Old woodwork in houses is pretty much always excellent. Why? There was way, way more top-quality lumber available (they'd "throw away" giant near-perfect timber

Old woodwork in houses is pretty much always excellent. Why? There was way, way more top-quality lumber available (they'd "throw away" giant near-perfect timbers in framing, including using huge load-bearing pieces along foundations that'd cost thousands of dollars each today, assuming you could find something similar at all) and you couldn't get away with doing bad woodwork—because there was no air conditioning and heat wasn't as good as it is today! Badly-installed woodwork that didn't have great corners and joins, didn't account for wood grain and cut and position pieces accordingly, use properly aged lumber of a suitable quality, and so on, would simply fall apart between temperature and humidity swings over the years, probably so fast it'd come back to bite whoever did the shoddy work in the ass. Well-build wood finishes, meanwhile, can break a century and still be almost perfect, with little or no maintenance (aside from repairing outright accidental damage, of course, and keeping water from getting in the structure). But we don't really make those anymore. If someone wants really nice wood trim, mantlepieces, panelling, and such in a modern house, it seems they usually loot it from an old house. The materials and work are too expensive now to make it from scratch. Ditto doors, of all things. Modern interior and exterior doors are awful compared to solid wood doors that were common not even that long ago, but, though you can still buy them, new solid doors are impractically expensive, so buying salvaged old doors usually makes more sense.