Has anyone ever owned a really old house or historic house before?
How's 1692 for you? I spent part of my childhood in a house owned by my family from 1692 until 1995. Is that "really old"?
For eastern PA, the OP's 102 year old house is not old. But slam that same house down on the west coast, and it stands out, a little more.
The pros and cons are going to vary enormously with condition, location, budget, etc. The right old house in the right location, with lots of curb appeal, will generally increase in value quicker than aging new houses, in an area experiencing stability or net positive growth. The opposite can be true in areas experiencing negative growth. Most of the value of an old house is caught up in its curb appeal, so find a pretty one on a nice site, and you'll do well investing in its rehabilitation and maintenance. But of course too many are slammed right up against busy roads, or in what has become commercial districts, and watching owners pour their money and soul into these is just... sad.
As to actually living in one, you need to love the idea of it enough to overcome all of the obvious discomforts, effort, and expenses. Old houses can often (not always) be more expensive to maintain and heat, their layouts aren't always the most conducive to modern lifestyles, and they're often less comfortable throughout. Yes, lead paint and asbestos are issues. Yes, there is arsenic in that old wallpaper, that's now under six layers of lead paint. All real problems, so you'd better really get a serious emotional boost from living in an old house, to make it worth all that effort and headache.
Are really old houses hard to maintain?
First, let's clear up some confusion. What most people call "old houses" are actually modern houses, in terms of materials and construction. Anything built much after the early 1800's is basically modern construction. Portland cement came along in the 1820's, and changed home construction as radically as the internet changed our lives 30 years ago. It was invented and produced in England, so depending on how remote your American home was at the time of construction, it may have been still built using pre-Portland cements until the 1840's. But any Victorian era house, which people errantly call "very old", is actually a modern house, by that distinction.
So, are "really old houses" hard to maintain? Yes, if it's pre-Portland, it's a whole other level of maintenance. The bedding mortar in my stone walls is mud. Not slang "mud", as masons today call their Portland-based mortars, but
literally mud dug up from the back yard. No Portland, no lime, it's just mud and sand. If an area of pointing or stucco fails, rain water can penetrate and wash out the bedding mortar, and the wall can fail. If you have a wet season, water can migrate up thru the wall, and cause bonding failures between paint and plaster, or even between plaster and stone. "Very old houses", meaning anything pre-Portland, require very careful and continuous maintenance.
But masonry houses with Portland-based cements are just the opposite, arguably even less maintenance than modern homes. What lasts longer than nicely pointed brickwork on a Victorian home? Not much.
I have stayed in inns that are over 1000 years old. Having already stood the test of 200 - 300 years, a very well built old house will never fall on its own, if it's maintained. The only thing that brings these old houses down is fire, earthquake, wars, or neglect. And by neglect, I mean gross neglect, as in leaving the house without a roof for a decade.
Can houses stay up for that long?
They already have!
You notice all my discuss above is about masonry homes, as that's what the old homes in eastern PA tend to be. Our carriage barns are generally timber-framed, as well as the upper stories of our bank barns, and I've owned more than a few of each. But you don't find very old wood houses, in this part of the country, they've either rotted, burned, or been taken down for other reasons.
That said, my old window frames and sills are indeed slowly rotting. I've replaced or repaired about a dozen of the 26 oldest (1770's) windows in this house. We've kept the original sash, just building new frames to reinstall the old sash. Nearly all of the old frames I've removed for replacement are not original to the age of the house, it's clear someone replaced them before me, most appearing to have been done about 120 years ago.
What's amusing is that our most badly rotten windows are not those from the 1730's or 1770's, but all of the ones installed in the 1990's addition. I'm looking at replacing
all of our 1990's windows in the next year or two, but the 1730's and 1770's stuff is holding up better.
Also, do they have a lot of bad qualities like lead paint or asbestos?
It's pretty uncommon to find asbestos today, as that was outlawed so many years ago (1970's?), and the houses have generally passed through so many owners, inspections, and renovations in that time. The last time I saw asbestos in any of the 40-odd old homes my family owned, was ca.1990.
But lead paint is going to be found in nearly EVERY home built before 1976, not just very old ones. It's not a problem until you start sanding down woodwork, and creating lead dust. Encapsulated in modern paint, it's totally benign. Heck, even chips from chipped paint is fairly benign, it's really only a serious hazard when made into a dust fine enough to be respirated.
Are they hard to repair or update as far as heating, cooling, windows, etc.
I already hit on the windows. Unfortunately, most owners of old houses have been tricked into replacing their high-quality and beautiful original windows with ugly and cheap replacements. So, instead of rebuilding original windows that might last 120 years between rebuild cycles, they replace them with Andersen or Pella garbage that rots or fails after 30 years. Ignorance.
Heating costs are a huge and challenging subject, as old masonry homes can't be treated like a modern home, in terms of "R-value" math. Thick stone walls create a constant thermal mass, so "R-value" thinking goes out the window. But, stone houses are noticeably less drafty than modern framed houses, as getting a draft through 20 inches of stone is neigh-on impossible. Also, old single pain windows with a 4" gap between the sash and a traditional storm window performs much better, in terms of radiation, than any modern multi-pane window with 5mm air gaps. This subject really requires a whole separate thread of its own, but let's just say that if you're worried about heating costs, you should redirect that worry toward maintenance and renovation costs. Heating is damn near free, when compared to the cost of renovation.
Please share all your experiences good or bad. I am considering a really old house, but have never known anyone that owned one before. Just don't want to fall into a money pit, although I am aware that can happen with any house. Thanks.
What's "really old"? What's the construction type? Whether or not it's a money pit depends entirely on condition, and what prior owners have done to it.
