Inspiration

The Ultimate Movie List for Old House Lovers

February 25, 2022

Hey there - we're Kevin & sarah
Follow along as we transform our (second!) turn-of-the-century house into a restored, 21st century dream home. 
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The Ultimate Movie List for Old House Lovers

The very first time we saw the new house (for now referred to as Project GTown) one of the things that got us most excited was the primary bedroom. We couldn’t quite put our finger on why it felt so familiar and cozy, but driving home that evening it hit us: it felt exactly like the George and Nina Banks’ bedroom in one of our favourite movies of all time, Father of the Bride.

The layout and window placements are almost exactly the same. As you walk into the bedroom, you face a bed centred on a wall between two windows. The wall to the left of the bed features two doorways – the one on the right leads to the bathroom, the left a closet.

In our house, the door on the left is a closet. As is the door on the right – leading to a part of the house we currently refer to as ‘Narnia’ (not on the movie list for inspiration…). That closet leads to – get this – a hallway, with a staircase in it, and another doorway that leads into the back of another closet, which leads into a bedroom. It’s just one of those old house things where, understandably, the layout just accumulated and was added to over the years.

In any case, we raced home to watch the movie. Were we remembering the movie correctly? And could it be possible that the house we were looking at buying shared something in common with one of our favourite movie houses of all time? Turns out – it was! We devoured the movie, and quickly moved onto the sequel soaking up all the house inspiration we could get.

The following day on instagram, we shared a photo of the exterior of that oh-so-famous Father of the Bride house and asked what other movie houses we should be watching. Well, the next 48 hours saw our DMs just about explode with your must-watch old house movies. Suggestions are still coming in!

And, despite getting ready to move and zipping back-and-forth to the city lately, we’ve managed to sneak in a few old-house-movie-themed date nights and binge days. Yes, we’re working our way through your list!

A lot of you asked for the consolidated list, and that was tough. We think over 50 suggestions came in. What we did – spreadsheet and all – was rank them by how frequently they were recommended (it’s only roughly accurate, because in the days following we continued to get all kinds of recommendations and so we casually bumped some of those repeat mentions up in the list).

Now, before the unveiling of the list below, here some of the insights:

  • IF a movie stars Diane Keaton and IF that movie features a house, it basically comes in at the top of the list – with the underlying theme being the magical filmmaking work of Nancy Meyers
  • The total cumulative runtime of all the movies is 37.5 hours! That’s a LOT of movie watching, especially for people like us who are always complaining that there’s nothing to watch!
  • IF you account for the fact that, also like us, you’re going to be pausing every second scene to take a picture of the house, you’ve got to account for at least 15% more watching time, which brings us to 43 hours of total runtime (basically a standard work-week. Is this a job? We’d like to know)

So, without further ado, here’s your ultimate movie list for old house lovers!

1. Father of the Bride

2. Home Alone

3. Something’s Gotta Give

4. Family Stone

5. Practical Magic

6. It’s Complicated

7. Pride & Prejudice

8. The Holiday

9. Stepmom

10. Baby Boom

11. Monster-in-Law

12. My Girl

13. Royal Tenenbaums

14. You’ve Got Mail

15. Failure to Launch

16. Under the Tuscan Sun

17. It’s a Wonderful Life

18. Parent Trap

19. Money Pit

20. Simon Birch

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  1. Great content! Thank you for compiling interesting movies together and sharing them. You are awesome!

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hey there - We're
kevin & sarah

We're making an old house work for modern life.

Follow along as we transform our (second!) turn-of-the-century house into a restored, 21st century dream home. 

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