re: People who went from nice older home to newer one

It probably was. The other thing for me is interior doors. Most of the older home had solid doors. These days, every builder wants to use the hollow core shite.

I bought a new construction house last year moving from a house built in 1977. My new house is great and open and all that jazz, but when I go in the attic and see this shite, it causes me a great deal of rage. I hate OSB with a passion.

Dog kid lead paint is a big issue

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Idk what that means but yeah new homes look like sawdust. The door on this house was single piece of wood

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The doors to the bedrooms were solid? That's great! Not a lot of builders are doing that unless it's a pretty high end home.

And OSB is Oriented Strand Board. Instead of solid sheets of wood they created this shite in a lab using strands of random wood and chemically gluing and pressing it together. It's fricking Frankenstein board.

Part of this is you need to define "older" house.

It used to be post-war (WWII) construction methods were considered a modern house. Now you have people calling houses built in the 70's and 80's old homes due to their age. All periods had something later frowned upon, whether knob and tube or later aluminum wiring. That said, a house built before 1940 is typically going to feature materials lasting years beyond a modern house, all things equal on maintenance.

When I built my house about 5 yrs ago the only thing that was cheap really was the sheathing but that is technically better generally speaking because the glue actually makes it last longer.

But I had a friend build a home in Dallas and the actually had finger jointed 2xs

I have been in construction for 20yrs and I had never seen finger jointed material except for cheaper trim materials.

They also used some of that plastic/cellulose sheathing on parts of the house which I had only seen that one other time on a garage.

It’s kind of a myth, but not completely. Plenty of houses from “back in the day” were built cheap AF also and they aren’t around anymore. The ones still around after 75 years are well built.

A lot of the reason for “cheap” stuff falling apart is leaking, water damage, etc. Plus, our houses are so air tight now that they can’t dry out anymore. Also, tear into an older house and I bet you’ll find plenty of repairs on them.

The installation on this newer stuff has to be perfect or it won’t work as well or last as long.

Complete bullshite on the materials. Now all of these small lot sub-divisions with 3 floor plans and quickly slapped together... that can be an issue.

Homes that were built 100+ years ago were mostly made of wood. If stone was prevalent in the area, some may have been built of stone. It's possible to have a home built of brick that old, but I don't recall seeing any. FWIW, I'm talking about common homes and not plantation homes.

Old growth wood is much better than new growth as other posters have already pointed out. A wood house has to be painted and kept painted. Paint today is many times superior than paint from 100 years ago (even ignoring lead-based paint).

As brick homes became an option, many homeowners chose them because a brick home doesn't need to be painted. Yes, the wood trim, fascia, soffit, etc. needs to be painted but the bricks do not. This was seen as a huge advancement in having less exterior maintenance.

Then came all types of exterior siding that came in 4x8 sheets. This allowed houses to be built more quickly and with less expense. Many of these products were terrible. Vinyl and metal siding came on the scene with all of the problems you would expect with such materials.

Next came James Hardie products (cement fiber). These seem to be quite good overall but a lot depends on the installer.

Houses built 100+ years ago didn't have any electrical or indoor plumbing at the time they were built. Plumbing and electrical was retrofitted. Old plumbing and old wiring generally are terrible. The use of aluminum wiring in the 70s was a terrible move. Thankfully, we're back to copper wiring.

Plumbing has seen many advances with use of different materials. One of the latest innovations is PEX for water lines.

Roofing went from wood, tin, asbestos shingles, asphalt shingles, clay tiles, and back to metal.

Insulation has become much better. Windows have become much better.

Homes from long ago were built by carpenters (and only carpenters). The same people did everything. In the mid 1900s, the building of houses slowly added specialization. First, plumbers and electricians. Now, it's highly specialized.

A 100+ year old home frequently has a lot of charm and character. Houses went through a period of incredible blandness. Fortunately, there's somewhat of a return to having more charm and character.

New homes can be fantastic. So much of it depends on the builder and the materials. Old homes can be fantastic too. It's usually super expensive to bring a really old home to current standards of comfort, safety, and convenience.

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I’m anti boomer in most things but this house got me: LINK We lost and very very bummed

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For $1.8, I’d like to think they could have enclosed the water heater somewhere