LOL, your house "talked to you" aren't "scientists" smart enough (or rich enough) to help with the renovations? 5 years is a long time for renovations. You poor lady. :yelrotflm have to laugh, or else I'd have to cry. Good Luck with your "renovations".

I was looking and I don't have any good pictures of it. When we bought the house the tub was just sitting in what we call the "tub room" but it wasn't hooked up to any plumbing... it had flowers in it and it was almost like a little museum, had a chair next to it... I don't know, it was really weird lol So we got it refinished, bought a new shower kit and wa-la. I need to get some pictures.

We were lucky, too. Our house had central air/gas heat when we bought it so we don't have to use window units.

Ya'll are making me jealous to the bone!!! I love love love old homes. I'd love to get one, but there arent that many in the neck of woods that I wanna move to. I wish i could find a builder who'd build me one, but make it look old.

The first house I bought was a 1905 Colonial! It was all refinished with love before we bought it. We had 1 original window left bc it was between 2 rooms. It had all the original hardwoods floors and a big hardwood grand staircase. It had arched doorways, high ceilings and beautiful woodwork everywhere, and only the master bedroom had a closet, the other bedrooms did not. It had horse hair plaster walls and we cut a hole in one of them to make a niche shelf wow.. those walls were HEAVY!!! You could see in the ceilings where they strung the electrical since the house was built before electricity! I loved this house, everything about it, it was gorgeous and unique! I miss it!
It was actually designed well to be efficient, but for some reason it was not that efficient at all. 3 heat zones, we only kept the middle one on, and at a temp of 68 and in Jan/Feb it was almost $500/month! Even with the new windows. :( Then again, there were no doors on the main floor, except a bathroom door, which means that we couldn't shut off rooms that we didn't use much.

My husband is one of the top plasma scientists but scientists are mostly 'thinkers' not 'do-ers' and rich? I wished... (((sigh)))... maybe one day if one of his 12 patents gets funded...

It took me about 4 months to make the house livable the first time around but my 'friend' left the house in such a condition that I had to start all over again... (((double sigh)))

Mine has closets in each bedroom but all except one are small closets so that is a downfall of my house too. We do have an unfinished basement though

Closets are over rated, it always for junk to be collected LOL. It sounds as if you have done a great job and still have room for improvement.:thumbup:

I think some of them relied on armoires instead of closets. My DH is custom building armoires to fit on each side of the bed, and due to his disabilities it is taking longer than it used to. Also, I have demanded a matching one for my 'girls' ....:p, so that will add extra time.

My house is an 1901 Colonial. I have 5 bedrooms, one bath, dining room, living room, kitchen, front porch, and it used to have a wrap around back and side porch area that have been converted to my whelping room and a den. It also has a full unfinished basement. Parts of it had been redone prior to purchasing it and I have spent 10 years on the rest and am in the final stretches. I working on the hallway/stairwell area. Unfortunately the earlier rehab has been all modern and so that is what I have finished with. So new windows, plaster gone, new insulation, new wiring, new heating, floors, etc. Once the hall/stairs are done it will be approx. 30K put into it. It still needs a new roof at a 10k estimate made me choke:eek:! So that will have to wait a year or so.
I have maintained one part of the original house and that is the steps and banisters.. Stripped the 6 layers or so of paint off them and then hours and hours of sanding to then repaint them all white. They are beautiful and I wish that the rest of the charm remained:(.
I plan to sell this in 3 years and when I do I will be building new or buying new:D.
I have enjoyed the project but do not want to do it again.

ahhh, to be that ambitious. This is our 'death house'. Last stop. We can take as long as we want, because we are not moving ever again. Too old. Sometimes, it's good to be old...:)

Well I tell ya after this many years doing this house I feel very old:D

Well with 5 bedrooms in the winter even with all that work done it still cost me $500 a month to heat and that is with the upstairs heat turned off!!:eek:
So when the kiddos move out completely (21,20,19,19) I will for sure sell it for something smaller on the inside and much more land on the outside:D

Well with the new insulation and sheet rock the heating bill went down about a hundred bucks a month. But yes all the charm is gone and it has been moderized:(. Really had no choice as half had already been done.
I bought this house from my parents (I grew up here) and they bought it from their parents. Prior to that it was in the neighbors family for 2 generations...and old man Trask built it. So not bad for that long and just 2 families...

