To hate people going on about how beautiful my house is

[DyslexicScientist]

When its absolutely freezing inside, costs a fortune to heat and its still not particularly warm or comfortable! This is for about half the year. I've done lots that I can do but it is listed.

I dream of building a modern but boring house. I've packed my suitcase and am staying in my friends modern house this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it.

Anyone else suffering in an old house and having to deal with people just commenting on how nice it looks despite bing very impractical?

When I think of all the people living in poverty in this country who can't afford to heat their tiny, 'modern' houses.

You lot don't know you're living.

People probably exclaim over the beauty of your house (how insufferable) because it's something nice to say. Wouldn't you take umbrage if they criticised it instead? There's every chance you bought it for its beauty. They're probably thinking 'rather you than me when it comes to living in it' but perhaps you'd find this less annoying? I must remember to say this to women living in privileged such unfortunate circumstances.

I'm one of those people I'm afraid. While our boring-looking home is cosy, warm and looks lovely inside, I forever dream of a gorgeous period home with cellars, fireplaces, packed with period features, high ceilings. If we bought one in this suburb it would be £200k+ more and our kitchen and garden would probably both be smaller, so sadly DP is having none of it!

I feel your pain OP, we heat our outsize pile with a rayburn, a logburner and an open fire. Building up the firewood stock over the summer is an obsession...

OTOH, your post reminded me to go and close the damper on the rayburn (just lit it 20 mins earlier) so thank you

I just like to come on these threads and 'win' the oldest house competition. It's bloody freezing in my 1340's house. I'm sitting under my heated blanket wearing a scarf and gloves. Brrr

morris

YOu have given me a much needed belly laugh thank you :

'THINK before you comment. What is beautiful to you may cause others great hardship. I can't get a Habitat three seater in here. Please show some sensitivity'.

Maybe we need a Twitter campaign? Edwardian tile chill factor awareness week?

This has really cheered me up, thank you.

ipost I have to say when I now look at beautiful chocolate box houses, I just think of the families of huge spiders living in them, who would terrorist me all the time. Nice to look, nice to stay in as b and bs but to live in - nah not with spider phobia

Pah SingSong.

I'm in a neolithic passage tomb. Your 1340s home is positively new build to me!

Stealth boast much Mitzy

When people compliment me on my home I say "I know, I'm very lucky".

I love it. Draughts, slugs in kitchen and all. Although I could do without the rain coming in the roof...

My house is about 25 years old and it is freezing and not beautiful.

I have as few friends who live on very new houses - and yes, they are warm and easy to look after (for now - in time they will have maintenance issues too) and they look immaculate because everything is new but....FFS they are sooo small! Even the 'executive' 4 beds. Worst of all there is no space outside - everyone overlooks everyone else and you never get away from other people's noise!

We have a 1930 semi and it is not a beautiful house by any means but it has some lovely features - and lots of light and space.

If I could afford to spend a fortune I'd build my own place in a spot of my choosing (or drastically renovate an old place - old houses don't have to be cold and draughty if you have the dosh) - but other than that I don't think I'd ever want a brand new house.

And if people tell me they love my house I say' thanks, so do I'

Not all new builds are tiny with no land

Nor or all periods house freezing money pits

My DH and i had a listed building for our first place, we used to leave the heating on all day when we were at work so it would be warm 9 hours later when we got home!
The place seemed warm when you walked in at first, within an hour we had a duvet wrapped round us and used to offer to pay each other to go into the kitchen to make coffee!
It was beautiful, the location was beautiful but it was the coldest house i have ever lived in.

Jesus Christ.

That's why I love 1970s houses.

Old enough to be spacious inside and out
New enough to be warm
Ugly enough that they are cheap to buy
Not-quite-old enough that you don't feel bad about ripping out original features and fitting modern ones
Old enough to have 'quirky' features such as supataps

Oh, and sometimes you are lucky enough to rip up an 'original' carpet and find that some cheapskate has used old newspapers instead of underlay. It's fascinating to read all those adverts for Ford Cortinas and Radio Rentals.

