are solid wood and shut with a satisfying bang. You might even have woodwork that has not been painted in eighty or ninety years, which is really beautiful. If you are really fortunate, you might even have stained glass windows!
Old houses aren’t for the timid, but if you can adjust to their foibles, you will enjoy their assets.