After some discussion and consideration, we have added a new rule. You must have a connection to any house being posted here. As in you live in it, lived in it, own it, visited it, etc. We are aiming to cut down on on the low effort posts and people just sharing houses they find online. We are a community of caretakers of these homes, and we would like to keep it the content relevant.
Welcome from our mysterious nope-holes, and the summits of our servants' stairs.
Today we the mod team bring you all an announcement that has nothing to do with our beloved old bones, but that, unfortunately, has become necessary again after a century or so.
The heart of the matter is: from today onward any and all links from X (formerly Twitter) have been banned from the subreddit. If any of you will find some interesting material of any kind on the site that you wish to cross-post on our subreddit, we encourage you instead to take a screenshot or download the source and post that instead.
As a mod team we are a bit bewildered that what we are posting is actually a political statement instead of simply a matter of decency but here we are: we all agree that any form of Fascism/Nazism are unacceptable and shouldn't exist in our age so we decided about this ban as a form of complete repudiation of Musk and his social media after his acts of the last day.
What happened during the second inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A. is simply unacceptable for the substance (which wouldn't have influenced our moderation plans, since we aren't a political subreddit), but for the form too. Symbols have as much power as substance, and so we believe that if the person considered the richest man in the world has the gall to repeatedly perform a Hitlergruß in front of the world, he's legitimizing this symbol and all the meaning it has for everyone who agrees with him.
Again, we strongly repudiate any form of Nazism and fascism and Musk today is the face of something terribly sinister that could very well threaten much more than what many believe.
We apologize again to bring something so off-topic to the subreddit but we believe that we shouldn't stand idly by and watch in front of so much potential for disaster, even if all we can do for now is something as small as change our rules. To reiterate, there's nothing political about opposing fascism.
As usual, we'll listen to everyone's feedback as we believe we are working only for the good of our subreddit.
C. 1890s Queen Anne. Wanted a moody study/dining room, and decided to paint it rather than wallpaper because I hate myself. I plan on adding crown moulding, creating custom William-Morris style tiles for the fireplace, gold leafing embellishments surrounding the chandelier, and framing the large format art. I would love a plush carpet, but this is the pets favorite place to puke 🫠
Before and after. Lots of other casualties I don’t have pics of. It could be worse, I guess.
Just sad. This wood survived more than a century of occupants. I slept in the dining room that we used as a bedroom for 4 years. I cherished every night I spent cocooned by the wood paneling. They might have been the owners, but they didn’t love it like we did as renters.
I’m in need of (emotional) support. I bought a house 2 years ago, and it’s at least 321+ years old. The first year was fine, and all the relatively minor repairs were fixed easily. Roll into the second year, and pretty much everything has been a nightmare. Anything over 200 years old…doing amazing! Anything 10 years old? Falling apart. I do have the funds to fix it, but omfg is it hard finding people who know what they are doing. I was INSANELY naive buying this home. I know it is worth saving (several historians said so), but I’m so sad how poorly a job I’m doing. I love history (have a degree) but I just can’t get on top of the repairs. How do people cope?
My house is from 1870-1880 and was abandoned for 4-5 years. I'm doing what I can to fix this place up as much as I can before I move in. This floor has taken me 4ish months of work on and off already. I started with treating the whole floor with a vinegar solution. Then came laying the oakum. I had to scrape out god knows how many years of dirt and mouse shit between the floors. Occasionally, I found these little white pills. My headcannon is that it's qualuids, lmao. Each crack took 2ish hours of work between scrapping cleaning and putting in the oakum. I will never get paid enough to do this and recognize this is 100% a lost trade. I finally just got to being able to punch the nails and start sanding last week 😭. I'm hand sanding starting at 40 and the plan is to at least bring it to 120- not sure if I want to go to 180 or 220. Then ima put teak oil on it and a beeswax coating. I did finish one section under the fridge and it's been so depressing that it just looks like a floor 😭 it looks like old growth pine. It's beautiful and I'm so happy I'm doing it- but it doesn't look any special 😭😭😭.
Originally posted about any tips on putting this crown up. Lots of time and effort. Tried coping but found the crown molding was too large for it to be done properly as not professionals, and lots of the angles were irregular so wouldn’t work anyway. Was a mistake to buy wooden molding that was sent as three pieces glued together as they did not bend at all against our very irregular plaster wall. Nailed directly into the studs as much as possible and used a heat camera to find the radiator lines before nailing everything in. Our last two pieces took us four hours to get right and had to put lots of wood putty, lots of sanding and caulking to even out the gaps but we are very pleased!
Town and Country just published the fourth in a series about the vintage house I renovated in Vermont with the help of talented local artisans, craftsman, and carpenters. I thought I would compile photos from all the rooms in this post. And I included a photo of Zoe, my Jack Russell because she is so darned cute.
Here’s the latest post, which is about the bedroom and study upstairs:
Next week is the last in the series. Jennifer will write about the “screen barn” I built in the site of the original barn, so that I can sit outside and enjoy the view into the forest during Vermont’s infamous black fly season.
