Old House Dreams

[CHuDWah]

Off-topic but lots of old car folks also like old houses.  If you're one of those, check out

 

Old House Dreams

 

Exterior and interior pictures of lots of houses, most at least 100 years old, some for sale and some not.  Site is searchable and mostly US but a few international.  Like old cars, some are restored or survivors but some need complete restoration.

[alsancle]

As a young stupid person I always wanted a larger house from the gilded age.   Criterion was simple,   it needs lots of woodwork,  multiple fireplaces and a back stair.   The back stair usually meant you were looking at a upper end cool house.   A large carriage house would just be a huge bonus.

 

[3macboys]

I've got the old house - built in 1928, no insulation in the walls, chestnut trim etc which makes it everything just that much more expensive every time you renovate but hey it's just like old cars.  However, considering that it was -29C (about -21f) this morning when I dropped my son off to work you now have me searching for an old southern house!

Edited January 29, 2022 by 3macboys (see edit history)

[1937hd45]

David Domidian had the ultimate, old carriage house, living quarters upstairs and EVERY body style of 1931 Springfield Rolls Royce on the main floor. He was a great guy, I miss him. Bob 

[mike6024]

 

I saw something like this for sale locally in a great area, somewhat near the coast, with dairy ranch properties around it. Priced about 30% less than a house would be. I thought that would be an adventure, to use something like that as your home.

 

 

[alsancle]

2 minutes ago, mike6024 said:

 

I saw something like this for sale locally in a great area, somewhat near the coast, with dairy ranch properties around it. Priced about 30% less than a house would be. I thought that would be an adventure, to use something like that as your home.

 

 

We had something like that just off the center of our town for sale last year. It had a big hall on the second floor, and then bathrooms in a couple of bedrooms on the first floor the whole thing was pretty big, somewhere around 4000 ft.²

 

I was thinking the same thing as you. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by alsancle (see edit history)

[Paul Dobbin]

I've always loved old houses too.  I have a close friend with a 1924 Sears & Robuck house with every sitck of wood numbered.   He added a bigger kitchen two more bathrooms, a family room and a 11 car garage.   His 23 cars sit idle because he's to busy working on the house.   We saw the movie "The Money Pit" with Shelly Long and decided to build a new house, now we have time to play with cars.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Paul Dobbin
spilling (see edit history)

[Walt G]

37 minutes ago, 1937hd45 said:

David Domidian had the ultimate, old carriage house, living quarters upstairs and EVERY body style of 1931 Springfield Rolls Royce on the main floor. He was a great guy, I miss him. Bob 

Bob I agree, Dave and Jane Domidion were the best. Amazing space they had in NJ. Nicest people. I recall looking for some Brewster body interior door handles. Dave called me and asked" what RR do you own? I know everyone but don't know yours" I told him that Brewster and Derham used the same interior handles supplied by Harry McFarlan Co . in NY City and I had a Derham  bodied Franklin that was missing a door handle. He told me"I will send you one - didn't know that fact , how interesting. My Dad owned Franklins." And so my Franklin did then have all the working handles and Dave had me visit several times. Nice people, I miss them too.

[Tom Boehm]

I can't decide between the church in Iowa or the temple in Georgia. Both low price.

[SC38dls]

GA is warmer!

dave s 

[Pfeil]

I used to really like Victorian and Tudor style houses. Painting one of those houses is like painting the San Francisco bridge. You start at one end and when you get to the other it's time to start all over. I prefer a house like the one below.

 

 

[1937hd45]

If you are low on funds, have tons of talent, and 40 years of your life you could build a castle. Peter Wing is another friend in Heaven.

 

 

[SC38dls]

I had the old house as an office. 18,000 so ft 3 floors and 100 years old. Main floor had 18 ft ceilings. The butlers pantry was 20 feet long and had cherry cabinets all along one side. When we bought it it needed a new roof, 9 furnaces and A/C units. All new electrical and plumbing. Paint of course everywhere. It is on the National Historical Register. When we sold it we made a profit plus it was our office for about 10 years. You can see it as it is on line. We did not change the name of it and sold the name with the building. It is called — The Copley Mansion. In Aurora Illinois.  It was designed to look like the White House. The fireplaces were identical to what is in the WH and the marble even came from the same quarry. It had a ball room on the third floor with a raised floor so it bounced when dancing. 
it was the home of Col Copley of the Copley news papers and Copley square in Boston. They turned it onto the corporate offices then sold it to a lawyer that made it his home until we purchased it. The guy who purchased it from us dropped another bundle into it and went broke. He lost it to the bank and it recently sold again. 
We were very happy to sell it. 
dave s 

Edited January 29, 2022 by SC38dls (see edit history)

[TAKerry]

Some incredible buildings! These kind of structures keep me in old cars, LOL. My wifes office is a beautiful home built in 1865. It is now a 3 story law office. Lots of upkeep. They recently handled the sale of an old church, the buyer was in touch saying someone was wanting to bury someone on the property. Not sure how that one turned out!

