Houses - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[PennySycamore]

@Rowan, I'd have to put a chair in the bay window that is comfortable for knitting.  My granddad had a bay window in the living room of his house.  My grandmother's spinning wheel was there in the bay.  I still have fond memories of that room after all these years.

[Diggingupdirt]

On 1/1/2017 at 9:37 PM, catlady said:

here's one that i like.  i have no ties to the location; merely found it on a random search.  built in 1924, and the decor looks straight out of the 80s, but i love the (presumed) pressed-tin ceilings and the stained glass on the front windows.  and it's affordable!!

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/355-Main-St_Saint-Agatha_ME_04772_M48661-62694

I'm not gonna lie, I think it is absolutely adorable. The colors make my heart sing. I love colors. When i bought my first house almost 10 years ago, I had my mom waiting at the house for my furniture to be delivered and she heard the delivery people saying that an old woman must have lived here because it looks like an Easter egg!  I guess they weren't aware I had just freshly painted the house and I loved the "Easter egg" look. Even thinking back on it now I miss the colors and the way it made my heart smile. We just bought a new house and my husband and I haven't had a chance to paint or do much to it since we moved in, due to some medical issues my husband had just after moving in. So right now I'm looking at white walls. The bright side is the new house has windows galore so it makes it a bit better. But I can't wait to paint my house into a giant easter egg again.

 

On 1/1/2017 at 4:58 PM, Fascinated said:

It's going to be very nice but I'm a bit worried about the size, at just over 1,500 sq. ft., and the lack of storage.

My first house was only 780 square feet!!!! Our new home is 17,000 square feet and it feels like a mansion to me. I don't know what to do with all the room we now have. lol

Edited January 4, 2017 by Diggingupdirt
grammer

[PennySycamore]

@Diggingupdirt, do you mean that you house is 17 thousand square feet or do you mean 17 hundred square feet.  17 thousand would indeed be a mansion by anyone's standards.  

I love colors on walls, too.  Too many of our walls are white and too much of our furniture is bland and beige.  The biggest problem in the room that needs painting this month is not the white walls, but that ugly, seen-better-days, bright blue molding. That blue looks ok in the Florida room, but it is an ugly color for molding.

@Blahblah, that house is charming!  It looks a bit like it was plucked from the English countryside. Or from the Australian countryside.  It reminds me a bit of Farmer Hoggett's house in Babe except that Farmer Hoggett's house was two storeys.  Do you remember when Babe went upstairs to steal the Electric Rooster aka the electric alarm clock?

[TeddyBonkers]

Can I vent about my current house a minute? The kitchen is so frustrating. There is a big, floor to ceiling cabinet which would be great for storage, if it only had more than three shelves! It's hard to see what I have when everything is piled up. It also has a TINY cabinet on one side of the fridge which is only 6 inches wide. And I have to 'angle' my dinner plates into their cabinet, because there's a support piece (?) that's too wide. 

That's one of the good things about moving a lot-I only have to put up with frustrations for a short time....

[Jana'sHairScrunchie]

Looking at houses is really enjoyable. My husband and I used to look at online listings of houses for sale in the neighborhood we were renting in, even though there was no way to afford buying one. Some of the homes look so unassuming and small from the street but were huge and impressively updated inside. I also love looking at home tours on Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge. So much inspiration. Then again, I'm a total homebody so it's up my alley.

 

We bought our first home this summer and while it's fairly small and cookie cutter, it has more or less everything we wanted and it's been fun making it our own. 

[Blahblah]

@PennySycamore I love Babe. It's one of my favourite movies. Magda Szubanski is a legend. I read her autobiography last year which made me love her even more.

And confession time, the pic is actually of my home. (So thank you for being so lovely about it!) It's a 1930's Tudor  bungalow at the front but has a massive modern extension at the back. We've been here 3 years and have tweaked a few things inside, mainly painting a few rooms because the previous owners were so bland. And we've added solar power. But the front is untouched because we loved it just how it is. 

