I like, Rich! I know just how much work old houses can be, but there's still a charm there you just don't get with new construction.
I can look ath the quality of changes in my house and date pretty acurately when they were done just be looking at the quality of materials used and the skill with which they were executed. Unfortunately, I bought mine from a guy who had a son working at Home Depot. Many of his "improvements" just didn't meet with the style of the original. Only interesting thing I ever found was a 1917 copy of the Taylor newspaper wrapped around some old terra cotta pots in the crawl space under the house. No porn :^( Gary Thompson Georgetown, TX 1995 E320 1913 Arts and Crafts Bungalow (National Register Easley/Raper Home) On 1/17/07, Rich Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I restored/renovated a 100 yr old Victorian, and while it was a very nice house, and well-built, when they say, "They don't build 'em like they used to" that ain't always a bad thing! I found lots of shortcuts in my house, when I opened up walls and stuff, from when it was originally built. And the "upgrades" over the years looked like they were done by cheap morons, which I am sure was the case. I did find some interesting porn stuck in the floorboards from a 50s bathroom redo, and some from maybe the 60s in another wall . Too funny. Most of it was no worse than today's newspaper. I found some original 1884 newspapers from when the house was built. Classified ads (Boston paper) were looking for (under separate headings) Italian girls (Catholic), Irish girls [Catholic/Protestant] . Some general ads specified "No Irish" and "No Negroes" but Italians generally seemed acceptable unless otherwise specified. Kinda shows what the pecking order was then. If anyone is interested, here is my web site chronicle of the transformation http://www.constructivity.net/victorian_restoration.htm --R
