Around 1974 or so developers started building very inexpensive but good make framed houses, single family and/or townhome. These single family units were great for lower middle income to middle income families. Siding, be it vinyl or aluminum, is an acceptibly aesthetic outdoor cladding for the upper mid Atlantic to Subtropical climate found in the lower East coast of the United States. It keeps the cold out and the heat in in that range. About the only difficulty some people had with them is that in some isolated areas House breakins could be effected by just chainsawing through an outer wall. They were sturdy, but vulnerable to shear cut.

The problem is the frames in these homes are constructed of wood, a harder pine generally, that does NOT endure as long as a newer siding or roof might suggest. In this design common maintanence WILL keep the rain out and off, but it will also conceal the inner decrepitude of an aged hard pine frame. These structures are NOT ripoffs, no, but you gotta know that at somewhere around 45 years or so if you want to keep the thing you have to reframe the frame from within with new wood of some sort and while this sounds terrifying, it is NOT. A simple studfinder will reveal the placement of ALL the frame and they can be SAFELY replaced, even and especially THE LOADBEARING studs, if you get in there while they are still structurally strong enough. NO, YOU DON’T RIP THEM OUT AND REPLACE THEM, dumb ass, you install new ones along side the old ones just like when replacing spark plugs, OK? The floor joists, ALWAYS much stronger and generally formed of laminated wood whose composition keeps A LOT longer, but at some distant point if you want to stay there they will have to be replaced too. If you want reassurance about this, think liability. There’s no way in hell some builder want’s ANY sort of catastrophic failure of a floor his company installed. Pair that with the REALITY that load distribution over an elevated floor is broadly distributed statistically in both space AND time and a sane individual will convince themselves that this part of the home is the MOST grossly overbuilt, so relax, have some nitrous oxide.

Now, for the thinkers, you are right. The tough part is replacing the square of each floor of the house, the top of the frame upon which the floor joists sit, which in my home are doubled. The ONLY way you can do this is to install a temporary scaffolding about six inches or so out from the frame to temporarily support the joists while you pull out the square, or the roof of the frame if you wish. This is done one side at a time and it is expensive, but, of course, you can reuse the scaffolding, and they do, if you are the contractor. I suspect that the square of the frame is made of a MUCH better grade of wood in any home of quality, but that it might be hard to discern, Pony up a little consulting dough and have a home inspector (very clandistinely) inspect it and give you an honest evaluation after he leaves the site and encrypts the evaluation in a non-publicly keyed e-mail that he sends to you under a priorly arranged coded topic. I mean it, has family jewels are at stake here.

So what are we to conclude? If you want, you CAN stay in that economically built frame home as long as you or your descendants wish. I love my home and have been in it for 30 years or so and have recently installed a tongue in groove hardwood floor that I got at an incredible price. I got it largely because I did some reading and was able to strike, not drive, strike a fantastic bargain because I could barter a bit with trade items the contractor could REALLY use. I was also lucky enough to contract the work when there was an oversupply of flooring and labor on the market largely due to covid. This was not evil, we all got a LOT out of the transaction, just don’t expect to make a wildly profitable deal like this on anything like a regular basis. Mapping the example back onto the generality, you can keep your home forever, just like you can keep your car forever, but people will think you’re a freak.