moresparkly Ditto radiators. So cozy to perch on.

einportlandor I love my 1928 house with its drafty wood windows, some with wavy glass. And my glass and brass doorknobs that sometimes come apart in my hand. And my stucco fireplace with the very cool, but somewhat chipped floor tiles. Oh, and my funky basement with the knotty pine walls and homemade cabinets. But not the closets. No, not the closets.

Donald The complete and utter lack of a single 90 degree angle on any wall or doorway in my 1897 row house...drives me batty but also charming at times

Michelle W Older kitchen cupboards are usually made of solid timber, not MDF and everything about these older kitchens is solid and not plastic, just adds so much more character, quirks and all.

groveraxle I love the woodwork in my 1910 craftsman bungalow. Crown molding and picture rails, built-in china closet, and the worst which is also the best: a plate rail that goes all the way around the dining room. I use a shop vac to dust. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Cora Cervantes I live in an old house (built it around 1935). :-)

tcufrog The former owners of our current house had an old style big screen tv built into a built-in entertainment center. There was no good and safe way to mount our flat screen tv into it. We hired a cabinet maker to add doors and cabinets along with a removable back panel for safely mounting our tv. Not only does it look great but now we have a place to stash DVDs and toys in the the living room plus compartments for our home server which is hard wired to the tv for watching Amazon on demand and Netflix and our home entertainment components.

At our old house there was desk in the kitchen. The desk was too low for us and too small for our files and other home office necessities. It ended being a dumping ground until we had our first baby. It turns out it was the perfect place to put diapers and a changing pad downstairs so we didn't have to take our baby upstairs to change him.

dylan7gig wow nice and @coracam nice

dylan7gig i spelt the name wrong sorry hopefully you know who im talking about the one that posted the pics from the house built in 1935

Bloom'n Gardens Landscape What a great topic! Living in a 100+ year old house, I have a LOT to choose from. Actually, I find that the lack of closets makes the rooms easier to reorganize and repurpose.
www.bloomngardens.com

prettyhappynut Our wood burning stove. The first thing I said when I saw it for the first time when we were considering buying the house was "God awful ugly...it's gotta go!!" Well ten years later and so many great memories later not only did we not get rid of it but we saved it during a recent renovation and had it installed in our new family room. Talk about growing on you....

ikwewe When I first walked into this house, it was so dark! All the walls are paneled in real cherry paneling. I thought it was going to have to go. We took out part of one wall to open up the living room to the dining area and kitchen and their big window, and left the rest of the paneling and now I love it.

riconsd ikwewe: your my hero of the day not painting wood work and the barrel game table suite. I always envied the people that won those on "Let's Make a Deal".

ikwewe Oh, that barrel set! That was another quirk of this house, it actually came with the house. While I loved these when they were new, I never had the money to buy one. This time, I wanted a particular dining set, and these were already there, no other place for them to go. So they stayed, and we adapted. The chairs are comfortable but insanely heavy, and the table is big enough to fit at least six people. There are four matching counter height backless stools, too,

spenserh Sadly, none of the quirks have grown on me. I live in a 30+year old home made log cabin. Nothing even close to square or plumb. When I redid the bathroom, I shimmed with a 2x4. The spiral staircase is made out of cedar. Beautiful wood, but not a single tread or riser is the same height, width, or depth. I did love the brick floor in the kitchen right from the start and still do, despite losing the occasional jar of pickles or salsa. but I love it a little less when I realized they put the brick on top of the previous floor and now can't get the sliding door out to repair the rollers. *sigh*. It's on a lovely piece of land, though and I can thoroughly indulge in all the gardening I want.

texshop I've bought an older Bungalow home, with beautiful wood floors. It was built in 1920 with the original radiators and boiler. I will install HVAC because I live in the south and need the AC. Although they take up wall space, I love the nostalgic look of the radiators. Glad to know others feel the same.

erplaut When changing a three season room into a year-round space, the walls had many irregular surfaces and edges and there was a post that would have been difficult to remove. We decided to emphasize them with white pine and give the room a very Japanese flair. It is now many people's favorite room in our home.