[ClaraOswin]

As far as paint colors...when we built our house, the builder only gave options for white and various shades of beige. So we went with "crisp khaki." I do like that it's nice and warm. I am a brown-tones kind of person. We always planned to paint various walls/rooms different colors. But here we are, 8 years later, and we're still mostly beige. We have an accent wall painted blue in our guest room. And our son's room was painted yellow before he was born. When we move him to a new bedroom (next year?) we'll probably paint it. But yeah...that's it. We are so boring. I am just horrible at making decisions. And I have no style at all.

[Maggie Mae]

1 hour ago, Jana'sHairScrunchie said:

 I also love looking at home tours on Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge. 

It's been a long time since I thought about Apartment Therapy. I remember the comments could be a little... unhinged. It was rare when they actually liked other people's tours and they had some very specific hates, like bikes indoors (even if it's an apartment and there's no where else to do, I guess people are supposed to give up their transportation and/or hobbies because random people on the internet don't like how they decorated their apartment?) or painted wood. (Why didn't they just sand and restore the coffee table instead of painting it! They ruined it!) and sexism "there is no trace of the woman in the relationship in this apartment. it's all so hard!" 

Anyway, I should go back to AT. I miss it. 

[Screamapillar]

The Online Listing for our current house didn't have any pictures of the 4th bedroom. When we got to the showing we saw that it looked like this:

Spoiler

I thought, no big deal, I'll make this the baby's room since I want to paint her walls anyway. 3 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint later the room is now a lovely light shade (Misty Lavender by Behr) and the temperature of the room is at least 5 degrees cooler without those deep red walls.

The house appraised for 10K more than what we paid for it, and I think a lot of it had to do with the previous owners' paint and style choices. It didn't show well. They had bible scripture wall decals everywhere. The kitchen was a shocking bright salmon with a huge countryside mural on the breakfast room wall. The gorgeous bonus room with vaulted ceilings and great natural light was puke brown...even the ceilings! The living room and foyer were a depressing mustardy yellow. The most obnoxious thing was the downstairs powder room, the walls were the ugly yellow and the ceiling was the bright salmon (why?!) And they used gold accents in every place possible. The house was only built in 2010 but their style choices were from the early 90s.

Six months later we have painted the entire house a nice light gray (Sterling by Behr) except for the living room and foyer, because they are 2 stories high and we haven't had a convenient time to have a painting team come in with scaffolding. And we've replaced all of the shiny gold doorknobs and ornate light fixtures.

Scraping off all of those scripture decals was the most Free Jingerish thing I've ever done!

[ClaraOswin]

Here's a house that is actually a bit too 'over the top' for me, in general. I do like all the space and some aspects of it. But the chandeliers and stuff aren't my taste.

But the yard and landscaping...YES, PLEASE! (Just needs a bit more open space for running around.)

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/22814-Hascall-St-Elkhorn-NE-68022/91935262_zpid/

Edited January 4, 2017 by ClaraOswin

[ClaraOswin]

I found my friend's old house on zillow. She hasn't lived there in a long time. The people who were recently selling it made it much more fancy looking than before. But I always loved this house. She was the only person I knew who lived in a truly older home. I am having flashbacks looking at these pictures. I remember dancing to 'Nsync in the back parlor. Though we spent most of our time in the basement and in the finished attic. I loved that they had a "secret room" behind a book case. My favorite place to sleep when I'd stay the night was on the window seat in the attic. You can see it to the left in photo 28. And in the last photo, you can see the window where the seat was...very top in the middle. It was seriously a great house.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/903-S-3rd-St-Council-Bluffs-IA-51503/76823318_zpid/

[FrumperedCat]

As someone living in the UK I find the style of US homes so interesting! They really differ from those here in the UK. For example most of the properties here are brick or stone built and we don't have one's with siding being used. Also there appear to be a lot more single storey buildings and larger plots too, with a lot of porches and "bonus rooms".

One thing I do find is that Zillow listed houses don't really tend to have floorplans very often, or at least I can't seem to find them. Looking at floorplans is one of my favourite ways of weighing up different houses. Some of the fancy ones even have their own brochure.