 

[alsancle]

So I scarily was serious about buying this when my kids were young.   My wife (thank god) put the kabosh on it because she said there was no way she would stay alone in that house when I was away.   It sat on its own and you couldn't see another house.     On the plus side,  the carriage house would hold 9 cars according to my calculations.

 

[SC38dls]

AJ I bet you would have dropped another million into the rehab of that house looking at it unless the inside was immaculate. The outside painting would have been at least a nice car or two!  
dave s 

[TAKerry]

The Overlook, LOL.

[alsancle]

21 minutes ago, SC38dls said:

AJ I bet you would have dropped another million into the rehab of that house looking at it unless the inside was immaculate. The outside painting would have been at least a nice car or two!  
dave s 

 

The house is a sad story,  The first time I looked at it, it was basically original to 1908 when it was built and still owned by the original family   the 98 widow has just passed away.   I passed on it based on the restoration costs.   It was purchased and fully restored by the next owner.  When he lost his job and was moving out of state it sat for a few more years at a price under what he paid to restore it (forget about the purchase price).   Sound familiar?   At that point I went back and looked at it twice before my wife put the kabosh on the whole idea.  It was bought by a real estate developer and eventually torn down.    A true white elephant.  

 

I wish I could find pictures of the carriage house.   It has a huge center door which opened on to an area that was about 30x40.   At some point the had added on the side with a 4 car garage that blended nicely.  Underneath there was room for 3 or more cars at least.   It was really cool.    I'm sure the whole thing would have bankrupted me.

 

[John_S_in_Penna]

1 hour ago, Pfeil said:

I used to really like Victorian and Tudor style houses. Painting one of those houses is like painting the San Francisco bridge. You start at one end and when you get to the other it's time to start all over.

 

Many old houses were brick, and some were stone.

Most trim was wood, though, unless a house was

very expensive when new.  So painting doesn't have

to be a constant effort!

 

From what I have seen, our friends in California or

British Columbia could sell their small $1,000,000 houses

and buy an old house 2 to 4 times the size, and much

better made, more detailed, of higher quality, for 

$300,000 in many smaller towns.  The extra $700,000

could be put to use as they choose:  Buy a few extra

old cars, invest wisely, AND save some for house maintenance.

 

Here's an example from a house tour, with a '59 Cadillac

parked outside to mark the location:

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by John_S_in_Penna (see edit history)

[1937hd45]

 

 

Too bad that is gone, you would never need to plow the snow off the driveway, just drive in the fuel oil truck tracks. 

[CHuDWah]

4 hours ago, 3macboys said:

I've got the old house - built in 1928, no insulation in the walls, chestnut trim etc which makes it everything just that much more expensive every time you renovate but hey it's just like old cars.  However, considering that it was -29C (about -21f) this morning when I dropped my son off to work you now have me searching for an old southern house!

I dunno.  Temps in Florida are predicted to get down to 20s F tonight and we have a falling iguana warning.  For the non-crackers in the audience, iguana (an invasive species) are cold-blooded and sleep in trees.  If it gets cold enough, they freeze up - doesn't kill them but they can't move and often fall off of their tree perch.  Getting hit on the head by a 10-pound frozen lizard would smart.  🤣

[CHuDWah]

15 minutes ago, 1937hd45 said:

 

 

Too bad that is gone, you would never need to plow the snow off the driveway, just drive in the fuel oil truck tracks. 

Yeah, but all those solar panels on the roof might help.

[alsancle]

I found a picture of the carriage house!   This the back,   the big 12 foot high double door faced the house.

 

[alsancle]

1 minute ago, CHuDWah said:

Yeah, but all those solar panels on the roof might help.

 

That is copper flashing to keep the ice from coming off the roof and killing you.   It had a slate roof and if anyone has any experience with that you will all of a sudden hear something that sounds like a locomotive,  but it is the snow/ice sliding off the roof.

[3macboys]

2 minutes ago, alsancle said:

I found a picture of the carriage house!   This the back,   the big 12 foot high double door faced the house.

 

I would have settled for living in the coach house and renting out the main house!

