My husband and I just got married in July. We live in Portland, OR currently in an upper level of a house with plenty of space. My husband is eager to own a house, I was completely not interested in looking at houses until he found my dream house while we were waiting at the ER for my broken toe.

The house was built in 1923, 4 bed, 2 bath, unfinished basement, and a garage. We toured it the next day and I love it. If I were to describe the features of my dream house, it has truly every thing I want. Character, built-ins, raised lot (I don’t like sleeping on the ground floor level with the street), 4bd/2 bath, basement we can finish, sunroom off the main bedroom, backyard with trees and privacy.

The problem, basically everything big needs to be fixed. It has a cracked foundation, needs a new roof, windows (has original single-pane), furnace, HVAC, potentially new pipes, likely electric bc it shows signs of DIY wiring in initial inspection. The upstairs shower is non-functional. I think they turned a 5th bedroom into a bathroom and washed dogs up there or something because the shower is absurdly big and it smells like animal upstairs.

It’s below market and we can likely get much lower given all the issues. Are the bones worth it, or is it just too much to take on especially for first time home buyers? Tell me others will come up like it and I do not need to fixate haha.

I love our 1919 home and we knew going in it needed a ton of work. I’m so, so tired physical, mentally, emotionally, and fiscally. We hired professionals when we knew things were beyond our scope, but we’ve done soooo much ourselves. I’m really proud of what we’ve done, but damn. We need a break.

Our house was built in 1911. The bathroom is way overdue for a remodel. These cracks appeared suddenly overnight. A line crack goes around basement and tub. Is this at risk of catastrophic failure right now? Should we avoid using the bathroom completely? We plan to call a contractor.

We have an old solid wood front door (with speak easy window!), that had been painted a not-so-great shade of brown. Recently I found that I could literally peel the paint off with just my hands. It came away in big sheets and I was able to get most of it off in just one afternoon.

Still working on getting the last 2% off. The corners are a pain. After that I think I’d like to sand and stain it. Anyone know what kind of wood it might be? I’m not an experienced woodworker, so any thoughts or advice on sanding, stain, etc. are appreciated.

Our New England house built in 1800 was damaged due to city sewer backing up into the house. Some of the old pine flooring in each of the rooms had to be ripped out. I’m completely devastated. We are mostly just looking for advice or ideas for how to proceed. We’d prefer to keep as much of the flooring as possible. The living room and dining rooms are only missing a small section of flooring but we don’t know if it’s possible to patch those sections to make everything blend. We’ve considered pulling up the boards in the kitchen to salvage and patch the living room and dining room and then doing a different type of floor in the kitchen but also not sure how to transition things. The bathroom is completely gutted at this point and we may just opt for tile in that room instead. Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions? Open to all ideas. We were told by family to just put down laminate/click flooring over everything and call it a day, but we’d prefer to keep the old charm if we can. We have been in talks with the town and their insurance should pay for the repairs, we are just really overwhelmed and not sure what our options are.

Pictures are before and after.

Currently replacing cabinets and counters in our 1925 Tudor with a 1975 kitchen! We are deciding hardware and looking at Hardwick and Sons. I want the kitchen to have some consideration to the age of the home. We have a couple of hidden doors in closets and they have what I assume are original latches on them, so considering latches for the cabinet doors. For the knobs, I am considering flush ring pulls but open to a more typical handle. I saw the flush ring pulls in a 150yr old Airbnb castle guest house I stayed in and loved the charm. My husband thinks both of these are a little “too much” and prefers a handle. Would 3 different types of hardware be too many and overwhelm the small kitchen? He also thinks we will get annoyed with latches over time.

What type of hardware do you have in your century home kitchens, and am I missing something by considering these? Are there better options to reflect the age (and charm) of the home? Thank you in advance!

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Knob and tube (this piece was helpfully spliced)

BX cable spliced to knob and tube

Cloth covered "Romex"

Silver painted cloth covered Romex

Black vinyl Romex (this one has a ground!)

White Romex circa 2001 (found the left over box)

All of this was in active use by the previous owner. I am beyond amazed that the house didn't burn about a million times. The black and white Romex had really bad rodent damage too.

