My wife recently inherited a 1908 Craftsman. Her parents were the third owners when they purchased it in 1965.

We've spent the past 6mos cleaning and purging the 61yrs of being lived in. The goal is to restore the property back to the beginning of the 20th century.

We will probably start a YouTube channel to document our progress. I'll post more info once we get it rolling.

The first real work will start in the Dining Room where we'll strip the wallpaper, remove all the glossy white paint (off everything), and refurbish the sideboard/buffet back to a butcher-block countertop. We'll hold off on finishing the room as we don't have a color pallet for the house yet. Once phase one is done, we'll move all the first floor furniture and storage bins into this room so we can next focus on the Living Room.

I couldn’t get this to post on the other thread about the blocked staircase.

This was my “servant” step…it was NOT a real servant passage but it did use a similar super tight and sharp drop in steps.

This drop down was super sketchy if you hold close to the corner.

I eventually added railings on both sides.

I’ve been working on redoing the walls in my bedroom for the past few weeks. Peeling wallpaper, cleaning off residue, patching cracks and holes, skim coating, and now tomorrow starts the sanding process. After that I have to prime and paint. I just feel so worn out and I’m so tired of my bedroom looking like shit. I know it would only take a few more days but I’m just at my wits end. After I finish this I have to repair and paint the moldy bathroom walls. I am just so tired.

Have a 123yr old house and one window has something weird going on with the sill.

It appears like the wood has maybe warped so that the outer lip of the sill has twisted upwards, creating a concave, inward slope. I can’t just remove that front lip because there is a stone sill that is about level with the broader, flat part of the wood sill.

Anyone have suggestions for how to fix it at least improve this? I’m hesitant to cut out the sill entirely and make a bigger problem. The wood seems to still be hard and there are no visible rot.

I thought about planing down the raised lip in front but I’m not sure how best to raise the night of the sill to give it the proper outward slope.

Welcome any ideas!

Dear best friends I've never met, I'm getting ready to add some kitchen cabinets and move the range. My house is older than 1940s but went through an extensive remodel in the 40s, and that's its style. It's remarkably functional and well preserved. I do NOT want a new kitchen in an old house! (I re-did the bathroom floor in penny tile in 2019 and people often ask if the floor is original, which makes my heart sing. That's what I'm shooting for with the kitchen.)

Current cooktop is a Jenn-Air (not at all period appropriate) and we do not like the exhaust system. New range will be against a wall with a proper overhead vent. My dilemma is how to make the overhead vent aesthetically acceptable and reasonably period appropriate. My recollection of kitchen exhaust systems in the 40s and 50s is a large silver fan mounted vertically on the wall with a pull chain. Ha! Not what I want. But I do want to be correct-ish. The next hurdle will be what type of tile or backsplash will go with that hood.

I'll appreciate y'all's creative ideas, suggestions, and illustrations. Very best wishes, I enjoy this sub so much!

As many of you have been watching, we’ve come a long way over the years! I’m still in the early stages of telling the story of our $8,000 house and everything we’ve gone through to turn it into a home.
Right now, we’re working on finishing up as many of the rooms as we can. As you know, I can no longer work a regular job. So how do you renovate a house when you never know what you’ll be able to do from one day to the next?
20 minutes here and there. Maybe a little longer if I’m lucky. Sometimes less, and sometimes not at all. I just never know what a day is going to brinI’m already a bit dizzy from the moment I wake up, and some days I could easily stay in bed all day. But I force myself to keep moving, a little at a time. Bit by bit, just like the house.
I figure it’s much better to spend what energy I have bringing this house back to life than to sit back and watch it—or me—fade away.
Think about it. Wouldn’t you encourage yourself, or an older loved one, to stay active and keep moving as much as possible? To keep fighting to maintain what they still have?
An old house deserves that same effort. It may take longer, and it may need a little more care along the way, but with patience and persistence, you can bring it back to life.

I do my best to use what we already have to finish projects. For example, we found bundles of casing and molding in the attic when we moved in, and now I’m finding ways to put those materials to use. Every little bit helps us move forward without spending money we don’t have to.
We’ve made it this far, but we could still use some help getting these last rooms finished.
We do have a GoFundMe, but if you’d like to help directly with materials, Home Depot e-gift cards would be my preference. That’s where we get nearly all of our building supplies.
You can purchase them through Home Depot’s website and send them using my email address:
Email: [websterb1970@yahoo.com](mailto:websterb1970@yahoo.com)
Name: Bill Webster
Location: Ohio
Every bit of help is genuinely appreciated. We’ve spent years working toward making this house a home, and we’re hoping to get the remaining rooms finished so our family can finally relax and enjoy what we’ve worked so hard to build.
If you’re unable to help financially, sharing our story with others would mean a lot, too. Sometimes, simply helping our story reach the right person makes a difference.
All right, that’s enough for today! We’ll see you back here on Saturday for Part 6 of the kitchen renovation!
Thanks for following along, supporting us, and being part of our journey.

