I've noticed that a lot of the old houses don't have closets. I, on the other hand, don't have a wardrobe, or a china closet, either.
Particular to this one, it also looks like she's been cooking a wood stove. I don't think I've cooked on a woodstove. . .ever. Unless you count soup on the basement woodstove, during the Great Ice Storm.
I also worry about insulation. Some of the old houses were insulated with newspapers. Which is fine for clement places, and better'n nothing, but I can't afford to heat the Great Outdoors -- and it looks like she didn't/doesn't either. I'm betting Winter is passed in the kitchen (woodstove) and the living room (woodstove), with the electric heat coming on only in the Direst Emergencies.
Our Unbreakable Rule of Thumb in re Places to Live: We must be able to move into it, set up, and work comfortably. We do not have the income for extensive ongoing repairs, and, being as we're writers, we already have a time-consuming occupation, so we don't need to renovate the house in order to fill our empty hours. Also, neither one of us is particularly handy. We can scrape and we can paint, and re-affix hinges and things, but that's about it.
All of that pretty much means that we're seriously looking at an old house only if the previous owners did bring it up to spec, which means that the price is immediately above our touch. This house, the house of a fellow artist -- she put up with stuff, did stop-gaps, and fixed what Absolutely Broke. We did a little better with this house -- gave it a new roof, and new windows all around, blew extra insulation in under the eaves, gave it (some) new rugs, and (were compelled by Circumstances to give it) a new bathroom -- but we didn't do nearly as much as we honestly thought we would when we bought it, and it's newer by about a hundred years.
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I've noticed that a lot of the old houses don't have closets. I, on the other hand, don't have a wardrobe, or a china closet, either.
Particular to this one, it also looks like she's been cooking a wood stove. I don't think I've cooked on a woodstove. . .ever. Unless you count soup on the basement woodstove, during the Great Ice Storm.
I also worry about insulation. Some of the old houses were insulated with newspapers. Which is fine for clement places, and better'n nothing, but I can't afford to heat the Great Outdoors -- and it looks like she didn't/doesn't either. I'm betting Winter is passed in the kitchen (woodstove) and the living room (woodstove), with the electric heat coming on only in the Direst Emergencies.
Our Unbreakable Rule of Thumb in re Places to Live: We must be able to move into it, set up, and work comfortably. We do not have the income for extensive ongoing repairs, and, being as we're writers, we already have a time-consuming occupation, so we don't need to renovate the house in order to fill our empty hours. Also, neither one of us is particularly handy. We can scrape and we can paint, and re-affix hinges and things, but that's about it.
All of that pretty much means that we're seriously looking at an old house only if the previous owners did bring it up to spec, which means that the price is immediately above our touch. This house, the house of a fellow artist -- she put up with stuff, did stop-gaps, and fixed what Absolutely Broke. We did a little better with this house -- gave it a new roof, and new windows all around, blew extra insulation in under the eaves, gave it (some) new rugs, and (were compelled by Circumstances to give it) a new bathroom -- but we didn't do nearly as much as we honestly thought we would when we bought it, and it's newer by about a hundred years.