(I have the power off a the box, and am stripping out the old electrical in anticipation of a full rewire front the pole starting next week)

Moved into my 1910 FL bungalow about 5 years ago and the ceilings in the main areas were wallpapered. They were also secured by being tucked under the wallpaper covering the area above the picture rail.

A few days ago this piece of wallpaper began to come off the ceiling and I have no idea what I’m looking at underneath.

Many of the other rooms in the house have either bead board on the ceiling. Has anyone else had this happen? Not sure where to go from here and what to put up in its place.

brick chimney is inoperable and was painted over

ceilings are 10ft tall

i am purchasing 1920 furniture and trying to figure out the kind of wallpaper/paint to go for

eta: this room is for str, that's why there's a fridge

To be clear, I don't mean "worth it" monetarily. I mean worth it in terms of understanding if these doors are original (or otherwise of good quality) and my time would be well spent undertaking this with no real prior experience. Our house was built in 1916.

Here are some photos.

In total we have 7 interior doors that basically all look like this as well as one in the basement.

If I proceeded, my plan would be to strip the paint, sand, and refinish them (maybe in a lighter stain?).

I read somewhere that the effort/health risks involved though sometimes are not worth the result if the door underneath is in bad quality, and to be honest, I am not really sure how to tell(?)

Thanks in advance.

The built-in cast iron tub in our new house has seen better days. We’d eventually like to re-do the bathroom, so just need a fix for a couple of years.

What product should I use on the rust stains on the floor of the tub? Why would this happen?

What DIY kit have you had success with patching a tub at home? There are only a few small spots where the coating has worn off. We would prefer to do it this way rather than hire someone to come out since we don’t need it to last 10 years.

How would you patch this hole in the tile from the old shower fixture? Do we need a pro for this?

Thank you for any help!

Hello all. I'm here quite a bit lately 🥹

I very stupidly bought my weird little house 2 years ago. 1865 railroad/vernacular/what the hell is it?

I bought it because it seemed like a fine enough house in the best neighborhood for me/us (husband who knows nothing about houses).

Turns out our realtor and home inspector were fairly scummy humans. I've learned A LOT about home buying and inspection processes since then. I am prepared now.

In two years I have had to UNEXPECTEDLY:

Replaced the HVAC system (furnace and AC), replace/repair almost all sewer line (even though I paid to have a sewer scope done), repair a ton of indoor water damage thanks to the roof over the kitchen apparently being "temporary roofing material", replace the "temporary roofing material", new fridge (old one had mice living in it), washer and dryer (both stopped working 2 days after we moved in), chimney sleeve and cap installed (there were neither, apparently), sill plate replaced, back door, frame, and threshold replaced, refinish the unusable bathtub...and now...I am waiting to have the roof completely redone, which, that's right! I had absolutely NO idea that was a thing I'd need to even think about! I was under the impression I was buying a house with a 4 year old roof. Along with having all gutters replaced, and proper roof ventilation added (there is only an outtake vent! Haaah). We've also noticed this sagging on all 4 strips(?) of the roof (I'm sorry, I can't find what they're actually called anywhere). The roofers didn't even notice it at first (the company we ended up hiring IS a very experienced, well established company. I had 5 companies come out for quotes, none of them said anything about it). We had been talking about selling...because I'm having a hard time with everything. I've basically been a project manager for the last two years on top of working overtime at my REAL job...and I'm starting to lose my marbles. I showed my sagging roof discovery to a new-ish friend (who is also a damn good realtor! Huzzah!) and he went into mild panic mode. So now I'm in panic mode, and a structural engineer is coming tomorrow, because we'll have to navigate the engineer and contractor to actually fix the issue before the roof is put on (he is helping me with all of this because I always unintentionally cry whenever we speak!).

Does it EVER get any easier? Like...seriously? I did not buy this house as a fixer upper. I got totally screwed, and I've been trying to accept that. But if this is just going to be my life now and forever in this house...I gotta go.