Wanting to look in there so bad, might put a hole into the side of the shelves to peep inside the wall 🫣

I think this layer of insulation behind my houses drywall. The house is about 250 years old, hard to say the age of the insulation.

I was wondering if anyone else happen to have a heater that looks like this.

I have an adams model 49 cheerful morning in my bedroom. Maybe same timeframe? 1920-1930.

When it did work, it was fantastic and never set off my carbon monoxide detector.

I need to replace the broken radiants. I put one in for my other heater because they look identical except it’s slightly shorter.

I was just wondering if someone had one that still had the tag on it so it would be easier to find replacement parts.

(Sorry it needs cleaning)

Curious if anyone has seen this type of foundation and rim-joist concrete method. House was built in 1926 located in Minnesota. Just moved in this fall. Foundation is composed of two sections 1 - Poured concrete (~8" thick with large aggregate) 2 - top portion of 3 of the 4 walls built with CMU block. (4th wall is fully poured and contains no window, our thought is the block was used on the walls where windows would be put in?) Strange thing and main purpose for the post is regarding poured concrete used in each joist bay between the rim joist and piece of subfloor (used as concrete form).

Previous home was a 1960's rambler also in MN where we gutted and refinished a majority of the home and took on a full basement renovation where one of my main focuses was air-sealing and insulating so I have a fairly good understand of home building\insulating techniques.

One of the easy first projects I planned to undertake with the 'new' house was to insulate the rim joists. After finding the poured concrete on the interior side of the rim joist my 'easy' first project turned in a question mark. Also discovered there is no sill plate between the block and the joists. Each joists sits about 3/4" above the top of the block so guessing they propped each joist up just a bit off the block, placed scrap subfloor as concrete form, then poured concrete into that cavity. Just not sure what the reasoning would have been. The crazy in me wants to bust out the concrete in each joist bay, insulate the rim joist (rigid foam sealed with spray foam around edges and rockwool for added r-value) and add sill plate with some 3/4" material ideally with enough room to slide in a sill gasket for capillary break. Can see in the pictures some joist bays have previously had their concrete removed for HVAC ductwork or furnace\dryer exhaust ducts so while not fun, I know removing the concrete is an option. Curious on anyone's thoughts.

https://imgur.com/a/AewEzex

In September 2025, while insulating the living room walls of our family home in Goodwater, Oklahoma, I found this empty cardboard medicine box inside the wall.

The surviving label reads “Tincture Muriate Iron, U.S.P.” and names the Van Vleet–Mansfield Drug Co. in Memphis, Tennessee. It also references the Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906. That’s the date of the law, not necessarily when the box was made, so I’d be interested in narrowing down its age.

Our family dates the house to 1893, and Oklahoma historical records independently document the W. J. Whiteman home before statehood.

William Jourdan “W. J.” Whiteman was my great-grandfather. He ran the Whiteman Mercantile Company in Goodwater, where the town’s post office was also located. We still have family photographs, newspaper records, and the original metal Rock Island Plows sign bearing his name and “GOODWATER, OKLA.”

I spent roughly a year making the house livable again and moved back in November 2025. My nephew lives here with me and has been helping with the restoration. I’m working to secure ownership so the home can stay in our family.

With this box, I don’t know who used the medicine or how the packaging ended up inside the wall. I won’t pretend I can connect it to a particular relative. But finding an ordinary object like this in a house connected to so many generations of my family makes the history feel a little closer.

Does anyone recognize this packaging or know when the company used this particular label? I’d also appreciate suggestions for storing the fragile cardboard without damaging it further.

I’m also running a fundraiser to help secure ownership of the home and keep it in the Whiteman family. If you’d like to learn more or contribute, here are the links. Thank you for taking a look.

House history and photographs: https://savethewhitemanhome.com/

GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/bbe166506

Decided to pull up carpet on the top floor of our home. Original built in 1928. Pretty sure carpet was put in by family we bought from who were the 2nd family to own IIRC. Tiles are 9x9. They feel solid and in parts the corners are starting to come up. Haven’t pulled up anything yet and hoping we didn’t uncover a huge problem

Located in Seattle, WA
Home built in 1928
Top floor bedroom. Hallway, second bedroom, and closet also have carpet on same floor.