Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

What happened to your old family home?

153 replies

MissCromwellatKingscote · 14/01/2019 11:00

My mum still lives in mine, but a few friends have had the sad job in recent years of having to sell the house they grew up in.

I'm just wondering what happened to your old family home? Has it been sold on a few times? Has it been changed drastically from how your parents used to have it etc.

OP posts:
MyFamilyAndOtherAnimals1 · 14/01/2019 12:07

My parents still live in it... It's big and drafty - there are two sources of heat - the oil fueled ancient Aga and coal fires.

I wish they'ed spend a bit of money on it and make life a bit more comfortable for themselves (although it is beautiful, it's truly awful to live in in winter.)
And it's not as if they don't have the money - they do have the money but it's always spent on other things.

thatmustbenigelwiththebrie · 14/01/2019 12:07

My parents sold up to a smaller place about three years ago (all kids had left home about 15 years prior to that). I don't think it's sad, it's just a house and I think it's better that they moved somewhere better.

MyFamilyAndOtherAnimals1 · 14/01/2019 12:08

@BigDamnHero - Blimey!
I hope it didn't burn down when you were living there?

RosemarysBabyDress · 14/01/2019 12:09

My family home has been our family home for longer than I know, my father was probably one of the first children not to be born in it. I hope one of my children will want and be able to keep it when it's their turn, it would be sad to see it go.
It's quite fun to see all the various changes that have been made over the years

MyFamilyAndOtherAnimals1 · 14/01/2019 12:10

@Jaxhog - Haha! That sounds like something my Dad would do! I'm glad the whole house didn't collapse around you all!

CantWaitToRetire · 14/01/2019 12:11

My mum still lives in ours. My parents moved there when I was 18 months old, so it was the only home I ever knew until I moved out. Lost my dad in 2017 and I'm dreading when my mum goes and the house has to be sold. It seems a weird thought that I'll never be able to go into that house again once it has changed hands.

Kintan · 14/01/2019 12:13

My dad bought ours in 1974, and it's still in the family. Sadly my parents are both gone now, so we need to decide what to do with it. So many happy memories in the house and the garden. Hopefully when we do sell another family will be as happy there as we all were.

Doubletrouble99 · 14/01/2019 12:13

The very first home I lived in as a baby was in my grandparent's farmhouse whilst my dad finished the bungalow next door we were going to live in.
When my grandparent died we sold the house to a young family who seemed very nice. However it transpired that the husband was slowly but surely poisoning his wife in her morning cup of tea! - he was in farm chemicals.
The wife went to the GP telling her about her suspicions but the GP did nothing. He spent many years in jail, I never knew what happened to the children.

spiderlight · 14/01/2019 12:13

I had to sell ours just over a year ago. It had been in the family since my great-great-grandfather built it in the 1820s and I wanted to keep it for ever, but it was in the wrong city, the area was getting rough and our one attempt to let it out was a disaster. It has now been painted a horrific colour and turned into flats :(

ForalltheSaints · 14/01/2019 12:16

One of my grandparents had a family home that was in the family for 135 years from when built, to when one of her cousins could no longer manage alone and the home was sold. At the time of the sale it had no electricity- open fires, cooking on Calor Gas, toilet down the garden. Last year when visiting I went past the house which looks the same from the front, probably modernised inside.

juneau · 14/01/2019 12:18

I had two 'family homes' growing up.

No. 1 was sold when my parents divorced.
No. 2 was sold in 2004 when my DM and DSF downsized.

gamerwidow · 14/01/2019 12:19

I never had a single family home we lived in 6 different places between the ages of 5 and 18.
My mum lived in the last one for about 20 years then moved to sheltered housing.
I had no attachment to it because I only lived in it for two years.

TheNoodlesIncident · 14/01/2019 12:19

@rememberatime - Where did you live that suffered earthquakes of sufficient magnitude to ruin houses? So sad...

I occasionally look at our old houses on Google Earth - first one we lived there til I was five (youngest child), the second and more striking one from then til 16. We all moved from the area then and none of us live in that town. This house has been changed a lot from when we had it. The chimneys have been removed, significant trees cut down, boundary wall demolished...

I went back there once with DH and unexpectedly and shamefully blubbed like a baby outside the house Blush I could never define why but this house has had a profound impact on me and used to feature strongly in my dreams for many years after we left. (Hadn't thought of looking on Rightmove to see if I can find out any more, will now lose a day have a look)

Justaboy · 14/01/2019 12:25

I've bought them up and now rent 'em out!.