Sharon Our current house was built in 1984 and well built for that time. The Pella insulated windows were original and have lasted beautifully considering they are now 19 yrs old! But my most favorite thing are the brick floors in the kitchen, laundry room and pantry hallway and alcove office. I love my brick floors! They are indesctructible. Just roll some glossy sealer on it every couple of years (to make it easy to mop) and they are good to go! Another thing I love are the walkup stairs to the attic. They did make a mistake in not putting a turn in them because they go up straight into an eve which means hunching over when you get to the top but they are so much better than pull down ladders!

Felicity Davis We have a lot of great old wood in our farmhouse, but the previous owner (a real estate/developer's office) had painted the ENTIRE living room Band-Aid brown! My husband solved the issue by painting an abstract mural!

Lm Chipman Friends & neighbors affectionately refer to our Medieval German row house as a "Hexenhaus" (witch's house) because of its utter lack of any right angles; terrifyingly narrow, steep & oddly-placed staircases; and assortment of kooky nooks & crannies into which we must try to cram our more modern furnishings & lives. The first time we tried to hang something from the ceiling, we were dismayed to find that it was stuffed with straw & impossible to use for mounting anything. However, as we've progressed through various stages of renovation, we've discovered that the original wattle-&-daub construction (see photo) is the sturdiest & most adaptive aspect of the building. It has held up over centuries in the wildly unpredictable extremes of the local climate, and our architects rave about how solid the original structure is, compared with the parts that have previously been "modernized" with newer materials. So with renewed respect for traditional homebuilding techniques, we've accepted the pointlessness of trying to mount anything on the ceiling in some rooms & certain walls in others (including lighting fixtures). We're embracing our Hexenhaus' many quirks & finding surprising ways to pay homage to its heritage, like using hazelwood "wattles" in place of more modern trellises in our garden/courtyard.

agiesbrecht My college dorm had steam heat. The room I had my third year, I put my bed right next to it, and on frigid nights it was perfect.

triciak Maybe 50 years from now we'll be sentimental about those charming popcorn ceilings!

seandebra1 I captured these images on my iphone last summer which is of our back garden which has become the focal point of our ongoing renovation of the 3 year residency in our 1930s semi in the North East of England..summers are unpredictable but my wife toils endlessly to bring out the best of what the UK has to offer.

Terri Thompson Turn of the Century brick water cistern. 8ft deep and 10 ft wide at the bottom.

andie morgan When my husband and I found the perfect villa to rent, we forgot to measure the dimensions of the second bedroom. In our minds, we had all kinds of plans for the use of this bedroom, but in reality we just couldn't seem to fit all the furniture we needed in this 9' by 11' space. Every week, I pushed the full size bed around trying to squeeze at least a nightstand and an easy chair in also. I started to hate the whole villa, until I moved the bed down from the window wall to parallel to the closet wall just 3 feet away. Suddenly, the whole room opened up and we were able to fit a desk, and an armoire to store and play electronic games. This room has become our favorite now even though it is the smallest of all!

Cora Cervantes Thank you @dyland7gig :-) we still working on our house.

loroca I live in an old war time house that was poorly built back then. It's about 800 sq ft. There's no effective insulation. The basement has monstrous spiders that i've never seen before......but I love it! The size is perfect. It looks so cute from the outside. The incredibly squeeky stairs and floors are something i barely even notice anymore. We currently rent, but i love this house so much that if i had the chance to build my own, it would be very similar to this house.

halleycomet So sorry @triciak--no we will NEVER EVER be sentimental about those popcorn or textured ceilings.
EVER.

I lived in a 1950's house with a later over the garage addition with the "true" popcorn ceilings--like being in a cave. I expected bats to nest in there. HATED IT.

