Most of the houses we open in this city went up between 1900 and 1940. That is mostly good news. The framing is real lumber, the rooms have proportion, and the details are worth keeping.
It also means there are four things we find over and over. None of them should end your project. All of them should be in the estimate before anyone starts, which is the whole point of this article.
Plaster over wood lath
Before drywall, walls were built by nailing thin wood strips across the studs and pressing wet plaster through the gaps. It is dense, it is strong, and it is heavier and messier to take out than drywall.
What that means for you is simple. Demolition takes longer and makes far more debris. If someone priced your job assuming drywall, the number was wrong before anyone arrived.
Floors that are no longer flat
A hundred years of settling leaves floors that slope, bounce, or dip toward the middle of the house. Usually the structure is sound. It just is not flat, and flat is what new flooring needs.
Tile is the least forgiving of the lot. It will crack over a floor that moves. So before tile goes down the subfloor gets checked, and where it needs it, leveled.
Old work hidden behind newer work
Most older homes have been renovated at least twice already. Sometimes carefully. Sometimes with a fresh layer laid straight over a problem nobody wanted to deal with.
We routinely find flooring stacked three deep, a ceiling built below the original one, and patches where something leaked long ago and got covered rather than repaired.
The expensive surprises are almost never the original house. They are the last person's shortcut.
Moisture that came and went
Old water damage is the most common thing we find and the one people worry about most. Often the leak itself was fixed years ago, and what is left behind is stained, softened material that never got replaced.
It matters because soft material will not hold a fastener. Anything built on top of it inherits the problem.
What this means for your budget
Here is the honest version. In an older Cleveland home a good estimate has room in it for what is behind the wall. Not padding, and not a blank check. A specific written line for the conditions we can reasonably expect to meet.
- Get the walkthrough before the number. Anyone pricing your job from photos is guessing.
- Ask what happens if they find something. The answer should be a written change order that you approve first.
- Ask what is excluded. A quote with no exclusions list is not finished.
- Do not take a number you were only told out loud. A price you cannot re-read is not a price.
Old houses are not a risk to be avoided. They are a known quantity, as long as whoever is pricing yours has opened enough of them to know what is coming.
Thinking about a project?
Tell us what you are looking at and we will come and see it. The walkthrough and the written estimate are free.
