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Hello all! After some discussion and consideration, we have added a new rule. You must have a connection to any house being posted here. As in you live in it, lived in it, own it, visited it, etc. We are aiming to cut down on on the low effort posts and people just sharing houses they find online. We are a community of caretakers of these homes, and we would like to keep it the content relevant. Thank you all for understanding. -The Mod Team submitted by /u/capnmurca [link] [comments]

Welcome from our mysterious nope-holes, and the summits of our servants' stairs. Today we the mod team bring you all an announcement that has nothing to do with our beloved old bones, but that, unfortunately, has become necessary again after a century or so. The heart of the matter is: from today onward any and all links from X (formerly Twitter) have been banned from the subreddit. If any of you will find some interesting material of any kind on the site that you wish to cross-post on our subreddit, we encourage you instead to take a screenshot or download the source and post that instead. As a mod team we are a bit bewildered that what we are posting is actually a political statement instead of simply a matter of decency but here we are: we all agree that any form of Fascism/Nazism are unacceptable and shouldn't exist in our age so we decided about this ban as a form of complete repudiation of Musk and his social media after his acts of the last day. What happened during the second inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A. is simply unacceptable for the substance (which wouldn't have influenced our moderation plans, since we aren't a political subreddit), but for the form too. Symbols have as much power as substance, and so we believe that if the person considered the richest man in the world has the gall to repeatedly perform a Hitlergruß in front of the world, he's legitimizing this symbol and all the meaning it has for everyone who agrees with him. Again, we strongly repudiate any form of Nazism and fascism and Musk today is the face of something terribly sinister that could very well threaten much more than what many believe. We apologize again to bring something so off-topic to the subreddit but we believe that we shouldn't stand idly by and watch in front of so much potential for disaster, even if all we can do for now is something as small as change our rules. To reiterate, there's nothing political about opposing fascism. As usual, we'll listen to everyone's feedback as we believe we are working only for the good of our subreddit. https://preview.redd.it/6nuesysvolee1.jpg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9895ecd2844e882082639dd2904375202809d175 submitted by /u/bjeebus [link] [comments]

The bathroom was GROSS. Tile broken, mold, layers of dirt and grime that were like concrete. The entire bathroom needed to be gutted. The only thing that remains from the original bathroom is the toilet and the cast iron tub. The tub needs re glazing but I couldn't get another tiny tub that would fit in the space without spending thousands so I'm making it work. Still have to paint the new door for the new bathroom closet and waiting for the hinges to come in but overall it's almost done! submitted by /u/Intelligent-Deal2449 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/chrisdancy [link] [comments]

When two styles collide. The spiral staircase behind pocket doors, makes me especially happy. I’m currently looking for a similar space to convert into a live/work space for myself. submitted by /u/Ztiw- [link] [comments]

The previous owners unfortunately painted a few windows and doors in my house white. I obviously love the wood, would it be worth it to scrape this paint off, or just leave it as it. Pictures show the white it is currently, and then what it would look like with the paint off. I know if would be a lot of work so I’m hesitant! This particular door and window is in a bathroom and it’s a large window. submitted by /u/Even-Hippo-4839 [link] [comments]

Found this sub and have enjoying all the beautiful old homes. Sharing our 3/4 cape from the late 1700’s. When we bought it was in rough shape - no insulation, no electrical upstairs, aluminum siding and shag carpet and 70’s wood paneling inside. 10+years of DIYing what we could. Eventually hired a contractor to redo the exterior and most of the bottom level. Now we’ve got to redo the septic…20 years in it never ends! submitted by /u/green-neck802 [link] [comments]

My GF and I closed on this house last month and have spent every spare moment working on it. The previous owner wasn’t able to do much upkeep so we’re slowing getting it back from a state of disrepair. These cabinets do have doors but I’m still staring down the arduous task of stripping the many layers of many different types of paint off them. But for now we wanted to get the shelves to a useable place. I deep cleaned mouse poop and years of funk, stripped paint where necessary, boiled the paint and a century’s worth of hand funk off the drawer pulls (Seriously it looked like caked on earwax 🤢 ) The countertop was greasy and moldy and I didn’t want any of my food to touch it so we replaced it with a fresh bit of wood The ultimate plan is probably to tear these out and replace them (there’s just too many layers of paint, they’re too beat up, and honestly not that worth saving) but for now at least we feel like we can prepare food in here submitted by /u/FredTheBarber [link] [comments]

When the AC has been running, a circular spot about 2 feet in diameter is colder than the floor around it. There’s another vent in the room that only puts out half of what I think it should leading me to think there’s a vent under the floor that was covered up a long time ago that’s just cooling the floor. How do I go about figuring this out? submitted by /u/bottledfan [link] [comments]

We’re currently reflooring our ~100 year old home and our flooring contractor asked us how we want to handle this baseboard registers. The two options he outlined were: 1) cut the floors around the register, knowing that it will be difficult to cut around register perfectly and the bottom of the register will be partially covered by our new floors (1/2”) 2) remove the vent and extend the new floor to the wall, then find a replacement cover that will fit over the opening Does anyone have any ideas or experience with a similar situation? What would you do in this case? submitted by /u/soulprovidr [link] [comments]