[CHuDWah]

2 hours ago, Pfeil said:

I used to really like Victorian and Tudor style houses. Painting one of those houses is like painting the San Francisco bridge. You start at one end and when you get to the other it's time to start all over. I prefer a house like the one below.

 

 

I really like Prairie style - clean lines, not as "busy" as Victorian and Tudor.

[alsancle]

Just now, 3macboys said:

I would have settled for living in the coach house and renting out the main house!

 

That was what was mesmerizing me!   Maybe I was underestimating on the 9 cars?   It was 40x40 but 3 levels,  and the top floor accessed by the big door was designed for horse and carriage.   I figured it might take an engineer to tell me what sort of weight that would hold.

 

There was a play house too,  that I could have lived in, not to far from the carriage house.

 

 

 

[CHuDWah]

12 minutes ago, alsancle said:

 

That is copper flashing to keep the ice from coming off the roof and killing you.   It had a slate roof and if anyone has any experience with that you will all of a sudden hear something that sounds like a locomotive,  but it is the snow/ice sliding off the roof.

I stand corrected - learned something new.  But wouldn't ice slide off copper as easily as slate?  OTOH, if it keeps ice from sliding off, wouldn't that cause ice dams which also are bad?

[3macboys]

17 minutes ago, CHuDWah said:

I dunno.  Temps in Florida are predicted to get down to 20s F tonight and we have a falling iguana warning.  For the non-crackers in the audience, iguana (an invasive species) are cold-blooded and sleep in trees.  If it gets cold enough, they freeze up - doesn't kill them but they can't move and often fall off of their tree perch.  Getting hit on the head by a 10-pound frozen lizard would smart.  🤣

As much as we complain when it gets this cold in about 3 days we are supposed to get rain...all in all not a bad place to live, we get all 4 seasons, no bugs that eat the house, no poisonous snakes, no bears, no 'gators and other than the very odd tornado not much to worry about natural disaster wise and definitely no lizards falling from trees, though there was the one morning that I was walking to work and was almost run over by a coyote headed right down the middle of the street.

[3macboys]

12 minutes ago, alsancle said:

There was a play house too,  that I could have lived in, not to far from the carriage house.

 

 

Wow!  Of course just the equipment cost and labor cost just to maintain the property would have been incredible.  

[SC38dls]

That third story might hold a car if they had Percheron's as the carriage horses. Ours was 2000 lbs as a two year old and he wasn’t finished growing. His feet were the size of dinner plates. A horses hoofs are much closer together than the wheel of a car so the weight distribution would be better than a horse. 
dave s 

Edited January 30, 2022 by SC38dls (see edit history)

[John Bloom]

Thank God for wives........  We have a home in the northern Chicago suburbs, pretty large, 1.5 acres, which made sense when you had four kids and and a dog.  It makes very little sense once the kids and dog are gone.  It is this slow moving iceberg inching towards me every moment of my life and I'm falling farther behind with things I should be doing to give it the care it deserves.  In addition to that, 18 years ago we bought a cottage on a lake in Indiana 162 miles away from our main home.  When you sell your wife on a second home on a lake, you paint a picture of "easy living", "swinging in a hammock drinking sweet tea", " a great place to relax".......The reality is you deal with yard issues, large trees falling, Boats needing attention and repairs (and lifts and seawalls), finding handymen or contractors who will show up and do what they said they'd to when you are a 2.5 hour drive away......with that simple life,   enter in to my life this house (about 5 years ago).  About 7 miles from our cottage in the town of Delphi.  It is a cute older town with the classic downtown square and courthouse, The house sits on about an acre in town, a large carriage house is about 75 feet away from the main home.  It goes up for sale............149,000 dollars.  (149,000!!!!!)  Taxes like maybe 2 grand a year.   I tell my wife "lets get this, it would be three million easy up near us on the north shore (Lake Forest, etc.....).   My wife frequently finds herself executing the million small details of my brilliant plans.  She also loved the home, interior walls a foot thick, A main staircase to die for.  We went and looked at it.  I was smitten.  The disaster it would be to my life from a time standpoint was not something I would let enter the equation.  "We need a third house that will all consume us"  It was just fabulous.  After a weekend of talking about it (I was already making lists in my head of the order of things to start with), my wife said no.   Praise be to God.

 

You only have one life, you only have a finite number of hours to live and pour into things.  I still think about the house from time to time.....less and less lately.  This thread triggered me again.  

