At what point does a house reach the end of its life?

SandC · 31 August 2011 at 1:07PM

Hmm, I'd like to see the state of some of the 'starter homes' that popped up from the 90s onwards in over 100 years time.

Houses need to be maintained, simple as that. It's a crying shame looking at some of the houses around here earmarked for tearing down due to 'regeneration'. That means putting 4 properties where there were 2, get your money's worth developers.

Jeffrey_Shaw · 31 August 2011 at 1:29PM

sonastin wrote: »

Didn't John Prescott once conceive of a scheme where these sorts of areas were going to be forcibly demolished and replaced with something shiny and new and lovely. But the scheme foundered when the powers-that-be realised that some of the people "trapped" in these areas were actually living there quite happily and were quite peturbed at some whitehall politicians telling them they must have a new house because obviously no one would want to live in a hole like that.

Yes. In Liverpool. 'Pathfinder'. See http://uk.ask.com/web?qsrc=1&o=0&l=dir&q=Liverpool+Pathfinder+&dm=ctry re its failure.

desert_rose · 31 August 2011 at 1:41PM

Oh I don't know..I bought a three storey terrace in the mid-eighties that was built in the 1880's. It had a slate roof, red brick throughout and not a thin partition wall or dodgy floor tile anywhere.

The walls were really thick and after installing a damp proof course, it was as cosy as could be.

If a house is lived in and looked after, it can go on forever. What happens I think is that we get bored of the place or tired of the 'same old/same old', and want to move on - there's a bit of the nomad in most of us I think and its a gradual sense of dissatisfaction that builds up over time to motivate us to move to somewhere bigger/better/nicer/newer.

At the end of the day, a house is (or should be) a home. A personal sanctuary that reflects our place in the world back to us. Sometimes we don't like what we see in that reflection and so we want to move on.

There are others of course who couldn't bear the thought of moving away from a home that they've been in for 20, 30, 40, 50, odd years
and I quite envy them for finding their 'happy place'.
Think I'm still working on mine.

lincroft1710 · 31 August 2011 at 4:04PM

The type of house the OP is describing would have been built as cheaply as possible. Apart from Saltaire, Port Sunlight and Bournville most houses built to accommodate miners, mill and factory workers were built by uncaring bosses, so standards were poor. Many were cleared in the 1960s/70s and replaced by highrise flats.