I sort of liked the retro red but it was not in good shape and the lights were nothing special. We just added a backsplash, redid the counters and new lights. I think it brightened and cleaned it up while maintaining the original look. Cabinets are outdated but it not in the budget and they still kind of work with the flooring. Honestly I'm not sure what to do with them that isn't going to cost $40k now and look dated again in a few years. The house is nigh 200 years old, I think they are ok 😅 sorry it isn't the same angle! submitted by /u/mysticeetee [link] [comments]

These have never locked, bought replacement locks to try and they just do not line up. Thinking of furring up the rear section. Everything is as shut as I can get it. I even scraped the bottom of the lower sash to clean off debris. Can’t close it anymore. How would you get a new lock on?? submitted by /u/KindTarget [link] [comments]

Thought I’d share a nice flooring win. Found this (Maple?) under carpet of our 1925 dutch colonial. Refinished and love the way these turned out. submitted by /u/Diligent_Drummer_328 [link] [comments]

Like many century homes, ours has a patchwork of electrical - circuit breakers and fuses, grounded and ungrounded outlets, knob & tube and conduit/romex. One circuit has outlets across the house: in our kitchen, dining room, living room and second floor. It even includes the front porch lights. Yesterday, I noticed that all but one outlet (the one in the kitchen) doesn’t have power. Everything else is out. There’s no fire. None of the outlets have any loose wires that I can see. There’s no GFCI upstream that’s causing the rest to go out. Electrician brother in law also came out and checked them all, and he found all but the kitchen outlet have 2 volts. He said the best solution is to pull new wire. He thinks there’s a broken connection behind the plaster walls that’s nearly impossible to fix. He is knowledgeable but I don’t think he’s worked on a house quite like this before. I’m wondering if outlets in the chain are busted causing the ones downstream to not work. Figure it’s worth replacing one or two with new outlets before undertaking thousands of dollars in electrical repairs/replacements. Thoughts? Any other ideas? submitted by /u/critforbrains [link] [comments]

I go up and down the stairs all day because I work in a 3rd floor room. It has been hot and humid for a week in the Midwest US. Our 2nd floor has not stayed super cool, but cool enough to sleep. I walked upstairs tonight and immediately noticed the ceiling is all splotchy with what I assume is mold. No pipes up there, just the drywall (plaster was replaced before we moved in), then a layer of loose insulation. The roofing boards are about 8" from the drywall, and we had a new roof put in about 5 years ago. We did a full tear-off and had them insulated at that time. Now I am wondering if we made a grave mistake and it is trapping moisture. It is a big mold bloom - unbelievable that it just appeared, but I promise it was not there a few hours prior. I turned on fans and can move my dehumidifier from the basement.. but is this a professional job? And how should we have prevented this, do you think? submitted by /u/alliterativehyjinks [link] [comments]

I have a 1922 home and the second floor is these Douglas Fir(?) two panels and apparently with the first year of Stanley heart-stamped hardware. I think this is a relative of Japanning, but it was always fake. Unfortunately, after 103 years, these doors are worse for the wear. I've stripped the wax off the fronts of the door and the blacked shellac off the back (leaving a red dyed surface) and been reapplying shellac and eventually I'll wax to bring down the sheen. However, the finish on the knobs is in various states of disrepair. They're simply steel with a thin bronze coating, then some sort of black lacquer and then wax. I can strip the wax with alcohol (which makes it look like that Japanese pottery mended in gold for better or worse) but even if I wanted the cracked lacquer look...some of them are far too rusted to put back as-is. Stupidly or otherwise, since the hinges are largely bare metal, I took acetone to the knobs to get down to the (often poor condition) brass plating. Then, I repainted in a muted gold and planned to simply wax them. I'm now kind of regretting that and want to DIY something passable that's a bit more period appropriate. Apparently the houses I see with this bright hardware are more Victorian. Can I wash them in something? Wax them with tinted wax? Clearly, I can't etch into paint and they weren't really brass to begin with, so I'm trying to decide between embracing the bling factor here or potentially creating costume jewelry "aging." Any help would be appreciated! submitted by /u/csciuto [link] [comments]

hi i live in a philadelphia rowhouss and my daughter made an uncharacteristic mistake :( the rails are very splinter-y now and have to be refinished. my full refinish of the stairs is still a ways away, so i'd like to figure out how to SAFELY make them smooth and paint over them to encapsulate the lead without removing the railings. how do i go about this? submitted by /u/falshak [link] [comments]

