On Oct 18, 12:00 am, aemeijers wrote:
RicodJour wrote:
On Oct 17, 9:13 pm, wrote:
On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:41:19 -0700 (PDT), RicodJour

Not sure if you're purposefully misunderstanding what I'm saying, or
what, but that's all I have to say on that.

Nobody ever said the old houses were untouched. The steel pipe and K&T
wiring. The old boilers are GONE. Many are "restored" and upgraded to
at least current specs electrically and mechanically, at significant
cost - yet the owners virtually ALWAYS recoup their investment at
resale time.

Sigh. So you're making the old house into a new house piece by
piece. Gotchya.

R

Well, not everybody can get the 'This Old House' crew to come do it for
them.

Not what I meant. I meant that the ever-increasing-in-value old house
that clare was talking about, is also increasing in value because it's
being updated, which makes it That Not So Old Anymore House.

I've seen several old houses in my lifetime that I would love to own,
from a layout and ambiance standpoint. However, the upgrades would cost
more than building a new house of similar layout and features, with
modern materials. Sadly, the fine quarter-sawn hardwoods on many of the
interiors now fall into the 'if you have to ask' category on price.
Something about 95% of all the old-growth hardwood within 2000 miles
being cut down already, I think...

I took out a piece of blocking the other day from a house built in
1928. Just a tubafor. The growth rings were so close I could hardly
count them and I was wearing my reading glasses. Had to be about 30
per inch. The cy-boards you get nowadays. you're lucky if there are
more than five or six rings per inch.

One thing seldom mentioned about older fancy houses- in most towns, the
neighborhoods where the rich people lived 1890-1940 or so, have had a
demographic shift. Not much point in having a fine old restored house if
you have to have window bars, motion-activated lights, and wear a
sidearm to walk around the block. Blue collar houses from that era are
mostly gone, in this part of the country, at least. ( But some of them
have some keen interior features as well.) No colonial-era houses around
here- I think the oldest standing house in town is from 1860s or so.

Yep, what were stately houses on stately streets, serviced by
streetcars, are now inner city housing serviced by buses. Life
marches on.

R