Character properties are being ruined

[MaybeMaybeNotJ]

Is it just where I am?
All character priorities have been gutted and the inside is now bland and characterless.
I hate it.

Exactly this. My house was a 70's timewarp when I bought it, almost all the stained glass is gone and fake beams and wood panelling everywhere. Thankfully there is 2 of 4 fireplaces left but all upstairs fireplaces have gone and all the original coving has been removed. I'm trying to work with the 70's "features" so I'm not repeating history but lord it's ugly 😅

Totally agree with you.

I also don't think people realise that often they are devaluing the house by removing all the period features.

We're putting them back in! Picture rail, original style plaster cornice and have put a fireplace back in our bedroom. A lot of features had just been hidden, doors were panelled as was the staircase with the original underneath.

Shirley Kemp's house on Insta is great inspiration for sympathetic remodelling if you had the budget!

I know what you mean. Where I live there are lots of lovely Victorian and 1920s houses and the majority have had all period features removed inside and now look like a Dubai hotel room. Obviously, people can do what they choose with their houses but it’s disappointing to see so little attempt to retain character at the same time as modernisation.

Good point about the changes being made a while back.
We bought a Victorian terrace for our first house and it had the 70s? brick fireplace and surround. We put a salvaged fireplace back in and it was lovely.
We're currently house hunting and keep seeing the outside and getting excited, but then scroll through the photos and it could be anywhere.
A church has been bought and portioned into bland sections to sell as flats. I understand it's not logical to live in a huge church but it's still sad when it doesn't look like a church from the inside.

Thankfully some of the past modernisations were covered over and not ripped out, I love my doors, they were covered with plywood when I moved in, I took it off and had them dipped and they're beautiful, in my opinion, and original to the house. Most people unfortunately would have taken them out and put in modern cheap doors, a couple of my doors are from neighbours houses.

My staircase had also been boarded over and I was able to open it back up, the new owner will probably rip it out and put in one of those awful (in my opinion) glass ones.

People who take out cast iron bedroom fireplaces or cover them with glass paint, I'll never understand.

We live in an Edwardian house and the previous owners have ripped out literally every single period feature.

The other houses on our street still have the original stained glass front doors, tiled porches and hallways, ceiling roses, cornicing etc. Ours is a soulless white box with halogen spotlights and white carpet/laminate everywhere.

I hate it and will be changing it as soon as we can afford to.

There were certainly fireplaces ripped out in the 60s and 70s, and the panelled doors covered over with plywood. Where that happened more recent owners were able to restore them easily. The only rooms knocked through were tiny kitchens.

What OP describes goes much further.

I mean I have never cried about it but yes, I must admit I don't understand why you would choose to buy an old property and then spend so much effort changing it to a blank minimalist canvas rather than just buying a newer home.

Particularly things without any rationale - at least it makes sense to do things like remove doorways or open up rooms or add a window for living space or extra light but if having coving or a gorgeous edwardian fireplace spoils the look of the room you want then just buy a house without those features!

There are much more of them to choose from, why ruin the small remaining old ones so people who would love to live there and appreciate the original features can't!

I do wonder if these things go in cycles like baby names though - in 10 to 20 years will generally alpha be moaning about millennial owners who moved into 70/80/90s builds and plastered over all the popcorn ceilings, brick wall effects and ripped out the avocado bathroom suites, electric fires, and toilet carpet???

I had a lovely Victorian cottage with many original features including a beautiful panelled front door. The people who bought it just ripped every single thing out, painted it white throughout with grey carpet and a composite front door. I just don't understand why they didn't buy a more boxy property in the first place. It was a real shame.

People are idiots.

I agree. I live in a Victorian house with zero features/character other than one bit of moulding over the front door. It was originally over the windows as well but a previous owner changed the window shape, also took out interior moulding and fireplaces. Everything we’re doing to the house we’re trying to do in keeping.
There’s a lovely Victorian villa locally that’s been turned into flats - fine. But they’ve changed all the windows to that horrible dark grey and it looks ridiculous, it doesn’t go at all.

