I have a '51. Good vintage. The previous owner had removed all the plaster and rewired the entire thing with 200A service and ethernet to all rooms (ironic that now this is sort of redundant given wireless interwebs). Leaving us with a really solid base. Apparently he'd lived in it for 10 years with no drywall while he saved up and did the renovation one step at a time.... finished it just in time to sell to us. I built (I built) a garage out back last year, and am finishing the basement now.... should add about 450 sqft to a 1200 sqft house and will add a bathroom and bedroom to make it 4/2. Next is kitchen, and I'm calling it done after that. It will likely have squeaky floors, be poorly insulated etc, but this is some of the low hanging stuff. I'd consider (not that it's been said before...) electrical and plumbing the big ones. The rest is just icing, and largely easily upgraded/repaired.
Lead paint and possible asbestos siding...
Other than all the PIA (necessary) precautions that you need to be aware of when disturbing that stuff... but just follow the rules and there will be no problems..
I would gut it and make it my own... but then again.. That is what I do for a living...
It sounds great to me... Close to a lake on an acre with a potential great shop...
I am in... :)
It has double hung windows so no jalousies to worry about. The listing says 'electric' for heat, I'm hoping that's not meaning baseboard heat! 
More than likely it's a heat pump. Gas is pretty common in the area so in the event it does have baseboard I'd immediately stick a gas furnace in. It's on a crawl space so fixing plumbing etc should not be a big deal. (That does NOT mean it would be fun, of course.) In these parts, copper was pretty common for new construction back then and has a normal life expectancy of ~25 years, meaning it's very possible most of it has been replaced. But we will see.
SVreX wrote:
50's are a pretty good vintage- they are generally good bones.
'cept for the electric wiring...
any 1940's-50's house (with new romex) is better than any house built since then, no matter how much someone paid a custom builder. new materials are crap, new wood is from fast growth young trees, real plywood > osb, and vinyl siding sucks. add to that people used to take pride in their work. i'll put my 1932 house that was last added onto in 57 with new doors and windows and wiring up against any new house. i opened up a wall the other day and found REAL 2x4 studs.
i've been in the remodeling business for 17 years and would rather work on a 60 year old house anyday.
The only thing I have to add is that if the crawl spaces are below grade when it rains they will/might fill with water. The water can then come in through the cement and flood into what is adjacent to the crawl space. I had to retrofit two crawl spaces using cement to funnel the water to an automatic sump to get the water away. Having the garage flood isn't fun and trying to seal a leak with hydrological cement sucks. Don't get that stuff on your hands it will burn you. Oh and the water will wash/effervesce the mineral out of any masonry walls, haven't figured out how to fix that yet.
I removed about 150sqft of asbestos linoleum and I guess they used black tar mastic to hold the stuff down. 5 gallons of adhesive remover to get the mastic up then ended up having a floating floor installed over the floor making the mastic removal redundant.
Thanks for all the info and experiences! Got a text from the dirt pimp (thanks Keith! 
), it looks like it will be next week before I can get inside.
patgizz wrote:
SVreX wrote:
50's are a pretty good vintage- they are generally good bones.
'cept for the electric wiring...
any 1940's-50's house (with new romex) is better than any house built since then, no matter how much someone paid a custom builder. new materials are crap, new wood is from fast growth young trees, real plywood > osb, and vinyl siding sucks. add to that people used to take pride in their work. i'll put my 1932 house that was last added onto in 57 with new doors and windows and wiring up against any new house. i opened up a wall the other day and found REAL 2x4 studs.
i've been in the remodeling business for 17 years and would rather work on a 60 year old house anyday.
To an extent I agree that new construction is crap, but to say that it uses inferior materials without excepting simply isn't true. There are exceptions, and even though we build more of it now you can find E36 M3 that build in just about decade. And you can still get dimensional lumber that is actually the nominal size, just sayin'
About new construction being crap: during this house hunt it surprised me the number of less than 20 year old houses I saw with wood rot, etc issues. I saw one yesterday ~10 years old with rotted trim on a dormer window.
