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Monday, November 16, 2009

Nesting

I love old houses, and I can't wait until Ryan and I are settled and ready to shop for homes (it will be a while, but I am a planner, and long term planning is a particular favorite of mine, it drives Ryan nuts!).

I like really old houses though, impractical ones with terrible plumbing and ancient wiring, sunken foundations and leaky windows. I would love to re-do a home from the ground up...which is why I feel kind of bad for Ryan, because he's the handy one. I can do little things, like paint and tile, but the big projects would be all on him.

There's this fun website, www.historicproperties.com, that lists older homes according to style (pre-1820's, Romantic Revival, Victorian, etc.) from across the country. I found this home in Indiana that I love...


Here's the inside:



Flooring needs refinishing, I'd put 5 bucks on the fact that the wiring is worthless, and that dropped ceiling has got to go. The white paint needs to be stripped off that trim, too, and that is NOT a fun job (ask Ryan, he's done it before!).

This beauty is in Alabama, it's classic:

That front porch!
Those columns are so gorgeous.


I found this house on Carleton Island, New York. It was built in 1895 and it's been vacant for 60 years. It needs so much work, and it costs $495,000! It has hundreds of feet of waterfront footage, I'm thinking that's where the hefty price tag comes from. Obviously Ryan and I will never have a house like this, but it's so stunning I had to post it anyway. It's like one of those houses on "Life After People."




I think those are trees growing out of the home in some spots, that can't be a cheap fix.


This house is in such bad shape I don't know what could even be salvaged. But look how huge those windows are...



Taking a wild guess here that those stairs are not structurally sound...

Here's the home in it's hey-day:


All properties and images courtesy of Historic Properties.

So someday (hopefully not too far away) when this wedding mess is over, Ryan and I can find a cute Craftsman bungalow or an old farmhouse that needs some work (but not too much, I'd like Ryan to stick around and not take off!) and we can put our own mark on it.

What are your post-wedding plans?

5 comments:

  1. Wow, those houses are awesome! Where in IN is that top one? The last one reminds me of the movie Money Pit.
    -Miss Pug

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  2. Adore those homes!! We looked at an older house that I loved, but in the end it was too much money and time to put out in the same year as our wedding. We went with a newer house that we are still fixing up to match our style. Our post wedding = continue the house fix up and baby plans :)

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  3. These are so cool and its a shame that someone didnt keep up or restore the homes. I love that first one.

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  4. Those homes are stunning! It really is a shame they weren't maintained! Maybe if you start showing these pics to Ryan from now, he will have acclimated to the idea before he realizes that he'll need to do a bunch of work ;)

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  5. Wow that last one is so breath taking - a bit more than a fixer upper though huh! If you're planning on doing up a house you might like younghouselove.com - it's the blog of two newly married people doing up their fixer upper home. It's a great read.

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