Old houses can be a pain. I've lived in 100 year+ houses for most of my life. NOTHING is ever standard. One time we had to replace the faucets in the bathroom. The sink had this weird 45 degree angle where they were attached. Turned out, if we wanted to keep the sink, there was only one company in the world that made faucets that would fit, and they were in only one, utilitarian style! Most of the houses wouldn't accommodate a dishwasher without extensive refitting because the counters were either too high, too shallow, or both. Electric is usually a pain, plumbing is usually a pain. Septic almost always is gonna need attention. In the fifteen years we've been in our current house, we've had to replace everything you've had to except for the barn stuff (no barn here) but we did have to redo the roof on the studio because the slope wasn't steep enough for the heavier snowfall seasons. We also had to replace the house roof, but that was because a tree fell on it... almost killed DH too- one of the branches punched through the ceiling of the living room and stopped barely 6 inches above his head. If it hadn't been for the fact that the ceilings are solid planks instead of the usual modern ceiling....
BUT...
I love the character of old houses. A lot of them, like our present one, "jest growed" like Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin, and you can get all kinds of weird and wonderful. The house in california had 2 septic tanks- one for each bathroom- they were tiny and made from REDWOOD! (they still worked fine, too.) I love that usually they have wonderful mature landscaping. The house I grew up in had camellias growing all across the front that were tall enough to half-cover the windows on the second floor. Most people think camellias don't have a smell, but when these bloomed in the spring you could smell their delicate perfume just driving down the street.
His boundary is that he will not take care of them - ever. But I knew that before I decided to get chicks. 
