Renovating a 100 Year Old House: A Lancaster County Field Guide

What a 100 year old house is hiding

Open up a wall in a 1920 house and you find layers of history, some of it excellent and some of it expired. Knowing which is which before you swing a hammer is most of the game.

Walls: plaster over wood lath, usually 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Heavier, quieter, and harder than drywall, and repairable more often than people think. Framing: true-dimension lumber, often old growth. Plumbing: anywhere from one to four generations layered together, galvanized steel, copper, maybe some PVC from the 80s and PEX from the last remodel. Wiring: possibly knob and tube from the original build, cloth-jacketed cable from mid-century, and modern wire where someone updated a circuit. Insulation: frequently none at all, or a sad drift of something in the attic.

Then there is heat. Many county homes still run on steam or hot water radiators fed by a decades-old boiler, and honestly, cast iron radiators are worth keeping: they heat evenly, they last nearly forever, and reproduction versions cost a fortune. What usually needs attention is everything around them: abandoned chimneys that need capping, floor registers left over from a coal furnace that vanished long ago, and the total absence of ductwork if you want central air, which is its own planning conversation, not an afterthought.

None of this is a reason to panic. All of it is a reason to plan. The houses that go badly are the ones renovated one surprise at a time. We have dated walls by the newspapers stuffed in them as insulation, and the framing behind those old papers was always fine.

The framing is better than anything you can buy

Here is the part that surprises people: the structure of a century house is usually its best feature. That framing is old growth lumber, cut from trees that grew slowly for a hundred years or more before harvest. The growth rings are tight, the wood is denser and more dimensionally stable than modern fast-growth lumber, and a 2x4 from 1915 is an actual 2 inches by 4 inches. When we open these walls, the framing is almost always straight, dry, and ready for another century.

So we keep it. We sister new lumber to it where loads change, we do not rip it out to replace it with lighter modern stock. Where homeowners want walls removed for open living space, the job is engineering, not demolition: a proper beam, temporary shoring, and footing checks below. You can see the full sequence in our load bearing wall removal in Lancaster. Around here that work gets quoted at $9,000 to $16,000. Our jobs typically land at $8,000 to $15,000, because one crew handles shoring, framing, drywall, and patch-in without three subcontractors trading site visits.

One caution: many pre-1930 houses are balloon framed, with studs running two full stories and open cavities from basement to attic. That changes how fire blocking, insulation, and wire runs get handled, and your contractor should be able to explain the difference without looking it up.

Plaster, plumbing, and wiring: triage by generation

The default advice online is to gut everything to the studs. We disagree, and not out of sentiment. Sound plaster is a better wall than new 1/2 inch drywall: more mass, better sound isolation, and already there. The honest move is wall by wall triage. Solid walls get repairs and a skim coat at $1.50 to $3.00 per square foot. Failed walls get an overlay or replacement. Our plaster restoration in Lititz shows what saved plaster looks like next to replaced sections, and nobody can tell where one ends and the other begins.

Gut a wall for a reason: failing plaster, or because you need the cavity for wiring, plumbing, or insulation. Never gut it just because a video made demolition look satisfying. Demolition is the only part of remodeling that always goes according to plan, which should tell you something about how much thought it requires.

Plumbing triage is simple once you can name what you are looking at. Galvanized steel supply lines are always on the replace list: they corrode shut from the inside, and that weak shower pressure is rust, not your imagination. Copper is usually fine. Cast iron drains are case by case: a camera inspection tells you whether they have 30 years left or 3. When we open walls and floors for a kitchen or bath, replacing the wet wall plumbing while everything is exposed is the cheapest that work will ever be.

Wiring runs on the same logic. Original knob and tube, where still live, has no ground and cannot be buried in insulation, so it fails modern needs even when it technically works. Mid-century cloth-jacketed cable is brittle at every box. The rule we push clients toward: whenever a renovation opens a wall, that wall leaves the project with modern wiring in it, installed by the licensed electricians we coordinate. Rewiring an open wall costs a fraction of fishing wire through a closed one.

