r/OldHomeRepair

I bought my first house. It's a fixer-upper and I think I may be in over my head. It was built in 1870 and has a plethora of issues, but I got it for pretty cheap and am trying to fix it up myself. It's a brick house- but has this laundry room that was added on. The laundry room was never finished and it seems like it might be caving in? I'm debating just demoing it, there's bricks behind it but, would they need redone if I demoed it? Would it be possible to just put siding on it? I honestly think maybe I should just contract the work out but I'm not even sure who to call. I just want to fix it in the cheapest way possible. Is it going to mess up the rest of the roof if I don't get it taken care of soon?

Our West Michigan home is a 1920 art deco style house - which we restored to a single family home from a veterinarian office 6 years ago (during covid). I have loving learned so much from Reddit and YouTube about lathe and plaster, hardwood floors, and so much… but I don’t even know what to google to address this. It’s the railing dividing the walkway up the front steps into two. It’s original (I was told). I would like a professional to do this one, but again, I don’t even know who to call?

Sorry in advance for the pics - my house is currently decorated for Halloween.

Hi all, my Mrs and I have recently bought a Victorian house and my god is it a pain in the arse. We’re doing the upstairs bedroom and this is the state of the plaster underneath the lining paper we stripped. The original plan was to repair all the cracks, zinsser gardz the whole lot and go over it with one of those paintable plasters that you paint on and smooth out. I know the answer is probably knock it all down remove the lathe and board it but we don’t have much money. What’s the best way of tackling this taking into consideration that we don’t have much money or are we wasting our time trying to short cut it? Any advice appreciated.

My partner and I just bought a home that was built in 1895 then realized there was mold (and a mildew smell) under the 5 layers of wallpaper and paint we stripped.
First two pics are when we uncovered the mold and the last pic is after we stripped the walls, sanded the floor, patched any broken plaster, and painted a mold killing paint on (We also fixed the leak).

I’m looking for any suggestions/ideas to fix the bottom half of the wall because just out of frame in the last photo, the wall is very obviously patched even after paint.
I looked at some wainscoting options but don’t love the paneling most of them seem to have.
This room is for our toddler so I also wouldn’t want any intricate designs that come with half wall wainscoting.

Any suggestions are very much appreciated!

What is the best way to repair this? It’ll be rendered so it doesn’t have to be perfect
Thanking you in advance.

We moved into our brick house 3 years ago. It's 100 years old and was probably one of the earlier homes built with a little bit of Portland cement mixed into the lime mortar. You will see in the pictures that a lot of the original plaster is still directly on top of the masonry. I'm having trouble, even after consulting with MANY masons, figuring out how worried I should be about the integrity of our walls. The masons have said different things and are often selling their services, so it can be confusing.

The cover picture for this post is from the time when we hired a talented (in many ways) handyman to patch a few weird spots on the top left and he told us we should demo it and put up drywall. We didn't end up doing that but hired someone else who used gypsum to patch the areas we had to and lord knows how that will hold up. The rest of the house hasn't had the plaster disturbed like this.

Here is what we know:

- We need some spot pointing (can't afford $35,000 for full repointing). 2 out of 3 masons said spot pointing would do the trick

- We can't fix the walls with lime plaster due to the tar coating on the interior of the brick that was applied when the home was built.

- We have spots all over the house that are more hollow sounding when we knock, some places that feel a little sandy, and a lot is still solid

- Our back walls are quite uneven (see picture with the cabinet- you can see the gap where the bottom should meet the wall

- We don't have a rising damp issues

- Our windows are fine, need recaulking

- Our foundation is level, no issues in the basement that we have observed

What I'd like to know:

- We had our kitchen redone and they didn't redo the walls. They said they are find/solid but should I be concerned that they bow out in the middle? Does that mean the plaster is failing or just that over the years things settled or were patched badly? The outside of the house has been inspected- no bowing or indications of structural issue.

- When we do patch the sandy clumpy looking areas, what material should we be using? Should we be piecemeal doing framing and drywall to avoid this issue?

- Any other thoughts!

Thanks so much.

How to fix window trim? Wood rot

Hey all,

We’re buying a house we’ve been renting to own through family, pretty much due to a combo of “it’s what we can afford right now” and a few other things. Suffice to say, it’s our best option. That being, we do love the house.

It’s an old semi-row home Victorian (attached on one side, entryway on the other) sitting south facing on a westward sloping hill. I believe its build year is 1900, north eastern PA.

So, due to us deciding to buy, I want to shore up a few of the issues I’ve found. I was hoping for your help on this.

The most pressing ones are the ceilings on the second floor. The first two are the hallway stairway corner. Ignoring the paint, the ceiling is sunken pretty well. It’s hard to the press and doesn’t give much, so I’m not sure what the repair is. Tear the plaster down and tack a new sheet up?
I’m positive it won’t be that easy, nothing is easy in this house lol.

Secondly, the last two photos are from the master bedroom, this had been like this for a few years, and has been as long as we’d been renting it, though I’m noticing some hairline cracks coming off of it. Any advice?

I feel like we’re biting off more than we can chew, but there aren’t much better options in our range, so it’s very much Devil you know.

I do have some moderate home repair experience, we’ve renovated a few Victorians growing up, so I’m not totally helpless, but I’ve never done ceiling work and want to do it right.

Thanks in advance!