Now that we’ve moved in (finally) to our 1940 bungalow, I thought it was time to reflect and share some of the things that I’ve learn so far in our old house journey.

1. Plan on redoing the electrical work, even if you don’t want to.

            We didn’t plan on re-wiring the house originally, but had planned on have some electrical work modified and a panel replaced. Our first electrician, which we ended up not being thrilled with, did half of the electric work and then said the other half couldn’t be done with the current panel and refused to just replace the panel. It was a bizarre experience where we knew the panel was bad, which is why we wanted it replaced, and then the electrician refused to touch it. Eventually, we found an electrician we liked better and figured out a whole house re-wire, but it definitely hadn’t been in the financial or time plan. We weren’t able to work on the house much for about 6 weeks while the electrical work was done, and there’s a few things that I wish the electrician had done differently, BUT I find that I’ve very grateful now that we went ahead and got it done and can rest easy knowing our electrical work is sound.

2. There will be scary things beneath or behind the surface covering.

            We suspected that there were hardwood floors under the cheap, fake wood laminate flooring and we had signs that water had damaged the laminate in a few spots. So, we pulled up the laminate, pulled up the plywood underlay, and were thrilled to find hardwood floors!

            We were less thrilled when we moved further down the hallway and found black mold on the plywood under the laminate. We were even less thrilled when we found rotted hardwood floors under the plywood in several spots. The majority of the damage was from what appears to have been a big water leak from the old washer hookup (that we moved), and a few other spots were old termite damage.

            The hardwoods ended up being a lot more work than I thought they would be, and I doubt that I will ever put my hope on hardwoods under laminate again, but I’m glad that we’ve done and are doing the work to try to refurbish the floors – the real damaged wood looks so much better than the fake wood. That said, we may eventually replace our refinished floors with new hardwood floors if time and money ever allow.

3. There will be great things hiding beneath okay things.

            Our house was heavily renovated in the later 1960s/1970s and never renovated again (besides the laminate), and so the house was entirely wood paneling over the original wallpapered shiplap. Most of the wallpaper that we’ve seen is basic and uninteresting, but the kitchen had an adorable tea kettle pattern. More than that though, behind the soffit over the cabinets, we found another layer of cabinets! When the house was renovated, they dropped the ceiling in every room and in the kitchen that was ½ over the top cabinets.

            So, when given the choice between leaving things as is or doubling our cabinet space, we decided to pull down the drywall ceiling and regain those cabinets – naturally. I love the look of the double layer of cabinets, and we have a truly incredible amount of kitchen storage space. I have a lot of kitchenware and dishware which is about 90% unpacked now, and we still have plenty of space. Half of the doors were cut when the prior owners ran electrical through them, but eventually we plan to replace those doors.  

4. Neglected maintenance from prior owners is a killer

            Our roof fascia and some other outside woodwork have experienced significant water damage, and this last winter didn’t help with that. As we move into summer, we’ll start working more on the outside of the house, but its hard work to repair years of neglect. This is true inside and outside the house, but, so far, the outside is proving the most difficult for us to make progress on. We knew when we bought the house that there was neglected maintenance, but we didn’t really comprehend the scope of it.

5. Sometimes the obvious flaws are easy fixes

            There were multiple broken windows when we bought the house, maybe about 6-8 big windows, and it took about $70 for a professional glass company to replace them in about three days. (Our windows are old, single pane wood frame windows – the ones with original glass have the wavy, imperfect glass that old house people love.)

            We didn’t like the wood paneling – so we painted it. With higher quality paint, we didn’t even need primer. We didn’t sand any of the walls like some people do for wood paneling. In some of the rooms, the grooves in the paneling caused issues, but that seems to have been partially due to the choice of roller.

            Many of the original wood windows had broken ropes and so didn’t open. To fix that on our windows, we just pried off the outside trim and the side wood panel (names are incorrect cause I don’t remember the right ones). Then, we were able to knot the rope on the weight and string it through the pulley to the window sash. We didn’t re-rope the upper window sash because we don’t feel the need to be able to open the upper sash. For everyone with old windows whose nervous about trying to re-rope them though, it’s a fairly simple process that only sounds difficult until you start doing it. The hard part for us was having the right number of hands to manage the window sash and the weights.

+ 1 thing I already knew

            I grew up in 2 different hundred-year-old homes. I know that, eventually, you forget how the rooms looked before you redid them – I already struggle to recall the original kitchen we bought versus the bright and cheery one we have now. I know that when you see the finished product, you know exactly how good the quality is, how much work you put in, and how proud you are of it. I love my kitchen not just for the looks, but for labor of love in wallpapering, painting, and restoring. I hate the counters because none of the labor of cleaning makes a lick of difference, but I love the vision I have for their future and what I plan to do in the future.

            Renovating an old house is all about looking past the present and imagining what the future could be. Its optimism at its finest when you can fall through the floor and still believe that it can be saved. For me, renovating is about looking into the past of house, finding the best qualities to bring forward, and adjusting the rest for modernizing and adapting to your family.