Our first home was a 1939 Tudor style..."gingerbread" style houses in that neighborhood.
Ours had a brick facing and brick first floor but the rest was stucco. That needs painting.
The interior had been renovated by a coupe of interior decorator prior to our ownership, so other than wear and tear touchups, the interior was pretty nice.
The biggest investment was upgrades. I had the electricals redone, newer bathroom and lighting fixtures, and upgraded climate control units.
Also, the driveway (or what was left of it) appeared to be original. That was redone with an aggregate effect...turned out very nice!
It was a charming house and we had our daughter while we lived there, so there were many memories that are left in that house. I never got to finish all of the projects I wanted to do (and believe me, there are ALWAYS projects), but we moved to Texas.
We sold the house for nearly twice what we paid for it when we moved five years later, but with all of the home improvement loans I took out, we broke even with but a couple of thou left over.
Truthfully, our payments on our new home equal what we paid on the old plus additional loans)...and our current home has over double the living space! Add to that all of the upgraded features, efficient technology and such...the utility costs are about equal.
So it works out the same way as would the choice of buying a new car versus restoring an old classic...you can easily spend more than the cost of new, so it's more of a labor of love, than a choice investment...but I would do it all over again!
We have a second older home in my wife's hometown...it's in need of some TLC as well...and so the ball is rolling!
