Do you/did you own a Victorian terraced house? If so, pro's and con's please....

[Lizzer]

We're soooo tempted to a very reasonable 5 bed in a lovely location with some stunning original features that needs work (every room). But dp in 'the trade' so we could do it up, at a push to our finances (and stress levels probably).....

Also, baby on way in dec and dd 7, are we mad??! please let me know your experiences as a way of adding to the mass of info we are trying to collect....

(Also, sorry in advance if I don't get back to this thread til tomorrow, have friends coming round now )

We had a 3-bed terraced Victorian house and it had good and bad points. The kitchen was quite dark and it was right at the back of the house. The hallway that led to the kitchen was alongside the stairs and was so narrow that two people had to squash up if they needed to pass in opposite directions. Also we had original windows and they were quite draughty and made the house expensive to heat.

On the plus side, we had lovely high ceilings and the walls were very thick so there wasn't much problem with noise from neighbours.

I grew up in one. It was the sort where the work never got done. I think a big, high ceilinged Victorian house is great to live in but that might me being nostalgic.

Pros: full of character, usually big rooms and gardens, cool in summer, open fires.
cons: Cold in winter, maintenance (we've got rising damp at the moment), cant think of any more.
I think you should go for it, it sounds lovely.

Ours has beautiful features, high ceilings, draughty windows and dreadful, noisy plumbing.
Ideally the windows need replacing, as does the plumbing.
The stairs are lovely as they are long and each step is not very high, so easy for elderly relatives to negotiate.
Garden is long and thin, so a bit tricky to make it interesting and still have a fun space for the children.
We love it though, and it feels like a proper, solid family home - especially at Christmas.

Mine is a 3 bed 1907 terrace so similar...

Needs SO much doing to it So much 'work' from the 50s onwards that needs undoing, higher heating bills, everything is a big job - like if we take the wallpaper off we have to replaster, very very dusty, can get very warm in summer, noisy and in our bedroom if someone smokes in the next door room you can smell it because of holes in the bricks (?)

The noise is the BIG downer about a terrace - gets me down sometimes

Good bits - lovely BIG rooms - particularly the bedrooms, massive bright windows, character, our house has a very nice layout.

I suppose for me the big thing is that compared to a 3 bed modern house, our house is massive which is fab.

We live in a Victorian house, not terraced but a semi.
Pros:
Large rooms, high ceilings, house is like a tardis as it goes back so far, walls are thick, we've been able to extend into the loft and out the back to create a larger utility room with french doors, lots of character and you can mix modern with the more traditional
Cons:
Can be draughty - previous owner put in double glazing which doesn't look exactly in period keeping but does help; even so, it can be cold in the winter as the ceilings are so high; parts of the house look quite shabby and it never looks really really clean (but this HUGELY has to do with the fact that dh and I are slatterns that don't clean properly anyway); am always secretly frightened that the ceilings/ plasterboard/ walls will one day give way if we lean or stamp on them too heavily; we've had to have new wiring, new boiler and new pipes throughout which cost a packet; would prefer to have large front room leading to dining room but have two separate rooms instead which can seem cluttered; dining room as dark as it's at the back

I love this house but I do sometimes yearn for a modern build with larger airier rooms that doesn't have musty corners! Don't think we'll move though, unless we win the lottery

i am in one. it was very badly treated (was council house for about 20yrs) so the only original features were the really essential ones and we had artex / polystyrene ceiling tiles etc.

it has been way more work than we thought, but is so well built is def worth it. we did kitchen when ds was 4months, that was so awful that we haven't done much since (run out of money too)

same as smurfgirl.

Go for it, it sounds fantastic!

Our last place was a Victorian flat and I had DS1 during a major refurb, this had it's bad times, it is difficult living in a building site with a new baby but your DH being in the trade should make things easier. In the end the flat was great, the DS2 came along and we sold up.

We now have a Victorian semi, it started off as four bedrooms, one bathroom and is now three bedrooms, two bathrooms, once again we have done a lot of work to it and DS2 was 5 months old when we moved here which meant, baby and building site again.

We have spent quite a bit of money on this house but having had it valued recently it has outstripped the new builds as far as rise in value goes.

At the end of the day they don't build properties like the Victorian's did any more and a Victorian property will IMO always be in high demand.

Same as Smurfgirl but minus the nice layout, ours is awful.

I used to own a 2 bed one - cons - loft had to be separated from others in row as originally they were all connected, shared drains, back yard, steeeeeeep stairs

Pros - high ceilings, big rooms, big windows

I have recently bought a 5 bedroomed Victorian Terrace.Loads of room,lovely features.
You are not mad,buy it.

dd is 7 and ds is 2 and they love the house too as we now have a playroom

always had them = about to move to another - they do it for e

We had a two bed terrace. As with all houses of that era they have no foundations, being built straight onto the earth and consequently we had loads of wood louse-type bugs around the place whihc I understand is typical.

