A reckoning with knob-and-tube wiring, a slate roof that turned out to be asphalt, and the ledger that kept us sane.
We bought the house because of the porch. That is the honest answer. The front porch was deep and wide and faced west, and we sat on it during the showing while the late afternoon light came through the oak tree, and we made an offer the next morning.
The inspection report was fifty-three pages. We read it carefully and understood most of it. The inspector said the house was in good condition for its age, which is a sentence that contains approximately everything you need to know about buying a 1922 bungalow and nothing useful about what you are actually about to experience.
What we found in year one
The wiring was the first surprise. The house had been partially updated — there was modern electrical in the kitchen and one bathroom — but the rest of the circuits were original knob-and-tube. Not dangerous if intact and uninsulated, the electricians all told us. Not insurable, either, our homeowner's insurance company told us. We had it replaced that fall for $14,200.
The roof was the second surprise. The listing described it as a slate roof. It was, upon closer inspection, an asphalt roof with a dark gray granule pattern that photographs like slate. The actual slate that had once been there was replaced in the 1970s with 3-tab shingles that were now fifty-some years old and well past their useful life. We replaced it in spring of year two for $18,400.
The ledger
After the electrical, I started keeping a proper record. Not because I had any particular reason to think there would be more surprises — I was optimistic by nature — but because I found the shoebox method genuinely intolerable. I had one folder for 2023 and one folder for 2024 and they were both just piles of PDFs with names like 'Invoice_Final_REVISED.pdf' and 'receipt001.jpg'.
I started using TrackMyHomeCosts after a friend mentioned it. The setup took an afternoon. I backdated everything I could find going back to closing: the inspection, the legal fees, the moving costs that were also capital costs, and all the work in year one.
The first thing I noticed was the number. In eighteen months we had spent $41,700 on the house beyond the mortgage. I had known it was a lot. I had not known the exact number. Seeing it was clarifying in an uncomfortable way and then, once I had absorbed it, very useful.
Year two: the roof and the kitchen
After the roof, we tackled the kitchen. The original layout made no sense for modern cooking — the refrigerator was in a corner that required you to open it into a doorway — and the 1970s cabinets were warped and smelled faintly of old cooking oil in a way that no amount of cleaning resolved. We spent $28,000 and got a functional, honest kitchen that doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.
I logged every receipt as we went: the contractor deposits, the appliances, the tile, the extra plumbing run we hadn't planned on. The kitchen alone had 23 line items. Without the software I would have remembered it as 'around thirty thousand' and lost the detail.
Year three: smaller problems, bigger patterns
Year three has been quieter. We replaced the water heater (it was 18 years old and starting to make sounds), repointed about four feet of deteriorating chimney mortar, and had the old cast-iron drain lines scoped — they were fine, which was an enormous relief.
What I have now, three years in, is a picture of the house over time. I can see what we've spent by year, by category, by contractor. I can see that we've put $97,000 into the house beyond the purchase price — which still surprises me when I look at the number directly — and I know exactly what most of that built, and why.
What old houses actually are
A 1922 house was built by people who did not expect it to still be standing in 2026. It has survived a century of weather, multiple owners, multiple renovations of varying quality, and fashions in architecture that came and went. Parts of it are overbuilt in ways modern construction is not. Parts of it are deteriorated in ways that modern materials simply don't permit.
The ledger doesn't make the surprises not happen. It doesn't make the wiring cheaper or the slate less fake. What it does is turn a pile of expensive surprises into a coherent record of a house you're choosing to take care of. That, I've found, is worth something.
We still sit on the porch most evenings. The light through the oak tree is still good.
