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"They don't build them like they used to" usually refers to prewar houses. Prewar as in World War II, which started in 1939.
Most 1970s houses are pretty useless.
Exactly correct. That old saying has nothing to do with the 70s and never did. They were saying that in the 70s about things built prior to WWII. I was there. I know.
Some reasons they aren't made the way they used to be:
- A 2x4 of lumber is not 2x4 anymore, it has shrunk over time. In the old days it was 2x4 even after drying.
- All the good old natural lumber that can be cut mostly already has been cut, new supplies of wood are "farmed" and tweaked via science for maximum yield, which results in wood that's more susceptible to movement.
- Some materials that provided durability like asbestos and lead based paint were found to have other unpleasant characteristics and outlawed. Newer materials like poly spray foam will suffer the same fate in time, we gotta wait for some folks to die first.
- Craftsmanship has been discouraged. Good carpenters have been taught they will lose their job to less skilled but cheaper illegal immigrants no matter what, so they either left the industry or just in general aren't willing to put the same level of passion or hard work into it.
Correct. My wife is a home inspector, and even homes built in the 70s are usually built better than current new construction in most cases. She says older homes have "better bones," and has witnessed this phenomenon herself in the thousands of homes she has inspected. Homes are built more from real wood, not composites, the roof is a 30 year, not 15 year, they actually use metal instead of plastic painted a metal color, etc. . . And don't forget the China vs. USA factor in materials. I can't stand the new construction homes. They are all identical cookie cutter beige and brick monstrosities thrown up as fast as possible in identical subdivisions with virtually the same features. Thanks, but no thanks. Our next home will be older, more unique, and stronger.
I personally, think you would be hard pressed to to prove that using "real" wood versus composite or engineered products gives you a better or longer lasting end product. I have 30 year shingles on my house built in 2006. Just because people choose cheap junk doesn't mean that good stuf is not available any more.
I will say, as someone who lives in an area thats hurricane prone, I'd rather ride out a hurricane in a modern house over one that was built pre 1950 or so. I have been in those old wood houses and have actually seen the ceilings move up and down due to the pressure changes in the attic. In the old days they didn't use trusses, and they were bad about spanning lumber way longer than it should be. When it comes to the "bones" of the house, I think modern houses built to a code are better. Stuff like interior trim and doors are usually better in the older houses however.
Well, other than when the house was built, perhaps houses should be compared according to who they were built for. We have a 1911, but it was built as a temporary house for new sugar cane workers on a plantation so it's not exactly finely built. Still standing, though and it's endured some major abuse over the years. Funky floorplan, odd construction methods but a great location.
We also have a 1950's house which has a very typical floor plan of the time and was built as a 3 bedroom 1 bath family house with an additional toilet and shower in the laundry room below the house. It is built in Hawaii so it's 'single wall' construction, nothing you'd be familiar with on the mainland. Vertical 1" x 8" clear fir walls with double exterior bellybands. It looks like the windows were built in place as well as the doors. The living room windows are big wood framed three pane sliders with wooden framed screens. The rest of the windows are double hung sash windows which work really well once the sash cords have been repaired. The roof was built in place and the aluminum roofing is still the original roofing and in surprisingly good shape. The fiber washers around the fasteners had disappeared so we had to refasten it down with better fasteners, though.
It's got it's own quirks, such as the bathroom window that impinges on the shower area so the shower curtain rod is custom made to curve over to the side of the window. That's made of galvanized iron pipe, along with the handrails in the shower. There's also a galvanized pipe handrail at the back door. Built in kitchen cabinets, solid wood floors although they were covered with linoleum in the bath and kitchen and then recovered with sheet vinyl and at some point we will have to replace that which will be a huge project. Other than removing the doors which shut the kitchen off to the rest of the house and relocating the laundry to the back of the house we haven't changed the floor plan. For a sixty five year old house, it's pretty solid.
We also have a 1972 'kit' home, Hicks Homes #690 to be precise, that was built for the same type of folks that the '52 house was built for so they are an even comparison. The same guy even built them, too, from what I've heard, although he was a cabinet maker for the sugar plantation and not a contractor. He apparently built quite a few houses as a side job. The '52 house took more skill to build although that's primarily from the doors and windows being built in place. The same 'single wall' type construction. Same 1" vertical boards, although in the '72 house they are 1" x 6" instead of 1" x 8" and there is only one bellyband. The living room fixed glass windows are wood framed, but the rest of the windows in the house are aluminum framed louver windows with aluminum framed screens. The doors are hollow core, even including the exterior doors although those are in protected areas so they don't have the weather on them.
