What It's Actually Like Living in a 100-Year-Old Home

I lived in a 1903 Victorian in downtown Colorado Springs for four years.

People ask me all the time whether it was worth it. Here's an honest answer — the good, the real, and the one thing that surprised me most.

The Good Stuff (That Nobody Mentions)

The Light

The glass in windows from that era is subtly different — slightly thicker in places, with gentle imperfections that catch and bend the light differently depending on the time of day and the angle of the sun. By 4pm in winter, the light coming through the west-facing windows in the front parlor was the kind of warm gold that photographers rent expensive light panels to imitate. There's a quality to it that photographs badly and registers physically when you're standing in it. You can't replicate it. It's built into the glass, and the glass is 120 years old.

I didn't expect this to be the thing I noticed most. It was.

The Ceilings

Mine were 9'6". Even in a room that was only 12 by 14 feet, the ceiling height made it feel like you had room to breathe — like the walls weren't pressing in. I've been in brand-new 2,400 square foot houses that feel smaller than my 1,500 square foot Victorian because modern 8-foot ceilings press down on you in a way you only notice once you've lived without it. Height changes how a room feels. It's not decorative; it's spatial.

The Floors

Old-growth Douglas fir, cut from trees that were 200 to 400 years old when they came down. That wood is dense and tight-grained in a way that modern Douglas fir simply isn't — old-growth trees grew slowly, over centuries, and the grain is compressed in a way you can see and feel. After 120 years of foot traffic, those floors were still solid. No movement. Not a squeak in the main hallway.

In year two, I refinished them myself — took them down to bare wood. What came up was richer and tighter-grained than anything available at a lumber yard today. The color, once stripped to raw wood, was almost amber. It's not a finish you can buy. It's what happens to old-growth fir over a century of use.

The Plaster Walls

I didn't expect to love the walls. I did. Plaster is roughly 1.5 inches thick — versus drywall's half inch. It's heavier, holds temperature better, and genuinely dampens sound in a way that painted drywall cannot replicate. My neighbor could be throwing a party next door and I'd hear a murmur at most — not voices, not music, just a low ambient presence that told me something was happening. The texture of original plaster has a depth that comes from being hand-applied in multiple coats. Painted drywall looks flat by comparison because it is flat. These aren't small differences. Once you notice them, it's hard to un-notice.

The Real Stuff

Winter Heating

Victorian-era homes were designed around a coal furnace and the insulating properties of thick walls and dense plaster — not forced air heating. Mine had been updated to a forced air system, which helped considerably, but the original single-pane windows — which I chose to keep, because the glass was original and irreplaceable — let in drafts that modern double-panes wouldn't. In year one, I added weatherstripping to every door and window in the house over the course of two weekends. It made a meaningful difference. Heating bills in January were real — not absurd, not unmanageable, but higher than I'd have paid in a newer house. I knew that going in and it was the right tradeoff for me.

The Pipe Situation

In year three, I woke up to a small puddle in the basement. A cast-iron supply line that had been dormant for decades developed a slow weep at a joint — nothing catastrophic, no water damage to speak of, just a reminder that old infrastructure needs watching. A plumber handled it in an afternoon for a few hundred dollars. I'd budget for moments like this — not because they're disasters, but because they're the nature of a 120-year-old house. Old systems occasionally need attention. That's not a flaw in the house; it's an accurate description of what you're taking on. Budget accordingly and don't be surprised when it happens.

No Central Air

The house had window units when I moved in. I replaced them with better ones in year one. It worked fine — Colorado Springs summers are genuinely mild enough that air conditioning isn't the constant necessity it is in Phoenix or Denver in August. There were maybe three weeks each summer where I ran the window units consistently, and a few more weeks where I ran them at night. If you're coming from a house with central air, it's an adjustment. If you've lived in older homes before, it's not a big deal.

The Thing That Surprised Me Most

The neighbors.

Old neighborhoods — the ones that have been there for a century — have residents who've lived there for 20, 30, 40 years. They know each other's names. They wave. They leave tomatoes on your porch from their garden without knocking. Within two weeks of moving in, I knew 12 of my neighbors by name. Within a month, I knew their dogs' names and their kids' names and had a standing invitation to stop by two houses on the block. That's not typical in newer subdivisions, where neighbors can live 15 feet apart for years without exchanging more than a nod.

The neighborhood had a social fabric I didn't anticipate and genuinely valued — more, I think, than almost anything else about the house. The house was the reason I moved there. The neighborhood was why I stayed as long as I did.

Would I Do It Again?

Without hesitation.

The character of a 100-year-old home is permanent. It was built by hand, with materials that aren't available anymore, by people who expected it to stand for generations — and it has. The glass is original. The floors are original. The plaster is original. The bones are the bones of a house that has outlasted every trend, every era of taste, every change in what "nice" is supposed to look like. That doesn't go away.

The drafts and the pipe situation and the window units are small prices for floors that generations have walked on and ceilings that make every room feel like a room worth being in. I knew what I was signing up for, and I'd sign up for it again.

If you're on the fence about whether a historic home is right for you — reach out. I'm happy to talk through what it's actually like, and whether it fits what you're looking for. That's a conversation worth having before you start searching, not after you've already fallen for a house.