50 Beautiful Old Houses That Show How Craftsmanship Has Stood The Test Of Time (New Pics)

Not-technically-century-home my parents built in 2003. Everything in it is antique or salvaged; my mom drew the original plans and my dad made all the stained glass. They designed it to be Art Nouveau/Arts and Crafts/Queen Anne style of ~1900. My family spent years finding everything, including reclaimed wood for the floors and three-story foyer.

We’ve been avoiding this due to the fear of what was underneath. The rest of the rooms are all original hardwood (1920s), so assumed some catastrophic issue for them to cover the main hall.
But honestly, why did they even cover them up?? Minus a bit of water damage evidence (outside bathroom, and not unexpected given a 100+ year old house), they are in amazing condition given their age.
The carpets were also fairly clean (underpad looked almost brand new) - leading me to believe this carpet isn’t that old.
Thankfully carpet was professionally installed and easy to remove (no glue!!!) and now we are left wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.

And by devil, I mean the force that possessed us to buy an unkempt, historically registered house and temporarily blinded us to the massive amount of work it would require

Hello from Michigan! I got a tour of a home today and I could not believe the floors. Nearly every inch of the first floor was mosaic tile. I still can’t wrap my head around it. Enjoy!

The archway between our living & dining room has a mini closet on each side, with doors that match the front door & the other interior doors on the first floor. They are the perfect storage for board games and craft supplies!

When we first looked at the house I thought we would demo this bathroom. Many realtor friends said I was nuts, keep the retro tile. I had a remodeler come in and told them I wanted to retain the tile and do the shower enclosure, vanity, lights, etc and they told me they wouldn’t do it and leave the tile, so I did it myself! Now I’m so happy we kept the tile and just “leaned into” the vibe, whatever that vibe might be!

I was stunned at the gorgeous details hiding under all that paint (I counted at least 5 layers!) Debating whether to commit myself to stripping the rest of the original door plates from our 1920s rental once the weather perks up - my house still smells like citristrip

First off, we moved into this beautiful estate sale 1930s Tudor house back in September of 2024 and are finally settling in months later. This is our first home after breaking free of renters hell. Thought I’d share the start of our journey with everyone! Our goal is to preserve this beautiful house for ages and restore what we can.
We spent days removing old wallpaper in 4 rooms that looked cursed and found layers upon layers of it. The gates of hell were opened that day.
We also professionally replaced all the knob and tube wiring during our first weeks of moving in and upgraded all the 2 prongs to grounded. The previous owners were tremendous and professionally removed the asbestos insulation in the basement weeks prior to closing in our agreement. Every week we find something that needs to be done and projects are growing.

The owner thinks the house may have been a grocery at one point. They're working to keep it exposed and preserve it now.
It seems like a blessing and a curse. Imagine you wanted to paint your house a certain color but now you feel obligated to keep it 'Gold Medal Green' forever!

There are several doors with this same trim. (The big ol' piece of furniture on the left in the first picture is a 19th century organ my wife's parents impulsively bought in the 1960s).

Ripped up an absolutely horrific yellow shag carpet, and some sort of gray commercial office space carpet, then a layer of disgusting foam padding and this was hidden under it all. It’s like finding buried treasure!!
It’s been decided this will become my reading and crafting room in about 2 years. We’ve carpeted over it again just to keep it protected in the meantime.

Working from home during the blizzard. This place makes my 1890s row house feel new! My dad did all the renovations himself.

Our house was built in 1909 and had been stripped of almost all character. We made it our mission to bring it back. We replaced all of the plumbing and electrical, replaced an oil furnace with a heat pump, stripped carpets, refinished fir floors, remodeled the kitchen and bathroom, added a bathroom upstairs, moved some walls, and did most of it ourselves. I know this is controversial, but we did replace the wood windows with vinyl windows. I'm normally a huge advocate for saving historic windows, but our windows were extremely deteriorated and weren't particularly special to begin with. I spent the spring rebuilding the front porch and then we chose to hire out exterior painting. We got a great deal and it was SO worth it. It feels so good to smile when we pull up to the house

Built in 1903 on the eastern shore of Maryland. There's a lot of work to be done. Gonna try honor the history of the home as much as possible inside and outside.

The house was built in stages. Some parts of the original house are over 500 years old with parts added over the centuries. The barn conversion was originally built around 200 years ago and was converted by my parents in the 90’s from a hay barn to a living space.
The house was plaster boarded over in the 70’s before it was grade 2 listed, and my parents had to have a fight with the listings officials to get them to agree to allow them to restore it back to its original condition. Most of the plaster is original horse hair backed, and all the oak that could be salvaged had to go back to its original position. They were allowed to replace rotten wood.

Just purchased this run-down and abandoned small farm in Norway. Built circa 1927-1930, based on when the property got sectioned off from a larger farm. Nobody has loved here since the 1980's, there was a 1987 calendar on the wall.
After the original owners died without direct heirs, there were a series of changes in ownership until the previous owners literally abandoned the place and left the country without paying down the mortgage. So I got it on a foreclosure sale for relatively cheap, but boy does it need work before I can actually live in it.
On the bright side, the cellar is nice and dry without any moldy smell. And the structural timber is mostly in very good shape, it's all easy to inspect from the inside since they never panelled over it. Construction is in the traditional Norwegian manner from that period, solid timber walls are hiding under that rotten weather siding. It's like a log cabin, except the stacked, interlocking jointed timbers are milled planks 3 inches thick rather than round logs. And all of that structural wood is visible inside, most of it isn't even painted and still looks quite nice.
There's something structurally wrong up in the attic, causing the roofline to sag a bit in the middle, but it's been wrong like that since the house was built and hasn't collapsed yet so I don't think it's an immediate concern. They simply never finished out the upstairs into livable space, since they were childless and didn't need the extra room. Therefore they failed to tied the sides together properly across what was meant to be door frames, thus leaving the rafters as A-frames with the bottom rung missing. Two walls running across the house were supposed to form that bottom rung of the A to take up tension, but were never completed. I first thought someone had torn down bits in a misguided renovation attempt, but there's no nail holes or any trace of those walls ever having been fully built.

Removing the old vinyl plank to re-tile my kitchen, and I think this is what you call winning the floor lottery, right? Even better, I can return the tiles I just bought!

I want to restore but its so much work.... Glass is mostly broken or missing. Outside is covered over with steel siding. Half of me wants to cover it back up and pretend I saw nothing. House was built in 1880

We had a lot of storms this year (including softball-sized hail and a lightning strike to our house) so we’ve been spending way more time in the basement than we expected. It also became our dog’s safe space whenever he’s anxious, which is a lot these days.
We decided if we were going to spend so much time down there, we should make part of it less depressing. This last week we framed out one area and leaned into a cozy 70s lounge vibe to make use of some random MCM pieces we had in storage and leftover materials from my partner’s contracting jobs. Our home is mostly craftsman style, so the basement is our excuse to use the vintage odds and ends we’ve been hanging onto.
Also, I know it’s not recommended to ‘finish’ a century home basement, and we kept this in mind (no drywall, left gaps for airflow, dehumidifier running). Thankfully, our basement has very high ceilings and stayed dry too.

We purchased our first home in August, the original portion of a home was constructed in the 1830s with the front extension put on in 1856, lots of character and we don't intend to change anything if we can help it.