Definitely a stealth boast op.

If the inside of your house is shit (cold and uncomfortable) then surely the fact that the outside is so beautiful would at least be something, something that you would welcome.

I have shit hair, but I don't dislike people commenting on my beautiful smile just because my hair is shit. My teeth are fucking awesomely perfect, and I know it...so I thank them nicely and hope it just distracts them from my hair.

I suspect you are massively fibbing about 'hating' people commenting on the beauty of your house so YABU.

I wouldn't live in a cold house. I'd move.

Obs

Every year, around this time, Iroundnip the family and announce that's it, enough we are moving.

I make lists of all the small cosmetic things to do before going on to market. That keeps me busy till the end of Feb.

The Spring is sprung. The woods burst into life. The poplars shimmer pink with their baby leaves. Tiny deer, pheasants and swallows distract me from my to do list. I start eyeing the veg patch and get aubergines and pepper on the brain. And.... by the time everything is blooming I feel there is nowhere on the planet I'd rather live.

By August we reconvene with part 2 of my "we are leaving cos these fucking mosquitoes are UTTER ARSEHOLES" but no list this time, cos at 40°C it's too hot to think.

Then Autumn happens and I get all ".there's no place I'd rather live" again.

Our home, currently getting cursed a lot, is basically Hotel California disguised as an italian farmhouse.

I'm probably going to die here Most likely from cold

No one has ever said my home is warm or beautiful. It's a 50 year old council flat. Crumbly thin, uninsulated walls (if I try put a picture up huge chunks of crumbly old rubble break off). It also has subsidence so there are some alarming looking cracks in some walls. The wiring needs looking at too. It's cold despite it having heating put in last year when the HA got a grant to replace all the housing stock that still had old storage heaters. I am stuck here indefinitely. The outside brickwork is a mess and the paint is chipping off the boarding below the roof. It looks horrible from the outside too. But it's safe, clean and feels like home. Compared to millions and millions of people throughout the world, my home would feel like unimaginable luxury though. Everything is relative.

Bloody love my lovely warm house.

Which was built in 1876.

Old houses needn't be cold. But if you move in to one which hasn't been modernised you do need to spend money on getting a good heating system and decent sized tank. What with those Victorians being a bit shit on gas central heating!

The poster who mentioned her 70s house with supataps - if I ever moved I'd definitely go for a 70s house. In pretty from the outside but great layouts inside which are very suited to how we live today. And un pretty 70s outsides can be prettied up with render and cedar or a modern slate roof etc.

Grilled - I agree. I have very seriously considered buying a 70s house and doing exactly that you said and it was in a beautiful location.

That said, I do covet a Huff house.

I bet they don't leak, have mysterious damp patches, or have ominous cracks in walls that require repairing with goat hair and lime.

Don't get me started on the basement room so horrific the previous owners just filled it with soil and bricked up the door.

Op I feel your pain. I am on my sofa in tights/thick pj bottoms, massive jumper, wrapped in a blanket and I'm still cold and the heating is cranked up to high.

I am thinking how pretty the floorboards are though!

Oh I'd so love a huff house!!!

I love this thread, op you have given us all great joy.

I live in an Edwardian semi, hideous IMV. And draughty. It's only saving grace is the ceiling height. But as I grew up in a cold northern stone house, where the central heating was an apology at best, where only one room was ever warmed up, where the martyr of the evening went out to the kitchen to do the hot water bottles and having handed them out everyone scampered into bed, where Jack Frost painted beautiful ferns on the inside of the windows every night, it just seems irritating to me.

But the answers are as follows,
Interior wooden shutters
Shut shutters, close curtains as soon as twilight arrives.
Close off the drawing room for the season save for parties
Electric blankets
Draught excluders
Brush cotton pyjamas
, thinsulate or silk underwear
Curtains over any door leading to the outside it an icy room
A warm dog applied to the chest

The coldest house I have ever stayed in was so cold that I went to bed in my long party dress and coat with the rug from the floor on top of the bed. August.