Same built in cabinets, but instead of solid wood, they are particle board. Vinyl tile in the kitchen and bath - the old fashioned glue in place solid ones. You can still buy them today and they show up in industrial and commercial applications. The rest of the floor is oak T & G boards nailed directly to the floor joists. It had carpet in some areas but that was pulled up before we bought the house. Three bedroom, two bath with a big movable shoji door between the much smaller kitchen and living room.
The '52 house was better built than the '72 house although most of that is in the doors and windows. The '72 house has been reroofed once since it was built. It shows wear and tear more than the '52 house, mostly in the wear on the materials such as the cabinet doors and hollow core doors. The aluminium frame on the louvers and screens shows wear from the salt air since both houses are pretty close to the ocean while the wood framed ones ignore the salt air.
The '52 house is considered a 3/1 since the second bathroom (toilet with shower) is below the house were the laundry used to be. The '72 house is a 3/2 with the second bathroom (again, just a toilet and shower) in the master bedroom. The '52 house is 1,124 square feet, the '72 house is 1,024 square feet. The '52 house is much more comfortable than the '72 house with tons more room on the walls for artwork. In the '72 house, we weren't able to hang all the pictures on the walls, perhaps because the ocean facing wall in the living room of the '72 house was mostly windows and louvers. No real wall between the kitchen and living room, the hallway was too narrow for artwork and not much room in the bedrooms by the time furniture was added. We bought a few more pictures for the '52 house since it had room to hang them. Very strange considering how similar in size the two houses are.
So, comparing the '52 and '72 houses, the '52 is better built and uses better materials.
I don't trust anything built in the 70s-80s. The workmanship has been much better in my experience before and after that period. Science and tech have come a long way in the past couple decades, materials are stronger and more efficient than ever, building techniques better.
Older homes may be lacking in some areas, but they generally have solid bones.
In the 70s-80s there seemed to just be a rush to build ASAP regardless of quality. The baby boomers were in their 20s/30s and were flooding the market for homes.
The new home and two additions in my neighborhood have piers 22' deep and and 30" in diameter... they bored holes, installed rebar cages and filled with concrete...
All new seismic requirements as are sheer walls and load path bracing....
My home was 28k in 1957... my neighbor did an addition and had a 100k in the addition foundation...
I personally, think you would be hard pressed to to prove that using "real" wood versus composite or engineered products gives you a better or longer lasting end product. I have 30 year shingles on my house built in 2006. Just because people choose cheap junk doesn't mean that good stuf is not available any more.
How about engineered hardwood floors.
Engineered hardwood floors, which consisted of a top of layer of hardwood glued to multiple thin layers of wood, can only be sanded and refinished 2 to 3 times in its lifetime because the the top layer is thin. In addition, some of those engineered hardwood floors are only 3/8" inch.
However, according to this website, solid wood floors have thicker top layers that can be sanded and refinished 10 times. So the solid wood floors are longer lasting in that instance.
I grew up in a house built in the 1840s. It had dry stacked stone foundation walls (ie, no mortar), a dirt basement floor, logs set on the ground (no footers) to support the first floor, uneven floors, non-square corners, non-standard doors, narrow and steep stairs, holes in the first floor ceiling to allow heat from the non-ducted wood burning furnace to drift upstairs to the bedrooms, and a combo wood burning heating stove with attached gas range/oven in the kitchen. It had one bathroom off the kitchen. It had three bedrooms upstairs but no bathroom, and you had to walk through one bedroom to get to another bedroom. OTOH, we had closets, something most homes from that era lacked. Did I mention that each bedroom had 1 central ceiling fixture and no wall outlets? Of course, originally, the house didn't have either indoor plumbing or electricity, both of which were added later, the plumbing possibly before 1900 but electricity probably not until after WW I.
My point is that while the house wasn't really built as solidly as myth would have modern people believe, it survived for 160+ years despite a lot of flaws. It was also neither comfortable nor well designed, not for a family in the 1960s and certainly not for a family in the 21st century. My father rebuilt it in the late 1970s after a woodstove fire, so in its last years it was at least a comfortable and somewhat better designed house. It would still be standing if it had not fallen victim to a road project to straighten a dangerous curve.
My guess is that in another 50 or 100 years, people will be saying/writing similar things about homes built since WW II.
70s may not be great, but around here there are a TON of 70s brick home neighborhoods. Most of them are also single story which a lot of older people (or those with kids) prefer. Believe it or not, on average the homes in these neighborhoods look better than the 15-25 year old vinyl jungle neighborhoods.
And one thing you can't take away from those 70s homes is location. Homes built back then had a big head start on picking out lots. This often means flatter lots and closer to town so you don't have to drive as far.
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