LMNO Update

[Suu]

The problem with "old houses in Boston" is that they're either about a million dollars, or they are also fairly fucked, from those tight victorian rooms/no hallways, to stairs that can't fit anything larger than single bag of groceries (let alone a boxspring mattress), to grandfathered structural elements that aren't up to code because there was no "code" when they were built, to the weirdest electric set up ever (ever taken off a light fixture and only seen THREE BLACK WIRES?).

Yep.

Providence isn't exactly any younger. Though the majority of the houses on the West Side where I live are tenements built when the mills actually were functioning. They used to not have plumbing and were often built from kits. If you get in a 6 family house like I'm in and have a bathroom bigger than a coat closet, that means it was probably built in the 30s. My bathroom is about 4ft wide, cut off 2' where the tub is. My tub isn't full sized, either.

When we were trying to fix the thermostat in the last unit, there was one wire. We have switches that go to nothing and we have to screw in the lightbulb over the bathroom mirror to light it, because we can't find the switch for it.

In old houses, this is called, "charm."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The problem with "old houses in Boston" is that they're either about a million dollars, or they are also fairly fucked, from those tight victorian rooms/no hallways, to stairs that can't fit anything larger than single bag of groceries (let alone a boxspring mattress), to grandfathered structural elements that aren't up to code because there was no "code" when they were built, to the weirdest electric set up ever (ever taken off a light fixture and only seen THREE BLACK WIRES?).

I have; my whole house needs rewiring, which is a serious drawback of old houses. I hear what you're saying about Victorian architecture. Pretty to look at, inconvenient as hell to love in. And even if you could remodel, in a lot of cases it would be more or less a sin.

I'm fond of the Craftsman era, but in older cities that were mostly developed before the turn of the 20th century they can be hard to find.