Needing upgrades doesn’t render old buildings obsolete. My house was built in 1880, so naturally over time it has needed electricity, central heating, bathrooms added, internal decorations refreshed. But it’s a solidly built brick home with great room proportions and high ceilings, plus character and sound-proofing qualities which you’d be pushed to find in a new home.
Should we knock houses down just because they need some remedial work? Seems needlessly wasteful to me.
It’s important to consider as well that many old neighborhoods and buildings in American cities were bulldozed to make way for highways and parking lots. Had they been left in tact most of those homes and buildings would still be standing.
also, quality drywall properly installed is a fairly effective fire block which can slow the rate which fire enters the structure and moves to other rooms.
I don’t think anyone has an issue with drywall (what we’d call plasterboard) being superior to old wet plaster.
These things are not a big issue imo. They can be and are replaced/upgraded.
The underlying construction that makes up the house is still far superior in older homes…The farther back in time you go, the better the underlying materials generally are.
I’d take plaster/lath walls, or even better, interior concrete or brick walls, over dry wall any day
Well, that’s great. But until you come in here with well-thought-out reasons why it is superior than decent dry wall, don’t expect us to agree with you.
What about settling? many homes settle and get cracks in the walls and the basement then leaks like crazy.
my guess is it’s because “that’s the way it was done 60 years ago, so it’s automatically better.”
Looks nicer, more fire resistant, more sound deadenning, more solid and long lasting. Plaster lasts for 100’s of years even if it gets a little wet. Drywall is just paper and chalk and damages very easy. You can put a tiny dent in drywall with your thumbnail. You can punch plaster with all your might and you’d just end up in a world of pain.
I will acknowledge it is more sound deadening. I would disagree that it looks nicer (to each his own I guess). I also don’t punch my walls.
Considering that drywall is cheaper to install, way easier to remodel, and is better insulating. I don’t see a compelling reason why plaster is substantially better.
You could also make a case that it could make it harder to sell your home. I remember we were home shopping several years ago and we saw a house that had plaster. We became not interested just by the fact that it would be costly and difficult to work with when renovating.
Believe me, if it were given as an option in high end housing, and if contractors extolled it’s virtues(not to mention could find someone capable of applying it), the house would have little problem selling.
I disagree with your point that all homes last indefinitely with regular maintenance. Virtually all new homes today are built with OSB. That trash turns to mush in a few years of exposure to the elements. Sooner or later, the maintenance costs aren’t worth it and the house just gets torn down.
In 1959 as a child, our family moved into a house that was built in 1928. While it was in very good repair, it was definitely an “old house” even back then. In 1977 I bought a house also built in 1928. For obvious reasons, both houses had similar issues.
Fast forward to 1986 when my family moved into a brand new house and then fast forward again to 2019 although the children have long since moved out, my wife and I still live there. Save for significant renovations due mostly to updating as opposed to “repairs” as such (and yes we’ve done our share of that) in my humble opinion, this is a much better house than either of the 1928 houses. (absolutely NOTHING is square in those days and yeah, rewire a house that has lath and plaster!)
Are houses today built shoddier than say in 1986? From “first hand” experience I cannot say but no question in my mind the improvements in building methods/materials, etc from 1928 to 1986 was extensive.
Poor people did not have enough money to hire architects to build their houses. And while, yes, they did use hardwood (depending on where they were and how abundant wood was in their area), people being people, some of them did not do detailed, quality work. Many people just built what they could to last as long as they needed it to.
That’s the whole point.
OSB should never “be exposed to the elements.”
If you don’t do maintenance on the envelope of a house - Repairing the roof, fixing siding, stoping foundation leaks, etc., any house, no matter what it is made from will decay.
I’ve lived in the US and Japan for over 20 years each. I think that counts for something when we are discussing trends in consumer taste of the two populations.
Old homes do have their problems… but I’d far and away prefer one to anything built today. You couldn’t give me one of those new vinyl palaces-I wouldn’t know what to do with it. If I couldn’t sell it, i’d probably donate it to the local fire department for a controlled burn.
When I look at street views of old midwestern and northeast cities, I can’t help but ‘feel’ something when I look at the architecture of the old buildings- it’s quite awe inspiring. There seems to have been something in the ‘spirit’ of people in past times that is no longer present in modern man. Which would explain why we’re largely incapable of producing similar great works of architecture. I guess a consumer society has no time for that. Everything needs to be done as quickly and cheaply as possible, and everything is disposable.
Yes, because if a building isn’t well built it won’t last centuries. But you don’t find any old “soddies”, and you don’t see wattle-and-daub homes from the times of Chaucer. Why? Because that sort of construction, which used to be ubiquitous among the common people, doesn’t last.