Reply #3: Well, we live in Springfield, Illinois and our house is approximately [View All]

[lovedems]

100 years old. We live in a historic neighborhood. It is beautiful because it is so old. Our street is tree lined with huge trees and we have a big old magnolia tree in our backyard. (It is a bitch because we have to rake the blooms in the spring and the leaves in the fall, but worth it)

Supposedly, our neighborhood was one of the first "suburbs" (for lack of a better word) of downtown Springfield. The woodwork in our home is old. It was once painted (the real-estate agent said that at the time the house was built, painting your woodwork was a sign of wealth????) My husband and I have spent the last 6 years stripping, sanding and refinishing the woodwork.

The last owner (my grandmother) "modernized" the house and we are spending money to "unmodernize" it. We want the character that goes with an old house. Last year our neighboorhood celebrated it's 100th birthday and we opened it up to the city. The neighbors put alot of work into it and when you would walk up and down the street in the front yards were OLD pictures of the homes, some of the families have been here for along time so there were pictures from the 50's with kids playing in the front yard. Some of the houses looked the same, some looked totally different.

Old houses are wonderful and I apoligize for the long post, but my home is my "hobby" and if anybody ever asks about my house my husband always says, "oh boy, you don't know what you have just done!"

Edit: We bought our house when my grandmother passed away. It is the house my mother grew up in and it was my first home until my parents got a place of their own. We always had all of our holidays here and we continue the tradition. So this house has alot of special memories for me and when I mentioned that alot of families have lived in this neighborhood for along time, I still see the kids I used to play with when I "went to Grandma's" because their parents still live on the block. It was really a great feeling to know all of our neighbors when we moved in.