Pythonesque · 14/01/2019 12:26

My parents put a second storey on our house when I was at uni (still living at home). Made it really lovely, was fantastic when I was married as had room for overseas relatives to stay. Has also been great when we've been back with our own children, easy to stay for a few weeks. My mother's now trying to sort it out to sell up and move back to join us in the UK. She really hopes that it will be bought by someone who will continue to use it as a family house, but sadly most properties bought in the last 30 years there have been demolished and rebuilt as modern monstrosities. She's going to miss the vegetable plots too!

Birdsgottafly · 14/01/2019 12:31

I'm poor, so I had to move into mine, when I inherited it.

I started to redo the garden last year and that'll continue. I'm planting roses, which we did have (as did everyone in the 70's), in the front garden and doing a shrub border for privacy outside of the windows. I'm cutting back a privet hedge and putting a raised 7 foot planter and two by the front door. It'll really be next year that it takes shape, but I'll fill it with bedding plants this year for colour.

Next year, it'll be a new bathroom and extension. I'm moving the kitchen, back to where it was in the 60's.

It'll look different to when I grew up in it, but not so much when my Parents first moved in. Just more modern and bigger.

CoolCarrie · 14/01/2019 12:33

Still lived in by my dm, full of stuff, some of which I took stealthy to charity shops, she has soo much she didn’t notice. The flat they lived in When was a born is still there, as is my first flat. We come from a very old city, full of Georgian and Victorian houses and tenements.

bigbluebus · 14/01/2019 12:36

Sold ours in 2017 after DM died. Parents had owned it for 53 years. It needed a lot of work and was sold to an architect. It is up for sale again now and has changed massively on the inside but outside doesn't look much different.
I felt a little sad when it went but have actually lived in other places now for longer than I lived in that house.

SaucyJack · 14/01/2019 12:39

My Mum still lives there, and is as determined as she ever was to run the place into the ground to spite herself.

Seems a shocking waste of a large family home and garden to me (it’s council), but she can’t be persuaded or forced to downsize to something nice and more manageable.

GnomeDePlume · 14/01/2019 12:41

DM sold up a few years after DF died. The new owners marketed it some years later. Didnt sell but I had a good nose at the pictures. I thought they had made a lovely job. DPs did very little cosmetically to the house in the 30 years they had it, just a lick of paint every now and then.

DB saw the pictures and declared it a 'desecration'. He was always a bit funny about the house. He had wanted to buy it from DM and would probably have kept it as a shrine to DF but lacked the money.

reluctantbrit · 14/01/2019 12:44

My parents always rented (I am from Germany, house ownership is not the norm like here). She moved out 14 months ago and in late Spring 2018 it was demolished.

I do feel sad but it was a disaster as the owner company had already plans to redevelop the area and didn't put a penny into maintenance.

But I do think I won't walk the street for a while.

StrangeLookingParasite · 14/01/2019 12:44

Demolished, like many places I lived. It was a horrible house anyway.

rememberatime · 14/01/2019 12:46

@TheNoodlesIncident. I lived in nz. My childhood home sustained damage in a large earthquake a few years ago. It was deemed part of what they called the Red Zone... An area that was unstable and could no longer be built on. My family no longer lived there... But I did enjoy spying on the house via Google earth.

UbbesPonytail · 14/01/2019 12:48

We grew up in social housing and I know they all still are, which makes me happy.

The house we lived in from when I was 12 now belongs to a family who love it as much as we did.

The house I’m most attached to is my grandparents and mum and I am hoping to buy it (it is for sale) as we don’t want it gone from the family and mum’s siblings are just counting down until my (very young, pretty healthy) grandparents are gone. It’s my safe place and I fear that if it does sell it will be ripped down and built on by a developer.

VenusClapTrap · 14/01/2019 12:49

DF is still there, as he has been since 1969. He has slowly let it go to pot since DM died fifteen years ago. The house plants remained, dead, on the windowsills for years. Somehow I couldn’t bin them when I visited. Maybe he couldn’t either. Everywhere is thick with dust and abandoned DIY projects.

He now says that when he shuffles off this mortal coil we should auction it, so nobody has time to ‘investigate all its problems’. It doesn’t actually have major problems; they are all in his head, stopping him from maintaining it because it’s overwhelming. But he won’t entertain any help or even suggestions. So it is just being neglected and allowed to rot.

It’s all very sad. I had a very happy childhood there, but my happy memories are all mixed up with memories of my DM’s illness and death there. DF doesn’t let anyone visit very often; last time I visited I just felt nauseous being in there.

I think when it eventually goes on the market it will get demolished and something new built in its place. Probably a good thing. But I will never go back to the village after that, to see it or show my dc. Too much sadness.