Our house was built in 1536.

The date's etched in the stone lintel over the door.

You win! :eek:

That is why England rocks. :p That's seriously amazing. Do you have any pictures? I would absolutely love to see them.

I've always wanted to own a castle in Ireland. Is that weird? LOL.

Really? My uncle is a professor of Plasma Physics. What university does your husband teach at? Sometimes when he starts talking all his mumble jumble I have no idea what he is talking about. LOL.

LOL... I know all about the mumble jumble... Ever so often I go HUH???? My husband does not teach he is an inventor and in the process to get funding for one of his patents... It will be a very big thing about hydrogen...

I've always wanted a castle too. They have a lot for a steal in Germany, but of course the cost to restore them would just kill you (or me anyway).

I just saw this thread! In April we bought a 1909 (or 1918? there were two listings with two different years listed) 2.5 storey farmhouse. Luckily for us, in 1997 it had been gutted, moved into town from a farm yard, put on a new foundation, and had a main floor addition and double car attached garage built! They totally re-did all of the electrical, plumbing, drywall, siding, windows, etc. while still keeping the old features like doors, frames, stairs, banisters, and all original fir floors (not redone, just filled with character!) It's aboslutely beautiful and my dream house. We had to move 20 minutes out of the city where we work, but I'm a small town girl to begin with and I couldn't pass up the house... our realtor even told us if that same house was IN the city, it would be worth at least 1.2 MILLION :eek::eek::eek: Needless to say, we paid SUBSTANTIALLY less than that lol! But being only 20 minutes out, and both working in the engineering field and knowing our city is expanding that direction, we're sure we made a pretty good investment :D

The neat thing about our house is that it's an Eaton's catalogue house. Eaton's was a huge Canadian company back in the day (bought out by Sears in the 90's) and the only way farmers shopped was through their Eaton's catalogue for clothing, household items, farm equipment, etc. And yes, they could even order houses. The blueprints and all materials needed to build the house were delivered by train. Cool, right? We have an expert on these homes right in our city and he's wrote a book on them, so we're going to contact him and see if he can give us a copy of the original blueprints, if he can figure out which design it is.

I don't have any pictures here at work but I stole this one from my facebook :) I kind of hate the white siding and it is so hard to keep clean, but it's going to last for a long time so I'll deal with it lol!

Wow Lindsey, your house is beautiful :) that's so cool that your house was moved... We have thought about having out house moved a little more out in the country to a nicer area. I just wonder how much it would cost?

Anybody have anymore pictures of their homes? I swear I could look at old houses all day :p Maybe I need to find a forum for this!

I will post more pics of our house tonight when I get home from work:)

I'm sure prices differ between areas, but my parents had a 1920's farmhouse moved to their lake lot for a cabin, and it was moved about 30 km (~18 mi) and I believe it cost about $5,000 just for the move... my dad works for the power corporation so he lifted all the powerlines himself along the route. With all the lath and plaster it also was the heaviest house the mover had EVER lifted! And it's only about 800 sq. ft! But I'm sure most places could give you a free quote if you were seriously looking into it :)

If I have some time in the next few days I might find some pictures of the interior of our house! It's still a work in progress though!

You never posted pictures!!!! :)

I took some interior pictures before Christmas so I'll post a few year... ignore the Christmas decor ;)

In 1&2 you can kind of see the pillars to the living room. In the dining room picture, the large doorframe has beautiful original pocket doors. This was the "parlour". The last picture is a photo we have on the wall that the previous owners had left.. it was the house in all it's original glory!