Confessions of an old house addict

Rebecca Churchill is a self-professed “old house addict” with the pedigree and purchases to prove it: She got hooked during her first job at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has since fed her habit by buying three homes, each more than 120 years old.

Q: You and old homes go way back. How did it start? “In 1999, my husband and I bought an 1885 rowhouse in Jersey City for $225,000. Then we bought a 1903 Victorian in New Providence, NJ, for $400,000 with stunning stained glass windows and trim made from American chestnut (a tree wiped out by a blight after they imported Chinese chestnuts to keep up with demand for wood). My current house with my second husband in Warrenton, VA, is the oldest: a former church and Civil War hospital built in 1842, bought for $430,000. It’s so old that if you look under the house, you see hand-hewn tree trunks!”

Q: What are the highs of owning an old home? “It’s a joy to own a piece of history. I have opened up walls and found interesting time capsules like medicine bottles and tools. I know somebody who found a bag of money in their walls, although sadly that’s never happened to me! Culturally, we’re seeing a return to old because they’re better made; you can’t get that quality or uniqueness in newer cookie-cutter homes.”

Q: What are the lows? “Sometimes it’s a money pit. The cost of materials is shocking. Historic designation or districts will restrict what kind of renovations or materials are allowed. We strip a lot of paint, since previous homeowners went through phases where they painted everything, including a white marble fireplace! To save money, we do a lot of the work ourselves. We raised our children stepping over buckets of nails. It gets tiresome. But the finished product is almost always worth it.”

Q: Do you think old homes are good investments? “Absolutely. We eventually sold our Jersey City house for $1.395 million, and it’s now on Zillow for $1.7 million. Although what I see on Zillow now, I barely recognize, with that Pottery Barn trend of painting everything white. After all that time we spent stripping wood, it’s heartbreaking. But you can be a steward only to a point.”