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I know one, really really well. Actually I know a lot of people like this, but only one that i know really well.
The walls could use a little drywall putty and new paint.
Our walls are plaster and some need more than a little putty and paint. We fix some, then the kids break some other place, or let a bathtub overflow or . . . It is just part of the patina of an old house. Hang a picture over the hole or crack and it is hard to notice.
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The cabinets are from the 60s, very dated, not painted and maybe a few drawers don’t shut right
Our cabinets are from the 60s - 1860s. They are painted. The drawers eventually shut right but sometimes it takes a bit of work. The hard part is keeping the bottoms from sliding around and dumping half the stuff in the drawer into the cabinet below. Glue three of them and four others let go. They sure are pretty cabinets though.
Maybe the hardwoods show a lot of wear and “need” refinishing
Our floors are mostly heart pine - a semi-hardwood. Some have pieces missing. some desperately need refinishing especially in the kitchen. However we have bigger priority issues to focus on. The floors work just fine refinished or not. the area rugs cover most of the floor space anyway., It you do not like the floors stop looking down. There are some really beautiful doors, moldings and window casings right in front of you - and look at that cool 1830s whale oil lamp! Look up not down, you are missing all the cool stuff.
The porch has some peeling paint on the floor and rails that they might “get around to later”
Half of our porch deck is not painted. I just ran out of time, also on that side of the house, there are a lot of trees and the porch has green stuff along the edges. Power wash it off and then wait for it to dry. then tied up for a weekend or two, then it rains, then by the time it dries enough to paint, it is green again. Finally this summer I got the right weather and time and opened my five gallon bucket of porch paint. Only to find it had congealed into a big lump of goo. Now I have to wait until I have budget for another very expensive bucket of porch paint. I will get to it one day. Use to be no one could see that side of the porch anyway, but now someone is building a house on that side, so I will have to bump that up the priority list. Our porch does not have rails. Never did and never will. technically I think code requires them now but we are grandfathered.
The yard certainly isn’t perfectly landscaped but they at least cut the grass when it’s 8 inches tall
we cut the grass whenever the lawn tractor is working. It rarely get above 4" except around the trees, in the ditch, and down at the end of the driveway where there is a pile of huge limestone pavers that we will eventually use to make a walkway. I am not longer strong enough to lift them though, so we will have to find the money to hire someone.
Maybe the driveway has a lot of big cracks and broken places but it’s been that way for 20 years
Our driveway has no cracks, zero. It is gravel so it would be unusual to get cracks. It does have a few pot holes or puddles or whatever you want to call it. Also there is grass growing on the hump in the middle between where your tires go. We have been driving on that hump lately to try to smush it down a bit. eventually we will need to have the driveway regraded. I hate new gravel though. It takes a few years to pack down tightly and until then, in the winter, the snowblower throws it all over the place and then you have to rake it back int he spring.
Point is, basically nothing looks new or perfect. It’s pretty clean though.
Describes our house in a nutshell. it is not a cheap or dumpy house. It is worth over half a million dollars which is a lot for our area.
Is it bad to live this way given that all the major stuff is functional and safe (hear/air, plumbing, electrical)?
that stuff is all newish. when that stuff breaks we fix it immediately. Kind of have to really. Some things can wait though. We have a shower that was installed wrong and started leaking. We do not have the money to fix it, so we use different showers. It has been out of commission, for 18 months, hopefully we will have the money this coming summer. It really is our best shower.
Basically, they live by the motto don’t fix it ‘till it breaks.
No. Don't fix it until you have the time and money and it is at the top of your priority list. Only the essentials need to be fixed immediately (doors windows, roof, most plumbing or electrical issues).
They may make half hearted attempts to spruce things up a bit but they aren’t spending a fortune to say remodel a bathroom. Maybe they get crazy and spend an hour sticking some flowers in the ground around the old bird bath. The termite company comes out every 5 or so years to check.
We have a list. we do a little each warm season and some inside stuff during the winter. Used to be the kids would break more things than I could fix in a year, but now they are grown, I am making some progress. Deer eat almost anything we plant. there is no stopping them. We managed to keep a few trees and bushes alive until they got big enough to be safe. The roses did ok for a while but suddenly died last year. Lilacs are doing great and are beautiful. For a couple of years, we planted some annauls along the front of the porch. They were pretty until the deer at them. Now we dont bother. sometimes we put hanging baskets of flows along the porch, but the deer eat those too eventually. Not sure how they get to them.
