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I'm planning to tour a 1795 house in CT that is being sold as is. It has had very few renovations and looks very close to the original home. You expect George Washington to walk out the front door when you look at it. I will be doing an informational inspection. I currently live in a 100 year old home and most of the repairs I've had to do was from the major renovation done in 2005. The original part of the home is pretty solid. Can any of you that have bought or lived in much older homes (200+ years) give me some advice? Will this end up being a horrible money pit even if nothing major is found on inspection? What has your experience been?
Having been part of a few preservation/restoration projects here in GA, I can say this-
1. What is the asking price versus comp’s?
2. How much money (budget) do you plan to add to the difference between comp’s and your anticipated closing price?
3. Is your long time goal to preserve or restore? Is there a historical designation or restrictions?
4. DO NOT hire a typical home inspector- you need to hire a structural engineer who specializes in this type of construction/age of home. Also, having a preservation/restoration certified architect along would definitely be a good move (there are a lot that do work together- most are under the same roof).
It’s a huge endeavor; very time consuming, and can turn into a money pit very fast. All the projects I was a part of were 5-6yr projects. All were at least 1yr of planning, before a single nail was removed. And most of that planning was budgeting- finding contractors, vendors, and scheduling. Though we had a lot of students doing manual labor (reduced labor budget), there was a lot of need for elite craftsmen for many jobs.
So, there’s really nothing to be “afraid” of- it’s being as informed as possible and having very deep pockets!
I'm planning to tour a 1795 house in CT that is being sold as is.
Can we assume it has indoor plumbing and electricity?
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It has had very few renovations and looks very close to the original home. You expect George Washington to walk out the front door when you look at it.
Often an appearance like that means there has already been a LOT of work done on it.
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I will be doing an informational inspection. I currently live in a 100 year old home and most of the repairs I've had to do was from the major renovation done in 2005. The original part of the home is pretty solid. Can any of you that have bought or lived in much older homes (200+ years) give me some advice? Will this end up being a horrible money pit even if nothing major is found on inspection? What has your experience been?
Yes it will be a money pit. Are there any 'Historic Districts', 'Preservation Covenants', etc to deal with? What does the rest of the neighborhood/area look like? How long have the current owners owned it, are they selling because they are fed up with dealing with problems and restrictions on the property?
I would want a walking tour by the current owner as part of the process. Either the first showing or soon after. If the current owner has owned and lived in this house, and knows its history, they can and should be pretty free with information about the house. I'd want to talk to them and have a good friendly relationship with them.
It's not unlike when we sell big old farms, where things are buried and why is important for the new owner to know, to avoid making mistakes.
It all depends on condition and what you want to do with it. If you're not looking to change much appearances or size wise, then it boils down to structural condition. Some key areas in an old house to check are the foundation (likely rubblestone laid dry but that's fine if in good shape), chimney(s), wiring (absolutely replace knob and tube if present), roof. If a wooden house, the sills are a key area to check for rot. Make sure the walls outside appear straight. If bowing is noticed it could be a sign of many problems, including but not limited to timber frame joints separated, timbers failed, rot, etc. Check for sagging floors. Plumbers often butchered floor joists when they added plumbing. On brick houses, look for evidence of brick faces spalling, failed mortar, cracks. If modern portland cement mortar has been used on 1795 bricks, it will eventually cause problems. Lime mortar must be used for repairs. Check also for old gas lines. Old gas lines to long removed gas fixtures if gas lighting was added in the 1800's could still be live if gas is still used elsewhere, and they may fail and cause leaks. With old windows, you're better off just reglazing if they need it, adding quality weatherstripping, insulating any old weight pockets and abandoning the pulley system, and adding storm windows, than buying modern windows. Just assume any old woodwork has lead paint until proven otherwise but you don't necessarily need to remove all lead paint from a house either.
Binge watch every episode of the first two or three years of This Old House. Every repair looked really expensive to me. I've always wished that I could afford to do that. I love old houses.
Restoring old houses is kind of my thing. I have owned a number of them and helped with a couple dozen of so that belonged to other people.
You are never going to find a house that old that has not been modified and usually added on to. In fact there may not be all that much left to the house that is actually original. Often people will claim something is original because it looks old. Oh this has horse hair plaster - it is original. There is a good likelihood that in a 1795 house, there was no plaster originally, just cloth over wood. Regardless, there is little likelihood that there is an original plaster whatsoever (if it had any to begin with). Early homes did not have bathrooms, closets, or kitchens (kitchens were a separate building because they tended to catch on fire and smell a lot).
A lot depends on how well the modifications were done. Did the plumber cut through floor joists when putting in the sewer lines?
Just because a house has been modified, does not mean it is not historic.
