I was actually just going to say this. We live in a 220+ year old house, which is the “new” house on the property. The main estate house is late 1600s. Both have seaweed insulation, although most of it in our house has been replaced when additions and renovations were completed. Now we have modern materials like shredded paper, ha.
Renting and being caretakers for this old, old property had killed my love affair with historic homes! I’m ready to rejoin the 20th century a very least. Heck, even civil war era would be an improvement.
There is something wonderful about the really old homes that have been through so much, though. Isn’t there @Texarkana? I loved our old house. We only moved because parents from both sides needed to be with us and narrow, steep staircases were non-starters. We ended up with a c1900 Arts and Crafts type. It needed tons more work than our old house, but we love the bigger windows and that we didn’t have to deal with the Hysterical Society for every improvement.
Those houses both sound amazing! I love the charm and character that those homes have to offer. We recently sold a 145 year old home, it was gutted and renovated, but still required a TON of upkeep and maintenance. It was 4 stories, with narrow steep staircases and exposed brick throughout. Huge windows on every floor, and the original stone cellar. So much character. We’d planned on keeping it as a weekend city house when we bought the farm, but after living in it a year realized not being there 100% of the time to keep an eye on things was probably not going to work out well!
Charm aplenty, although right now I’d really appreciate a house that retains some heat. My furnace has been running around the clock and the best it can get the temp up to is the low 60s. Our monthly oil bill in the winter is more than our rent.
The whole reason we live here is to keep an eye on things. After a lifetime of living in these old homes, the owners built a new, energy efficient home on a different part of their property. None of the immediate family wanted to live in either of these old houses, so here we are. Old homes like these don’t do well when they aren’t lived in regularly. The family trust can’t decide what to do with the old estate home, which is on the register of historic places. So it just sits.