In some ways this seems like a low stress (good?) comfortable way to live.
Not necessarily a better way to live, just different priorities. Our time and money always went first to kid stuff, road trips, pets, charity, etc. what was left might go into the house. When your house is really cool, cool people look around and say how wonderful it is. Crappy people point out every blemish. No desire to impress the crappy people and they seem more happy if they have something to grouse about.
So what if you were moving something heavy, busted into the door casing and made a 1/2” dent? Just an accident move on. You don’t encourage it, but no big deal if someone decided to scoot the couch across the wood floor. Maybe the kids were playing, threw a ball and dented the siding? Well darn, but it just matches the rest of the imperfect house, right? Furniture? Hmm, the cheap or free non-perfect/beautiful stuff can work just fine.
Door casing - not much you can do about it. Cant replace it. You just have to be careful. Fortunately, yellow pine is a pretty hard wood. The house is 188, of course it will have some dings and dents. That is called patina. It makes the house more valuable. No one wants to walk into a historic house and see a subdivision home inside. Furniture was once really nice antique furniture form when we were rich. Some of it got broken form kid rowdiness. we can no longer afford to fix it. Some pieces just sit there and look cool and should nto really be used. Others are serviceable. we no longer have enough guests at a time to really need all five couches anyway.
Why not fix it up for resale value? Well, they aren’t planning on moving.
Oh we are. I have a ten year plan for that. However someone looking for a new looking subdivision house finished with low quality modern materials, should not be looking at our house they will never buy it. For a price I will accept. when the time comes to sell it, if we cannot find the right buyers, then my heirs will just have to sell it. I am not fixing it up for that.
Why not fix it up to impress others? They don’t care what others think.
if you do not think my house is awesome just the way it is, then you cannot be my friend. If you are not my friend, why would I care whether it impresses you or not?
Last edited by Coldjensens; 12-16-2019 at 12:32 PM..
I think you’ll find that in the vast majority of new home designs that make zero sense whatsoever. I don’t know, I don’t get them at least. I probably saw 100 floor plans that sucked for every 1 that had any use to me. It was never square footage, it was always function. A 4,000 square foot house with a formal dining room I’ll never use, a sitting area that’s utterly pointless, a way-too-large master - total waste of space, and bizarre areas and alcoves that don’t accomplish anything or catwalk like hallways open to the downstairs in the ultimate fail of open concept gone too far. Most of these houses looked grand, but who would want to live in them?! I couldn’t figure out what kind of person - besides a single one - would ever be able to tolerate living there??
I look for function in my house. I don’t want a formal dining room, I want a gaming room. I don’t want a huge master, I want a gym. I don’t want a sitting area, I want a guest bedroom or an office. It was very difficult to find a floor plan that wasn’t just some idiot designer making a “grand” house to show off the wealth of the owner. How sad that these people need to impress everyone else so much yet have no hobbies or interests or personality themselves. It was like the difference between a modest house and a big expensive house was absolutely zero added function but the architect just said, “Eh, add 3 feet to each side of each bedroom, throw in another bathroom maybe, Uhh make the dining room a bit larger. Hmmm... sitting area in the master? How about a sitting area when you enter? Hmmm how else to fill the space uhhhhhh hmm gosh this is hard I only had a C average in school. Oh shoot I got it! Maybe some form of loft like thing with extra hallways? That could work?” A bigger house should have more functionality and more specialized spaces, it shouldn’t just be bigger for the sake of being bigger.
I think some of the buyers really are that boring, though. They don’t need a bigger house, they’re never home anyway, they’re always at work. They can just afford a bigger house so, hey, it’s America, why not show off your wealth? I never cared about any of that. If I’m not using the space I don’t want it. It’s just more to maintain and fill with furniture and more systems to malfunction. I wanted exactly the space I wanted for specific purposes that I would use and appreciate and nothing besides that.
While I don't want the same spaces as you I do agree with modern home design. It's not really meant for living. A well designed, small house is worth it's weight in gold IMO. We've cheaped out on design and materials, taken out all the walls and replace "good flow" with "open concept", "functionality" with "whatever". I'm sure there's people who prefer that type of place but I've never actually met one.
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