Fast fwd to my OWN house a few years later--the one we bought to "flip" and are --cough cough---still living in? The one with the TEXTURED CEILINGS? The ones that have some --odd--stuff--painted on them around the EDGES that makes the color--not the same as the center? We have NO idea what this is and NO; BIN and other such sealers do NOT fix this. Painting didn't fix it either. Every bloody speck of dust and cobweb and soot--we used to heat with wood!--and dog hair--yes! dog hair ON THE CEILING!--and the pasta sauce splatters--no I have NO idea how most of it got up there--except for the plate that Husband DROPPED in the Living Room with tomato sauce that splattered straight UP and that he then--bless his heart!--tried to WIPE OFF. BIN did help that. Sorta.

To "clean" them you have to VACUUM them. Um---This is awkward in the extreme; most vac's don't really work that well with the hose reaching up for extended periods not to mention human arms and shoulders; the sharp points tend to grab the brush bristles and rip them out making for MORE crap on the ceiling--a broom does the same; no fluffy duster can get anything off of these spikes---corners are the WORST. AS you go around the crown moldings--really; who put CROWN MOLDING on a house with sprayed on ceilings!!!!--with the fluffy cob web duster it grabs the dust n cobwebs off of the molding and walls and--deposits it on the CEILING.

We have painted the kitchen ceiling at LEAST 3 times and sealed it and then painted it--we SHOULD have just screwed bead board or something OVER it and been DONE. Thinking of this soon.

No--no one will EVER love these.

Ever.

One thing I thought I would hate was the TWO doors into the bathroom--one directly off the back door entry and one to the hallway---turned out that this was great for kids coming in and needing the bathroom and drinks etc. Also for adults after working on cars and garden etc. Still makes for awkward bathroom space but now on third generation of "Use the back door!" bathroom users. And ushering in dogs and kids that suddenly need to be de-skunked or de-greased or de-mudd-ified.

agsus22 My house was built in the 40's. It has no real hallways, so the living room flows to our bedroom, which flows into the pool room, which then flows into the guest bedroom, and then into the bathroom and/or kitchen, dining, and laundy room. I can walk laps in my house. Sometimes I do wish I had hallways, but then I think of all that wasted space. There are also no real closets, so my husband and I use a small room off the kitchen for a closet. It's difficult not having a closet in the master bedroom, but houses back then just didn't have closets. My house was also built as a box house, meaning the walls were originally not studded. My husband and I are working on getting the walls studded, and adding insulation, as we remodel. The kitchen is proving a difficult room to rethink. It's the oddest shape, with many doorways, so hard to work around. We also have five doors to enter/exit the house, but are thinking of removing at least the one that enters/exits the master bedroom because we don't use it. We have this beautiful knotty pine paneling on two walls in the living room, and everywhere in the kitchen. When we remodeled the living room, we found an old block chimney in the wall that had been covered over by paneling. We busted it out(a huge job) and recessed our 55-gallon fish tank in the space. It turned out pretty cool! These are things that bothered me at first, and I'm sure there are many more. But as with most in an older home, they grow on you, and it becomes a labor of love to preserve as much of the history as you can while still trying to make it more modern/traditional for today's times!

dianecshirley Turning old gas heater grilles into speakers...........brilliant! Music in the kitchen, yeah!

decoratorlb I have an 1890 Victorian Farmhouse. I would have to say the low door knobs on all the doors in the home. Back in the 1890's people were short in stature. At first it was very strange to reach down to use a door, but now it reminds me of a past history in the house and all the people who lived here before us. I have come to love my low door knobs!

Rocío I love my living room, has a strange combination but I love it.

Grindl Woodworking A steam heating system that make noise is telling you it is not happy. I have a steam heating system in my house and it purrs like a kitten. There some pros out there that know the lost art of steam heating. You can find them and tons of useful information here:
http://www.heatinghelp.com/
http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-category/93/Strictly-Steam

oldblackdog I, too, love my steam radiators! They don't clunk but they do hiss quietly and when they heat up, the iron stays warm a long time. Like hot water bottles for the room.