My first post about the house garnered over 100k views and inspired Jennifer, who writes the Town and Country blog, to keep writing about the house. 😇
Scroll to the last photos and you'll see that the woodwork is blackened by smoke. This is because it was originally an open-plan hall house, where there was a hearth on the floor of the main hall.
We've been settling into our early 20th century house in a midwestern city: I've gotten use to the creaks and character that come with the history but I've noticed some things I don't want to ignore.
House is two stories, triple wythe structural brick, facing west on a north-south street. Majority of the house has a stacked stone foundation up to three feet above grade but in the front, for aesthetic reasons, they used brick down to grade (below which is stone again).
Poking around I noticed sloping/bowing outward in that front brick: pictures one and two are either side of a window opening, where the misalignment is obvious compared to the parged stone below and plumb posts in the background (note also the small gap between the joist and the wall).
What worries me is that this may complete a puzzle I've been trying to sort out for months. On both the north and south front corners (pictures 3, 4, and 5) we have pretty gnarly vertical cracking which is even noticeable from inside ground floor exposed brick (picture 6). It starts on both sides about three feet up from grade and runs up several courses. It's widened and propagated since the last tuckpointing, which we think was more than a decade ago. Worst case I can think of is that this all related and the front of our house is pulling away from the sides from the bottom up.
The *foundation* itself seems ok: the front of the house has a concrete path right up to the wall base and the front yard slopes steeply to the street, so no water ever pools, and besides we have flat roof which drains to a back gutter. One thing that might be important is that the front wall is taller than any other (the flat roof slopes toward the back) and has a parapet on top that adds weight.
Has anyone had a similar experience? What is going on here? How worried should I be?
For what it's worth, we hired a structural engineer when we bought who was pretty non-chalant about the exterior cracks. He didn't catch the brick slope though and in general not very thorough in retrospect. Wondering now if we shouldn't hire someone else to know if we should be budgeting for a big fix instead of other things.
Was starting to frame a new wall in my 1879 house and expected everything to be extremely wonky after all the This Old House tutorial videos I watched to learn how to do this.
I wondered just how off it might be based on the horror stories I’d heard and measured the height at both ends and one spot in the middle. Every stud ended up being within less than a quarter inch. I also put a prehung door in, and it just… went in. Perfectly level. No adjustments needed.
I have done so many DIYs in this house that I know to expect shit to go wrong, nothing to be as expected, and the whole thing to cost me more and piss me off more than I expected. This project went like a freaking textbook. I’m waiting for the house to collapse now, something HAS to go wrong, right?
(Also yes the ceiling height on my second floor is quite vertically challenged, I know)
I'm finally ripping off carpetting. What's the best/quickest way to remove paint splatter? I can't resand it right now due to financial difficulties. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!
We removed some MDF built in shelving in this room and went through the wall into the other bedroom to frame out a proper closet in both my son’s room (pictured) and my daughter’s nursery (in progress!).
Just purchased an adorable craftsman bungalow, built 1925, and would like to eventually remodel the very-90s kitchen to better match the time-period and style of the house. I'm very new to craftsman style homes so would appreciate any ideas or advice!
Hi, All. I'm working on the curb appeal of a 1900 Baltimore row home. I'd like to repair the masonry cladding on the sides of the front steps. Does anyone have experience with these materials or advice on how to proceed? Thanks in advance. I really appreciate this sub. :)
First off: Just looking at this house, what color would you paint it? The siding, the trim, the soffits and the corbels? (The wrought iron is going to be changed back to black, it's gold here, not sure that's really showing well.)
Now some background: We already have two blue houses right across the street from us, so that is why we have eliminated that, even though blue is our favorite color. Also, this house stands out, when you pull onto our block, it is pretty much the first thing you see and three out of four sides are pretty visible.
Right now, I am thinking a nice sage green (Hollingsworth Green) with light pink window and door trim (Pensacola Pink) and a dark green for the soffits, corbels and front door (Fairmont green)
Down the line, I am thinking adding shutters in the dark green color would help add some depth and contrast as well. Just not in the budget right now. (honestly thinking heart shaped cutouts on the shutters as well haha)
I feel like this is a quirky old home built in 1850 and I want to do it justice by painting it some fun colors that maybe you don't see all the time. But I don't know, is the direction we're headed in too crazy?
Hi everyone, We have to check/repair a potential 2nd floor leak by opening up the ceiling on the first floor. They will cut through lath to get a 3ftx3ft opening to reach a pipe.
Will I ever be able to match this plaster pattern on such a large piece of ceiling or should I just demo the whole ceiling and start fresh with dry wall? Seeing if anyone that’s had to deal with this and how they feel with their decision to repair or replace with dry wall.
The worst part is I have a ceiling that curves into the wall and ends at a picture rail as can be seen in the second picture.
Beyond happy on how these floors shaped up! They were carpeted before with lots of misc pet stains. Wanted to go lighter with the stain originally but couldn't due to all the random pet stains.