My great grandma's old cottage was for sale recently. I remembered it as a 2 up 2 down with a lean-to kitchen and an outside toilet. I knew the bathroom had been brought inside and the outside toilet removed but when I stalked it on Rightmove it was unrecognisable inside and not necessarily in a good way. It's now a 1 up 1 down as most internal walls were removed, god only knows where the bathroom is as it's not where everyone else in the same row has theirs, and the single bedroom upstairs was waaay too big. Fireplace gone too, replaced with a stupid little screen thing.
Funny thing was, the aerial shot of the back yard clearly showed the damp square that was where the old lavvy had been, and if you looked closely you could see the old sewage drain too. A descendent of my GG's old hydrangea still seemed to be knocking around, though, and she's been dead for the last 40-odd years.
They wanted £185k for it - 1 bed house with no parking and frequented by rats from the canal behind it. Soulless due to removal of anything of interest too.

I hate open-plan, especially in a period house.

There's lots of houses near me which have been extended out the back, bifold windows put in, sterile looking open plan kitchen and diner...no no no. I prefer smaller rooms and...doors!

Agree this isn’t a new thing, but I think a lot of renovations are going a lot further than just removing fireplaces (very easy to put back a suitable substitute) and even one or two walls (completely agree with the kitchen comment) so that you could never get them back to where they were. Also, if every removal of features and unsympathetic reworking of floorplans stopped tomorrow we’d still have lots of great houses with old features. But it isn’t stopping, and so the number of houses available for those of us who appreciate them is reducing all the time. I see a lot of open plan period houses in my area on rightmove and they’re all new.

They are homes foremost not museum pieces.

OMG love this!

But I want to live in a museum basically 🙈 in a time warp.

I wish they would just buy brand new builds. Honestly, if one prefers new flat interior, just buy new built. Especially that there’s so many to choose from. I was told that by getting older house and doing it that way, they get more equity. 🤦🏼‍♀️ I can’t imagine who’s out there shopping for Edwardian house with cheap looking pvc windows and doors?

It’s horrifying. Kitchens, bathrooms etc. that’s a different thing, but the details, windows, doors, instead of being restored are getting ripped out like it’s worthless.

Looking for properties myself now and these sort of refurbs are just a big no. If I want brand new townhouse, I will get it from developers. Definitely not into someones DIY interior design experiments.

We're currently looking to move too. And the character priorities that have been refurbed/modernised are so expensive!

YANBU!! This upsets me so much. Irrationally so perhaps. Honestly! I think this thread should have come with a trigger warning because I’m upset just reading about some of the stories here. I get it, it’s your home, but it’s part of a bigger piece of the story and one day it won’t be your home anymore and what you leave behind will last longer than you so I do feel we have some responsibility not to rip out all the history and character from houses…. I can only dream of living in a period home. We’re on the lookout for the right property- so many homes have had all the character stripped away. They go instantly in the “no thanks” pile. It’s just too incongruous to try and turn a Victorian property into a new build. I don’t understand why people do that?

Someone on MN referred to them as Macdonalds Loo Doors

We’ve an early Victorian townhouse that we maintain to a very high and original standard, and although we are happy to do so, it’s eye-wateringly expensive.

We had to re-institute some internal features after we bought it, and just replacing the modern wardrobes with new ones in an appropriate original style and quality cost £150,000. A new chandelier can cost £10,000.

I can understand why many owners can’t or choose not to keep things original.

The windows are another issue. I love the sashes, but the drafts mean that heating costs a fortune.

I find it very weird.

I can understand opending rooms out if that's your lifestyle - but you don't have to knock the entire freaking wall down - you can just have double through doors. And buying a Victorian house and removing fireplaces and cornicing is just nuts.

@StillGoingStrongToday

If you don't want to get double glazed sash (which is £££) you can just get an inside pane that slides to a close in the middle - as long as it matches the sash join, you hardly notice it. Much cheaper.