Does Your House Have “Good Bones”?

Often times we will hear people say something like “the house needs some paint, but it has good bones”. What do people mean when they say a house has good bones? When they say this, they are talking about the home’s structure. You can have peeling paint, a roof that is older, and other issues in the home, but if the home’s structure is good – then you can usually work through many of those other things.

But what makes up the “bones” of your house? The short answer is: anything that holds your house up. But it really comes down to two things – the foundation and the framing.

We could go on all day (and then some) about all the different parts of a home’s structure, but those are the two most basic parts of it. Your foundation is typically going to be made of hard, resilient building materials, including concrete, brick, blocks, stone, and more. It can be a full basement, slab, crawlspace, piers, and more. But this is the very “bottom” of your home that holds everything else up.

The framing is typically going to be wood framing. The dimensions of the lumber depend heavily on the age and building style of the home. You have modern platform framing, balloon framing, post and beam, and more. The framing starts at the floor framing (which is typically attached to the foundation) and works its way up all the way to your roof framing. And those are the basic parts of the “bones” of your house.