10 Things I Learned While Living In An Old House

Old houses have soemthing mystical and wonderous about them. From one-of-a-kind architecture to strange unexpalnable noises, a person can only know these things if they grew up in (or are currently living in) an old house. After my parent’s divorce, my mother and I purchased a home that she had lived in when she was a teenager: a 100 year old Cape Cod in despirate need of a womans touch. Since 2013, we have been on a nonstop adventure that never ceases to amaze us. 

Here are 10 things you can only know if you live in an old house.

10. Nothing Fits the “Standard”

In old houses, a lot of the structure and it’s compnents were hand built and put together by human hands: thus making room for errors. The doors are usally smaller than the average and the windows (espeically upstairs) are either really big or really small.

The Upside: The house is uniquely beautiful, and it isn’t too much of pain to have things customly cut.

9. Creaky Floors

Don’t even bother trying to sneak out – you might as well bang some pots and pans while you’re at it. Stairs are especially bad at this, and many nights I have had the living daylights scared out of me by my cats who sound like burgulars when climbing them.

The Upside: If someone does try to break in, you’ll definitely hear it!

8. Loud Roofs

Most of the roofs are made of tin and some have a large skeltal looking contraption that is might be an antena (all ours does is attract lightning in thunderstorms). When you clean the roof (or when you’re trying to be a Tumblr-y by sitting on it) be careful, they are really slipery!

The Upside: Rain on theses roofs is practically magical and very calming. 

7. Central Air

…or lack thereof. Most old homes have baseboard heating with large furnaces that are anything but eco-friendly. This means a lot of summers with window units and, if you’re like me and not willing to toss away money on oil heat, winters with space heaters! 

The Upside: If you can afford baseboard/oil heat it is the best of it’s kind!

6. Radiators

Not only do you hit your feet, knees, and even arms on these bad boys, but they are also great places for furry intruders to hide. One moment you see that big hairy spider and are preparing to send him away, and the next it’s skittering underneath the radiator. At that point you vacate the room and hope for the best. 

The Upside: They’re warm in the winter, and a great place to dry your shoes in the summer.

5. Creatures of All Kinds

This is espcially true if you live in the country. The amount of critters that I have found is alarming, and the places they hide is even more nerve wracking (espcially when your fiance loses the spider you just saw on the curtains). However, a quick spray down of the baseboards (with either porfessional spray or an oragnic DIY one) will ensure that our eight legged friends stay where they belong: outside!

The Upside: It’s the perfect excuse to get cats (a lot of them)!

4. Lead Paint

Back in the old days when smoking was still considered safe, people filled their homes with lead-based paint. Now that we have new advances, we know that this paint is very toxic when disturbed and the best policy, if removal is not an option, is to paint over it and leave it alone. It also interferes with any wireless internet signal, making them very weak.

The Upside: In a nuclear explosion, the walls are less likely to collapse!

3. Everything Breaks at Once

As I sit typing this one, I can’t help but laugh at the pure audacity of my home. From the little things that happen, like the outdoor spiket snapping off to the toilet breaking, we have been there for every single one. We will never forget when our furnace almost caught fire or when the water well just went AWOL in 2016 – but no matter what, we stayed with it and have some great skills and stories to tell.  

The Upside: By the time you fix everything, it won’t need to be replaced for the rest of your life!

2. Ghosts are totally a thing

2:00 AM: What was that noise!? 

*Cue fiance who is pretending to be asleep so I don’t make him investigate*

Could be the house settling, the cat, the floor, or, you know, that ghost that’s tired of you blasting music during their sleeping hours.

1. That “Old House smell”

You only know it if you have smelled it before, and I can bet you are smelling it right now. It’s not exceptionally hard to get rid of; however, sometimes along a normal day it will come back to you, and you will remember the way the house first smelled when you decided to make it home. 

The Upside: It’s oldly comforting, and you will grow to miss it. 

At the end of the day (when you’ve locked all the doors and made sure all the storm windows are down) no matter how old things are and what may go wrong, that old house is still special. It takes a certain kind of person(s) to love an old house and be ready for anything that is thrown at them. These houses have a life all their won, and a story they want to tell but only certain people are keen enough to listen. I’d like to think my mother and I are those people.  

• countdown