@Laura2592 The house I owned in Canada, where I lived for 25 years and raised my daughters, was almost 100 years old. Actually, about 50 years previous, it had been 2 separate houses, and one was moved from elsewhere and attached to the existing house. I bought the place for a steal because it needed such extensive work- it was basically sitting in the dirt on rotted wood foundations- if you put a marble in the center of the floor, it instantly rolled into a corner. The plumbing and electrical were ancient and the heat consisted of one old oil-burning stove and some also ancient propane baseboard heaters. Everything still had 40's paint job- industrial green, putrid peach or sicky beige lead-based paint. The stairs had disgusting old lino runner tacked to it, some embossed pattern, no less, so about 80 years of grime had collected there. Tiny, grotty galley kitchen, no insulation other than old decomposing newspaper.
Luckily, there were a number of govt, grants available at the time- One was called the residential rehabilitation grant and paid for things like having the place jacked up (at one point in that process the original 2 houses started to separate!) and a proper foundation built, putting in new plumbing and wiring. Ther was another insulation grant that enabled me to put real insulation in the walls.
The rest was renoed little by little over the time I lived there. There were some nice surprises- after removing that lino runner on the stairs, and sanding the old paint off, the stairs turned out to made of beautiful yellow cedar. That they were worn down in the center just added to the beauty, for me- it was evidence of several generations of families having lived in the house.
The hardwood floors also sanded down well. The back wall was pushed out so the kitchen could be enlarged, and the wall between the kitchen and living room removed, to create a more open concept. All the 3 bedrooms upstairs and the one downstairs basically remained the same, aside from drywalling over the old shiplap that had sevaral layers of old wallpaper on it, and building in loft beds for the kids, as the bedrooms, apart from mine, were all rather small.
In doing all the renos, we stayed as much as possible to the original design and materials of the house- it never ended up looking "modern", but simply more clean and functional and many of th old stuff that looked terrible when I bought the house, lookd great after a spruce-up. I even re-installed the built-in ironing board cupboard (remember those?) after the walls got dry-walled. And I left 2 of the walls in my bedroom the original shiplap.
What was curious is that after owning the house for several years, a newer friend of mine, after coming to the house for the first time, told me that her aunt used to live there- had lived there for 40 years (I had bought it from a person who had owned it for a few years after her aunt) and my friend had played at the house with her cousins when she was a child. So when one of my daughter's classes was given an assignment to pick something in local history to do a report on, my daughter chose to research our house. There were some photos of it in the local museum (when the original builders and owners, well-known city family, lived there) and my daughter interviewed my friend's aunt, who had lots of stories and info. I had her over for tea one day- she was about 70 years old and she had tears in her eyes when she saw the house- she was so happy to see what I had done with it, while leaving so much of th original features- she kept looking around and said "My husband built that cupboard", "Oh, my husband and boys laid that floor in the living room". And there were tons of trees and plants in the garden that she had planted herself, 40 years previous.
This obsession these days with "modern" is kind of sad to me- things with no history whatsover. I see this attitude with my oldest daughter, who keeps up with the house decor trends and likes modern stuff (although she also likes it to be comfortable and practical). She isn't at all interested in any of the family heirloom stuff- to her, it's just old, and nothing for her has sentimental value.
