Thanks all, Your thought are confirming many of my ideas- we have had many visitors whose first thought is to "open up" the whole first floor (ie. open the kitchen, dining and bedroom to each other) but I hesitate because 1. it is an old house and I'd like to keep some of the original plan and 2. sometimes opening up a space makes it actually seem smaller- to me the private bedroom makes the house seem bigger. The vestibule/mudroom leads to a cute side porch, overlooking the driveway but without stairs down to it. It has a closet which is great, but we currently use the space as a lego room :). So, we could do without! I also do picture French doors, but privacy and sound would be a downside. We are in need of a guest room for occasional visitors and really only have three bedrooms on the 2nd floor (the 2nd floor is basically the same floor plan as the first- one needs to walk through two bedrooms to get from the front one to the bath! That's another issue, and I'm not sure we can count on a remodel of the 2nd floor to give us the guest room we'd like). Thanks all for your thoughts- it helps to cement my feelings about this space, knowing others have similar ones!

We found old business card like papers (1899) and receipts (1901) and hand written letters (1901 and 1902). A wooden umbrella handle, some metal decorative bands, a fabric sample book, and some old blouses. Structural nightmares around every turn, some far too recent to be acceptable. Horrible septic, no working well, and poorly done new electric that should have burnt the house down. Wood stoves were the only heating this house had ever had, and up until this past year, we had heated with stoves, but have upgraded to a wood furnace plus the stoves. Some walls still don't have insulation and some drywall is hiding crumbling plaster. We'll get to it one day. Here is the first page to the 1901 4 page letter. The envelope and letter were in amazing shape for their age.

A good flooring company will be able to match the new floors (species of wood) that they install to what is currently in your home. They may need to refinish the entire floor of your home if the rooms inter connect to ensure the finish matches. This is to be expected. You need to have this discussion with your flooring people. So sorry that this has happened to your home. I hope no one was hurt.

without more info, how can we possibly have any ideas? what kind of house is it? where is it built? and on what? do you know how it was built? do you know if there are proper footings or supports? cracks in the basement doesn't tell us anything. if it's on the slab, cracks are normal. even if you answered all of those questions, do you really want to take advice from someone online that hasn't actually looked and done a walk-thru at your home? do yourself a favor and call in a professional structural engineer.