Hi all, so my parents bought the house i live in about 8 years ago while i was in middle school. it’s ab 200yrs old and we got it incredibly cheap in foreclosure because the previous owners inherited the house and just wanted to get rid of the place. there were a lot of issues with the house and a large portion was fixed by my dad who really had no experience doing any type of restoration or plumbing or any type of construction experience. so a lot of it was diy without enough research and kinda falling apart now. there’s so much i need help with to go into fixing this house (since it is now mine). i have no idea where to begin. but right now i wanna focus on the mouse problem. my boyfriend moved in so i moved from my bedroom to a separate area of the house for more space. it used to be my dads mancave. the part of the house i live in now used to be a barn decades ago and was converted to a living area and connected to the main part of the house. This room is INFESTED with mice in the “loft”(we use it for storage now but it used to be for hay and whatnot since it was a barn so imagine that layout) and i can hear them running through the walls and the poop is scattered all along the floor by every wall, i clean it weekly or even daily sometimes. we keep no food in this room and i set mouse traps and catch them all the time but its just never ending and they get into everything in this room, my clothes, my desk, my books, the couch, literally anything that is next to a wall will have mouse poop on it eventually or i’ll hear them at night crawling on or getting into. what can i do to get them out??? they drive me insane and it doesn’t matter how many i catch with the regular mouse traps. i’m a very clean person and this makes me feel so disgusting. i know the problem is that there’s so many entry points for them since the house is so old. but is there anything i can do to keep them away from my space at the very least?? better would be to get rid of them all together but i don’t think it’s possible at this point. please help!! submitted by /u/gg1227b [link] [comments]

110 year old house. The covering? has obviously come down and in some spots very easy to pop off. Interior of the wall is very crumbly. The darker wall is very damp and I suspect water coming through during big rain events. I had a foundation company come out and they were suprisingly not worried about it. Another company is coming to look but what should be done to repair? submitted by /u/sarge46 [link] [comments]

Moving into this house soon and trying to come up with a vision. I think it’s pretty good as-is, only changes I would make are to strip the paint on the columns around the fireplace to restore the wood, and to get nicer blinds. I plan to keep the walls white but I love living rooms with an accent wall. I just don’t think anything but white works here. Would love to hear your thoughts: how can I enhance this room while preserving the historical charm? submitted by /u/oopstoobig [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/baristacat [link] [comments]

Haven't moved in yet, these are from the RE listing. Someone painted the trim around the wide doorways but left most of the baseboards and the windows in the living room natural. It looks less insane in the staged photos but in person it really just looks like someone left in the middle of a painting project. Considering just moving in and stewing on it for awhile before taking any action. Thank god they left the staircase alone! submitted by /u/Optimal-Somewhere400 [link] [comments]

I just took off tempered glass doors on a sliding metal track that has been on since the 60s. I expected caulking and maybe screws but not this. Does anyone know what they used to adhere the track to the tub? is it just polyurethane caulk that is so incredibly old that it hardened into a cement like glue? If you were me how would you go about getting it off? I was using various scrapers, a razorblade scraper, a putty knife. This stuff is absolutely caked on so hard it feels like part of the porcelain enamel tub. submitted by /u/Peppermintblade [link] [comments]

Title. Thinking some variation of the swatches in the second photo, with maybe a darker charcoal-y accent somewhere in there, open to ideas! Restain the wood trim? Paint it? Crossbar accents? Homes in my neighborhood are relatively colorful, no concern with blending in or standing out, personality goes. I lean earthy tones, don’t love blues or reds. Greens, gold rods, terracotta, slate. She’s an 1890 build, I bought it as a flip 4 years ago with the dreaded millennial depression gray drench. This will be the last of it, finally. Needs new siding entirely but out of budget at the moment so we are making it work with fresh paint! submitted by /u/Accurate-Peach4148 [link] [comments]

I need to replace the inside knob on this door. I have no idea where to start to find something like this. Any advice? submitted by /u/ProRuckus [link] [comments]

Hi guys! I am almost finished jointing/grouting the brick veneer on the floor and am now wondering about our next step- beadboard on the ceiling. Going back and forth between staining and painting. I prefer the look of stained, but don't know if it will feel too heavy/low on the already low porch ceiling (about 7ft tall). We're in New England so I don't believe there's a much of a tradition with haint blue, but I have seen it. Our front porch has original beadboard but it's painted white. This is far from the front porch so I'm not worried about matching it. The column will get a little bump out around the bottom and the white storm door is going to be replaced with a wood one, but the trim will stay white. Curious what you guys think is best, and for anyone in New England/northeast what do you have on your bead board ceilings? Thank you!! submitted by /u/lefactorybebe [link] [comments]

As a longtime lurker of r/centuryhomes I am happy to be the proud owner new owner of a 1923 Dutch Colonial! I would love y’all’s advice on how best to set up our living room furniture. There’s a strange bump out (as shown in the first photo) that logically appears to be a covered/removed fireplace, but there is no evidence of a chimney on the outside of the house. Though if you look closely you can see the floorboards make an outline indicating that something was there. The other photos show our furniture in the best arrangement that we can presently think of, but I would love advice on better pieces to add and different arrangements we could try. Also, should I try to add a fireplace back in?? Logically, I know I should not, but would adding in a mantle just for aesthetic look stupid? It feels weird not to have a fireplace as a focal point in a house this old. But I also can’t think of a way to arrange furniture if there was a fireplace! Please let me know your thoughts, my wise house-loving friends! submitted by /u/Dutch1923 [link] [comments]