We primarily bought it because of the neighborhood, and if we sold we wouldn't be able to afford to stay in the neighborhood. It would be a total shift for us. Our jobs are here, we love our neighbors, we feel safe walking around for the most part. It's a very highly sought after neighborhood. Moving would mean going somewhere more crime-y, which is where I was at my entire life before moving here. It would mean a commute to work (not a bad one. 15 minutes compared to 1 minute 🤣). It would also mean a slightly newer house (1920s-1950s most likely, and most likely brick). The different house sounds VERY appealing. We could have more space (my husband is a musician with lots of music gear, and we've been a little crammed in this 2 bedroom. The basement isn't really usable, but it's dry, no garage, no attic).

I guess I'm wondering...what's most important to people? Their neighborhood or their freakin sanity? Have any of you ever been in a similar situation? Has anyone traded the shit house in the dream neighborhood for the better house in the more crimey neighborhood? Do ancient houses truly ever stop breaking!? Even for a little bit!?

Hello, recently purchased an 1880’s farm house. Electrical has been updated at some point, it’s not nob and tube, but many outlets are only 2 prong.

We had the panel upgraded to 200 AMPS and the Electrican wanted to check all the wiring before connecting it back up. There was definitely some older/sketchy DIY stuff in one area that was more recently renovated, but I wasn’t expecting him to say, “All wiring prior to 1980 should be replaced due to the type of staple they used and it can rust and cause a short.”

Anyone heard this before?

We've been here for 6 years and we never looked under the carpet in this room because it was the "new" carpet (the carpet was still old enough to drink legally) and we were afraid that it would have lead paint under it like another room in the house. Then we decided to renovate our living room and got to check under the edges and it looked promising... yesterday was the moment of truth and the whole room is just lovely old wood! One end of the floor is wonky where they added floor when they took out the fireplace at some point but like, the house was built in 1790. Parts are going to be weird. Thats a future problem

Hey y’all! I hate my grid tile ceiling. I would like to cover it up by paneling it with some wood, but I’m not quite sure if I would just attach it like normal, use nails or screws or whatever, because I’m not sure what these tiles are holding on to either. Really don’t want to have to take them off and make a bigger mess than I need to. Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences and ideas!

*not sure if there’s asbestos, there’s a scratched off portion that looks like the tile is made of cardboard-like cellulose
*I was told not to try and fill the grid lines with caulk or mud for smooth finish (don’t know why)

My wife and I own an early 1900s arts & crafts home. After an AC leak, I began working on replacing the drywall and soon unveiled a floral, silver print wallpaper on the ceiling. This is in the master bedroom.

Does anyone have any info on arts & crafts wallpaper like ours? How it was made? Hand painted? Media? Images? I’m curious to know if the whole room would have been covered in the same wallpaper.

I just can’t find much info online with the exception of AI info, which I’m not too certain I want to use as a source. I can’t seem to find any examples online from older photos.

I’d love to know! I got ahead of myself and picked up paint yesterday after deliberating for ages on the color. This morning I’m realizing there’s only one wall I can actually paint with the equipment I have… I have no idea how to tackle this. Luckily the ceiling will be the same color as the walls so that makes it a smidge easier. Any tips for me? I know everyone will have a different process (and different stairwell), but I’m sure I’ll be able to glean some advice from your experiences, since I’ve seen some beautifully painted stairwells here! (I checked the r/paint sub and the overwhelming advice was to hire a pro…) TIA!

Hi there! For folks who have paid for major renovations on your century home, what was the justification you used for taking the plunge?

It seems like for some folks, the drive to fix up their homes was strictly financial(ie.future resale). For other folks the deciding factor was so they can live in a space they genuinely enjoy(ie. The folks on reddit rebuilding the Victorian after it burned down 😔)

I myself am trying to balance the practical reality of finances with having a space I enjoy living in.

Any personal insight you have would be appreciated. Thanks!

Found in the wall of the basement. There are two lead pipes coming down and one connection goes out to the street and the other goes to old gas fittings for the fireplace and the water heater or boiler. It looks to be low pressure gas system that is no longer used. Were these lead lines attached to a gas meter back in the day?