Our house was built in 1836. It was a tiny house that had at the most four rooms. It may have been two rooms, one upstairs, one down. It was framed with logs squared off using axes and then pegged together. Metal was too expensive. They literally traded with native Americans in the downstairs room. The natives wold sit on the floor because they had superstitions about chairs.
In 1850 another house was moved alongside and connected to the little house. This added two more rooms (one upstairs one down). It also added a second staircase. The upstairs bedrooms were originally separated and you would have to choose a stairway depending on which bedroom your were going to. Later someone made a tunnel between the two sides. It was literally a tunnel - narrow and low. I had to duck and turn sideways to get through it. I thought it was cool, but we ended up having to reconfigure that section.
In 1868 another addition was added to the back of the house. Then the milking barn was rolled up against the back of the new addition and attached as a kitchen. This added two more rooms one up one down plus a kitchen and back entry.
At some point the rooms were divided to create bathrooms, closets, and more but smaller bedrooms. The dining room was "modernized" by adding coved ceilings (as well as electric lights and a boxed in chase for a sewer drain pipe from upstairs).
In 1946 the house was reconfigured to turn the back room in the old part of the house into a bathroom and tiny doctor's office. The front room was the waiting room. The Dr. could not practice in a clinic or hospital because she was one of the first female MDs in the state and no hospital or clinic would accept her. There were some other modifications from 1946.
At some point the front porch was extended and then wrapped around the side of the house. Then the side portion was removed and a giant sun room was added (this was in the 1940s).
In the 1990s the house was rented out. Some rooms got "Home Depoed". The historic trim doors etc were removed and replaced with cheap crap from Home Improvement stores. At some point someone glued big ugly slabs of marble to the brick fireplace in the 1850 addition. They painted the brick fireplace and soapstone (we think) mantle in the old part of the house.
In 2006-2007 we moved the house so it woudl not be torn down. We could not move the kitchen or the sun-room, so we replaced the sun-room with a wrap around porch the match the old one and built a "new" kitchen using salvaged materials and fixtures. We removed all the home depot crap and replaced it with salvaged trim from similar aged homes that were being torn down. we had to reconfigure the roof where the two houses were joined together in 1850 and removed the upstairs tunnel in the process.
So is the house "historic"? The local government and historical society consider it one of the most historic homes in our community. Yet not much is original. The old part of the house has the original framing, some of the interior wood sheathing (later covered in plaster), some of the original flooring. The original fireplace. The back door is probably original, but that door has not functioned in at least 80 years. There are two windows that may have been original, but probably not. The rest were added or changed later. The original roof was replaced and reconfigured, it slopes in a different direction now than it did originally. A small section of the front porch might be original, but that is unlikely. Of course all of the wiring, HVAC, and pluming is not original. Few if any of the interior walls are where they were originally.
Some of the changes were well done and are still very strong and functional. Some were terrible done. The 1946 Dr.s office bathroom leaked and rotter out the wall studs and floor so it had to be entirely removed. That also took out the Dr. office walls so we went back to a single back room. We have no idea what that room was for. We call it a library, but it definitely was not that.
The point is a historic house is not entirely historic. It is an evolving thing that will likely have good and terrible modifications. Usually, the modifications are the parts that you are going to be re-doing or fixing. So the number and quality of the modifications that were made will directly determine the cost and viability of the home.
A good example is the hideous 1990s home depot trim in the dining room. Dining room had 16 or 18 inch high ornate baseboard and matching door casings. The yellow pine baseboard costs $16 a lineal foot in salvage stores. That means that you are looking at more than $2,000 for one room just to remove the baseboard and replace it with something appropriate. Then you still have doors, door casings, window casings, picture rail, chair rail (if it had chair rail) and possibly flooring. If some yahoo took out the windows and replaced them with plastic (vinyl) you will need to restore those as well. Then you have wiring, lighting, plaster repair, flooring curtains. . . That one room can easily become $30,000 or more even though it is already and existing room.
OTOH we lived in a 1911 house in California that was not much modified. Other than the fact that it was just sitting on the sand with no foundation, it did not need anything. It had old wiring, some old plumbing, old windows, etc., but everything worked well. The bathrooms were tiny because they were squeezed in when indoor plumbing became a thing, but they were usable. The kitchen was super tiny. We bought a roll-away portable dishwasher that hooked to the sink, but we had to roll it out of the kitchen to open the fridge.also to open the bathroom door. Still there was nothing on the house that needed to be changed. It was fine as it was. ((Plus being 22 steps from the beach was awesome). Last time I saw it (about three years ago) it has not been changed other than paint - despite the fact that is it now probably worth $3 million.
There is no way to generalize whether an old house is a good deal or a money pit. Not one of them will be the same.
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