Hiya... have lived in Victorian/Edwardian terraces and semis for last 10 years.

Pros - big rooms, high ceilings, character, just general 'wow' factor, which is non-measurable but certain not something to be ignored. We have found ours cooler in summer than modern houses. Interesting nooks and crannies. A sense of history.

Cons - depends how much needs doing, really. May be cold in winter/draughty (we ended up carpeting over a lovely wooden floor just because the draughts from the cellar below were positively arctic). If it still has original windows, check for rot (but your dh will know this if in the trade). Kitchens/bathrooms may have been added later and therefore may be somewhat squeezed in (had a downstairs bathroom in one house, though it didn't bother me).

Having lived in these sorts of houses, I'd find it hard to move into a modern 'box'. I'd say 'go for it'!

We had one. High ceilings, lots of space. Big attic room.

Had an "offshot" kitchen and bathroom which weren't part of the original - they were down a step and tended to be cold.

The house had great character but was hard to heat in general.

Decent cellar. But there was no parking.

Oh yes forgot the knackered shares drains. I remember with glee the cantankerous old lady at the end of the terrace knocking on our door to complain that it had blocked again and the plumber had found loads of sanitary towels down there. She hadn't realised I was 6-months pregnant at the time (and obviously wouldn't have been the culprit anyway!) so ended up rather embarrassed.

Pros Lovely rooms and features and very easy to make them look lovely as they do a lot of the work for you.
Cons Lots of maintenance and hard to heat
Would still say go for it though as if you like character and style they are hard to beat

I think with old houses it helps to have an "oh just stick another sweater on" approach to the cold. Then again, I remember as a child going to houses that had central heating and being utterly thrilled. Not shivering in the bathroom was a relevation to me.

Ditto with noddy. Not only is it difficult to heat, it's very expensive to heat, compared to a new build. We moved out of our lovely 3 story victorian house as it had a teeny tiny garden with no grass, and only one gararge. I think I will always regret leaving it a little bit.
The other con was I think it was haunted (and I don't believe in ghosts!)

My biggest gripe with mine is lack of light

The Victorians built to keep the sun out of their homes as much as possible, because they didn't want their precious furnishings faded by the sun. So lots of Victorian places, unless they have been extended and had doors etc. added, are quite dark and you have to really work to maximise light.

Other than that they are fine. I've never had a problem with the cold, if you have a decent boiler and you turn the heating up to the required temperature, it's as warm and cosy as any other type of house.

I would say go for it, ok it may put a strain on finances and stress levels, but at least you'll have a lovely home at the end of it, and the satisfaction of having done it up in your own unique way.
Is it habitable at the moment at all?
I was just thinking, if it's alright to live in, while you do it up room by room as funds and nerves or steel allow!! That would possibly make life a bit easier for you, why rush if you dont need to?
If its impossible to live in without major works done, do you have somewhere to stay in the meantime?
Either way, I'm sure you can work things out, things like this usually get done somehow, so if you just do what essentially needs doing first, then move on to make it into a gorgeous home for yourself. Oh by the way, hope you like ghosties, as in my experience, they tend to be frequent visitors of vitorian houses!!!
Good points of vitorian houses: solidly built, tend to be grand style! Bad points: tends to be darker than other houses, but so what , we just have lights on for most of the day when its' at its worst in winter etc. and yes, they can be costly to heat, also what about sortng out woodworm etc..more than likely it will be a problem in that type of house, unless already treated? Come what may, at least your victorian house has stood the test of time, so that's a major plus point! Not like these cardboard box type of houses they build nowadays, I wonder what they will be like over 100 years from now, demolished more than likely! but your little victorian will still be going strong with a little bit of maintenance here and there!
Go for it, have fun doing it up, and enjoy your new home, all the best x

LOL at the resident ghost problem

At least the ghosts will have a sort of exotic quality about them, not like some common modern ghost.

sorry can't even spell now, meant to say victorian not vitorian, as have typed it wrong several times, tut tut! It must be that my brain cells are frozen solid in this oh so cold victorian house!!! Oh it's lovely though, as for the heating problem, we have central heating, but in the larger rooms we also have them little electric stove type fires, and they are fabulous, couldn't do without them, it's so lovely to be snug as a bug when the weather is horrible outside and you're sat in front of a roaring fire (ok pretend one, but we do have real ones as well, but can't be bothered as too much work involved!)
Hope you decide to go for it, as i'm sure you'll never look back and regret the move.