I remember sitting in my kitchen (or rather between the floor joists where my kitchen would later be) crying to myself about whether I would ever finish it. Six months of solid graft using every hour outside of work in my UK wide operations manager role and I felt like I was getting nowhere. A few weeks later, the floor was laid, wiring was finished, plastering was done and my kitchen was fitted. 98% of the graft lays the foundation for the finishing touches…
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I wonder if you’re in my neighborhood…greater Philly area.
In my place everthing is exposed…(plumbing and electrical) and I have no false walls or ceilings or built ins either - 2 level apartment all reinforced concrete walls nad floors - wifi nightmare - hence 4 access points all hard wired back hauled and 6 switches around the place with most endpoints all wired if possible.
I have very few ceiling mounted lights (study/workshop, kitchen and bathroom - the rest all up facing lamps or table floor lamps most on HomeKit control with bulbs or powerpoint controls. Siri do this or that…wife likes it 98% of the time. Oh and motion detection for lights in most areas too with time outs or siri command to off.
Use of HomeBridge on a RPi to integrate AC and Cameras for motion (unifi) plus ring a doorbell tone all the HomePods when motion at the front door.
I can do 99% of all contral from anywhere I have internet - like turning on AC before I get home, and forcing off when leaving the house if no body else is home - last one to leave.
tech is fun most of the time.
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Yes apologies, I should have said that in my case our 300 year old house is in the UK. And it is by no means the oldest hereabouts, some neighbours’ houses are close to 600 years old 
Actually it is a bit of a sore point to be honest. Many houses of this age in the UK are listed, which basically means protected due to being of unique or historical importance, especially with respect to their construction. It also means making any signifcant changes to the property are subjected to getting permission from the ‘heritage officer’ which is neigh-on impossible. It means energy efficiency is often terrible and you can do very little about it! Cold winters can be very expensive.
Nope, I’m in Florida (so 100 years is really old here as compared to Philly). But love Philly. Just had lunch with a couple of friends this week coming through town that live in Philly, center city in an old town/ row house.
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We lived in a conservation area and some guy came round and told me my back door didn’t comply with their rules. So I asked him to tell me what door to buy and I’d change it. He then showed me a picture from a book printed in 1925 and told me I had to have that. I never changed the door and sold the house soon afterwards.
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Wow thats mad! Never heard of anything quite like that. The previous owners of our house had a massive battle to change the front door. Which was crazy because it was a sh*tty wooden 1980s door that was rotten, but because it was fitted before the house was officially listed it was a massive deal to change; even though they fully intended to replace it with an in-keeping, but modern and secure door. We have the documentation as part of our conveyancing and its a mountain of nitpicking and pointless handwringing!
What’s AC?
So my moral dilemma is that I can play music from my lights using Alexa, which sources the music from Amazon HD, but I can also play music from the lights using Qobuz as they are Roon Ready, but I have to take my hands out of my pockets and find my phone or an iPad. Now if Roon were voice activated …
I wanted to make some large blinds voice activated. They are already motorised and have a remote. My wife told me to grow up. I missed out on the voice controlled shower system.
I can cook a chicken from the garden, but when the phone tells me the dishes are clean I’ve yet to find a way of getting them in the cupboard without getting off my arse.
I use some of the Shelly Alexa-enabled relays that cost about £15 each. They are extremely clever, retro-fit into light and plug sockets, the most useful one will allow me to switch my coffee machine on and off from bed, office, etc., when I get 10 minutes to install it. (Have to move the coffee machine out first and it’s heavy.)
The wife didn’t object to this bit of tech…
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Air conditioning?
And AC is required in Florida. It was mostly an empty place until AC became widely available.
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When we need AC we just take the day off. Once or twice a year.
The missing link.
Designed for winters in the UK when it’s difficult to get out of bed between November and March.
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Seems like your wife has her voice activated control working OK. 
Hmmm, what other pursuit does that remind me of?
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Our neighborhood (suburb north of Atlanta) was built in 1998 - 2000 and includes 40 houses. We have some pretty strict covenants, which I like. You can’t do anything to alter the exterior of your house without prior approval.
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Yes and that makes sense in a relatively new neightbourhood I think. Nobody wants No. 9 to suddenly be turned into ‘Shangrila’ with bright purple render and LED floodlights everywhere!
On the other hand, a 300+ year old house should be protected but also has to move with the times to some degree. Not being allowed to have double glazed windows, or to change the roof structure to accomodate more insulation is just daft, especially in the present times! It is not like these houses are identical to how they were when built in 1715 or whenever, they have always changed with the times. Adding plumbing, electric lighting, rooves and so on over the years. But now there seems to be an attempt to freeze them in time… in the end no one will want to own them at all, and then they will be lost.
I would be in favor of protecting houses that old for their historic value and not allowing any change to their exterior.
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I remember staying in the Old Bell Inn in Malmesbury, which opened its doors to punters in 1220. In those days the punters were monks visiting the abbey. They’ve made one or two changes to the place over the last 800 years. All I remember is that the menu had “spring onion soup”. As you can’t make anything decent out of spring onions, I assumed it was onion soup (which I like a lot) with “spring” added to reflect the time of year. Wrong. It was soup made from spring onions. Tasted like grass cuttings, except grass probably has more flavour. Maybe it was intended for the monks to test their devotion.
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We moved back to Tennessee from Florida in 2000. It took us three years to find a house. We eventually found a good lot and built.
We had made offers on two other houses in the same development, which was fairly new at the time. In the first one, someone had cut out some of the roof trusses to make room for more storage in the attic. When the inspector was showing us what he found, he said he didn’t think it was even safe for us to be there in the attic. The seller hadn’t disclosed it and refused to get an engineer to certify whether it was safe or to spec out repairs if it wasn’t.
The second house had some localized but fairly extensive termite damage in the kitchen and garage. The inspector showed us one spot where he could poke a screwdriver all the way through the floor. (We were pretty good friends with this inspector by then. He was amazing.) The seller had failed to disclose the damage (as required by state law), and would only offer a “termite letter” saying it had been treated and there were no signs of active termites.
These houses were only about five to ten years old, so problems aren’t unique to 100 year old houses.
We had looked at a house in another nice golf course development. That house also had termite damage, but at least the seller disclosed it. We made an offer on another house in that development, but the HOA wouldn’t let us install an attractive aluminum fence in the back yard for our dog. A couple of years later we noticed that the house had a big wooden privacy fence in the back yard. The golf course is now out of business, the greens and fairways are all grown over with weeds and brush, and there are lots of legal disputes with the developer and the city. So I guess we dodged a bullet there.
On a happier note, a few years after settling in to our new house, we hired a contractor to finish out the bonus room over the garage. When it was time for the electrical inspection, the city inspector looked at the permit and noted the name of the electrician, who had done the electrical work on many of the neighborhood houses. He glanced around the room and signed off, saying he knew the guy and knew that his work was first class.
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Ok since we’re talking about old houses, I went to a concert last weekend at the oldest church in the Continental US, from the early 1600s, although it was rebuilt after a fire during a Native American insurrection…
San Miguel Chapel here in Santa Fe NM. Beautiful
This is about as old as it gets in North America. Santa Fe also has the oldest house, the governors palace I believe. For the conquistadors to live in. St. Augustine in Florida Fe m probably comes a close second.
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I think most houses in SE USA have had to deal with termites. Retreat and termite letter is standard.