The order of operations that saves you money

Century house renovations fail on sequence more than on skill. The money rule: nothing gets covered until everything inside it is done. The sequence we run:

• 1. Plan and permits. Scope the whole project even if you phase it. Your municipality handles permits; most structural, plumbing, and electrical work needs one. Budget 2 to 6 weeks for approvals.
• 2. Structure and envelope. Foundation, framing repairs, roof, and windows. No point putting nice finishes under a leak.
• 3. Rough mechanicals. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC while walls are open. The single cheapest window for this work in the life of the house.
• 4. Insulation and air sealing. Exterior walls and attic while cavities are exposed.
• 5. Walls and ceilings. Plaster repair, overlay, or new drywall, wall by wall.
• 6. Floors, trim, doors, paint. Finishes last, protected until move-in.

What to preserve and what to replace

Preserve: the framing, sound plaster, original doors and hardware, staircases, and every stick of trim you can. That oak and heart pine casing would cost a fortune to reproduce, and refinished original doors outclass anything at the home center. Hardwood floors under carpet are a gift: refinishing runs a fraction of replacement and the old boards are thicker and tighter than new product.

Replace: galvanized plumbing, live knob and tube, failed plaster, and usually the kitchen and bathroom layouts, which were designed for a house without a dishwasher and a family without a schedule. Windows are the judgment call. Original wood windows with storm panels can perform respectably and carry the facade; rotted or painted-shut sashes with no storms are candidates for quality replacements. We price both paths and let the window itself make the argument.

This whole triage, keep the irreplaceable, replace the expired, is the core of our interior remodeling work in old homes.

Permits, lead paint, and the paperwork nobody warns you about

Two regulatory realities come standard with a century house. First, permits: structural changes, new circuits, and moved plumbing all need them, and Lancaster County municipalities enforce through third-party inspection agencies. A contractor who suggests skipping permits is volunteering you for problems at resale. Second, lead: any home built before 1978 falls under the federal RRP rule, which requires contractors disturbing painted surfaces to be certified and to use lead safe practices, containment, HEPA cleanup, no open flame stripping. The EPA program page explains it in plain terms, and asking a bidder for their EPA firm certification is a fast honesty test.

For building science questions specific to Pennsylvania housing, the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center at Penn State publishes solid, non-commercial guidance we point clients to regularly.

Real budgets and the 15 percent rule

Numbers for Lancaster County in 2026, market rate first, then where our jobs typically land with one in-house crew instead of a parade of subs:

• Full room renovation (plaster, floors, trim, lighting): market $9,000 to $17,000; ours typically $8,000 to $16,000.
• Hall bathroom, full remodel: market $13,000 to $24,000; ours typically $12,000 to $22,000.
• Kitchen, pull and replace: market $27,000 to $48,000; ours typically $25,000 to $45,000.
• Load bearing wall removal: market $9,000 to $16,000; ours typically $8,000 to $15,000.
• Contingency: hold 15 percent of the total budget for what the walls are hiding. In a century house this is not pessimism, it is arithmetic. If nothing surprises us, you keep it.

Living through it, and when not to renovate at all

Most of our century house clients live in the home during the work, which is completely doable with the right phasing and miserable without it. The rules that make it work: one zone under construction at a time, always one fully functioning bathroom, and the kitchen goes last or gets a temporary substitute planned in advance, a laundry room with a microwave and a utility sink has saved more renovations than any tool we own. Dust protection is not optional in a plaster house; we run zipper walls and negative air, and it still asks patience of everyone involved.

Phasing also spreads the budget. A whole-house plan executed over three years, systems first, then baths, then kitchen, then cosmetics, costs a little more in total mobilization than one heroic gut renovation, but it keeps you housed, lets each phase inform the next, and turns an impossible single number into three possible ones. Do not gut the whole house at once while living in it unless your marriage has been stress tested previously. The house has stood for a century. It can wait for the right sequence, and so can the third bathroom.

And the honesty section. If the house needs a foundation, a roof, full rewiring, and full replumbing all at once, and buying it already stretched you, the numbers may simply not work, and the kindest thing a contractor can do is say so before demolition instead of after. We have talked people out of projects, and every one of them thanked us within a year.