 

My wife has saved me multiple times on many fronts.  Add this to the list.  Add this to the top of the list.  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

[Bloo]

38 minutes ago, CHuDWah said:

I dunno.  Temps in Florida are predicted to get down to 20s F tonight and we have a falling iguana warning.  For the non-crackers in the audience, iguana (an invasive species) are cold-blooded and sleep in trees.  If it gets cold enough, they freeze up - doesn't kill them but they can't move and often fall off of their tree perch.  Getting hit on the head by a 10-pound frozen lizard would smart.  🤣

 

https://www.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/11/cow_falls_from_sky_barely_miss.html

 

OK Florida, your move......  🤪

 

[1937hd45]

29 minutes ago, CHuDWah said:

I really like Prairie style - clean lines, not as "busy" as Victorian and Tudor.

Love what you have done with the lawn. 

 

 

[alsancle]

9 minutes ago, John Bloom said:

Thank God for wives........  We have a home in the northern Chicago suburbs, pretty large, 1.5 acres, which made sense when you had four kids and and a dog.  It makes very little sense once the kids and dog are gone.  It is this slow moving iceberg inching towards me every moment of my life and I'm falling farther behind with things I should be doing to give it the care it deserves.  In addition to that, 18 years ago we bought a cottage on a lake in Indiana 162 miles away from our main home.  When you sell your wife on a second home on a lake, you paint a picture of "easy living", "swinging in a hammock drinking sweet tea", " a great place to relax".......The reality is you deal with yard issues, large trees falling, Boats needing attention and repairs (and lifts and seawalls), finding handymen or contractors who will show up and do what they said they'd to when you are a 2.5 hour drive away......with that simple life,   enter in to my life this house (about 5 years ago).  About 7 miles from our cottage in the town of Delphi.  It is a cute older town with the classic downtown square and courthouse, The house sits on about an acre in town, a large carriage house is about 75 feet away from the main home.  It goes up for sale............149,000 dollars.  (149,000!!!!!)  Taxes like maybe 2 grand a year.   I tell my wife "lets get this, it would be three million easy up near us on the north shore (Lake Forest, etc.....).   My wife frequently finds herself executing the million small details of my brilliant plans.  She also loved the home, interior walls a foot thick, A main staircase to die for.  We went and looked at it.  I was smitten.  The disaster it would be to my life from a time standpoint was not something I would let enter the equation.  "We need a third house that will all consume us"  It was just fabulous.  After a weekend of talking about it (I was already making lists in my head of the order of things to start with), my wife said no.   Praise be to God.

 

You only have one life, you only have a finite number of hours to live and pour into things.  I still think about the house from time to time.....less and less lately.  This thread triggered me again.  

 

My wife has saved me multiple times on many fronts.  Add this to the list.  Add this to the top of the list.  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Now you are talking!    The thing that most people don't realize until they have owned a home for 20 years or so is that you are constantly spending money on it.   The bigger it is the more you spend.   It never stops.   Once I got to about 45 I realized the big house dream would have turned in to the big house nightamare.

[30DodgePanel]

My dream house is a shop with living quarters (2 rooms) in the back, but the wife isn't going for it. Not sure why...

 

[CHuDWah]

5 minutes ago, Bloo said:

 

https://www.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/11/cow_falls_from_sky_barely_miss.html

 

OK Florida, your move......  🤪

 

Nah, you win!  😉

[CHuDWah]

6 minutes ago, 1937hd45 said:

Love what you have done with the lawn. 

 

 

Nope, I said clean lines - those obviously are dirty.  😁

[CHuDWah]

We once owned a circa-1925 home - it wasn't huge, about 1500 square feet with a reasonable size yard.  It was in decent shape and pretty much original with some 50s updates.  We tried to keep it that way while restoring, repairing and maintaining as needed.  Even that consumed a lot of time, effort and money.  We lived there several years and more-or-less broke even when we sold, so I guess we didn't get hurt on it.  I still love looking at and dreaming about old houses, especially big ol' mansions.  But that experience convinced me never to own another one.

[Pfeil]

1 hour ago, CHuDWah said:

I really like Prairie style - clean lines, not as "busy" as Victorian and Tudor.

The only thing I would have done on this house, or any house is to never let vegetation grow on a structure. I've done a lot of construction / remodeling and there is always a conflict between a builder, remodeler and a landscape architect. It seems landscape architects never seems to understand that a misplaced tree, shrub or ivy when it grows up can have dire consequences. This includes open space in a sidewalk, planting in a retaining wall planter, planting too close to sewer lines and planting too close to a house.  

Edited January 30, 2022 by Pfeil (see edit history)