I tend to use rightmove for finding properties over here, and they post once a month with what they feel are unusual properties which is great fun to look at. They've also posted with a blog of the most popular properties of the year: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/most-popular-properties-2016 and the most unusual: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/most-unusual-properties-this-year/ .

[ClaraOswin]

The house in Ireland with the mini theme park....ha! And I kind of love the "hobbit" type home.

As for the floor plans...typically real estate sites don't show the floor plan unless it's a house under construction or very newly built.

Edited January 4, 2017 by ClaraOswin

[FrumperedCat]

1 hour ago, ClaraOswin said:

As for the floor plans...typically real estate sites don't show the floor plan unless it's a house under construction or very newly built.

Ah thanks I guess that makes sense, easier for the agents that way. But harder for the buyer to get a good feel of which rooms which in the photos in some ways.

[Rowan]

32 minutes ago, FrumperedCat said:

Ah thanks I guess that makes sense, easier for the agents that way. But harder for the buyer to get a good feel of which rooms which in the photos in some ways.

I agree entirely. I helped a friend with her listing because you just couldn't figure out how things were put together. Different photos, a logical order = way more people interested in seeing her house!

[PennySycamore]

@ClaraOswin, I wish that first house were not so ornately decorated.  The bones of the house may be good, but the decor is not to my taste.  I'd love to see that second house without the Christmas decorations.  I can't believe that house sold last year for $26K!  That's not the asking price now though.  I imagine the homeowners put a bunch of work into it restoring it.  I do wish they'd left that window seat.

[SamiKatz]

On 1/1/2017 at 9:37 PM, catlady said:

here's one that i like.  i have no ties to the location; merely found it on a random search.  built in 1924, and the decor looks straight out of the 80s, but i love the (presumed) pressed-tin ceilings and the stained glass on the front windows.  and it's affordable!!

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/355-Main-St_Saint-Agatha_ME_04772_M48661-62694

 

I'm a sucker for wraparound porches, I love them.  I love porches actually.  I just always think of living in the country and sitting on a porch swing, sipping ice tea while it is sunny and warm outside.

23 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

@Rowan, I'd have to put a chair in the bay window that is comfortable for knitting.  My granddad had a bay window in the living room of his house.  My grandmother's spinning wheel was there in the bay.  I still have fond memories of that room after all these years.

 

Yay for knitting!  It would be lovely to sit in the window, knit away and watch the world go by.

[ClaraOswin]

2 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

@ClaraOswin, I wish that first house were not so ornately decorated.  The bones of the house may be good, but the decor is not to my taste.  I'd love to see that second house without the Christmas decorations.  I can't believe that house sold last year for $26K!  That's not the asking price now though.  I imagine the homeowners put a bunch of work into it restoring it.  I do wish they'd left that window seat.

I looked on the county assessor page and it didn't actually sell for that. I think it was around $260,000 so probably a typo. I was shocked when I saw it too...that's why I had to check.

The window seat is still there. You can see it just to the left in a photo. But it's not like a nice, old one or anything. It's in the finished attic. I think my friend's family finished it up there in the 90's. We spent a lot of time up there because it was honestly the most 'cozy' area of the house. And I'm sure her family didn't want to listen to us giggling girls downstairs all the time. Ha!

[Blahblah]

@ClaraOswin, @PennySycamore I love the "bones" of the house but the patterned wallpaper everywhere would do my head in. Also it reminds me of the type of houses that horror movies are set in for some reason. Looks like it would be awesome for hide and seek though.

[Diggingupdirt]

@PennySycamore 1,700 square feet lol. That's what i get for being on FJ at 0430. 

[ClaraOswin]

1 hour ago, Blahblah said:

@ClaraOswin, @PennySycamore I love the "bones" of the house but the patterned wallpaper everywhere would do my head in. Also it reminds me of the type of houses that horror movies are set in for some reason. Looks like it would be awesome for hide and seek though.

Are you talking about the old house? We did used to play hide in seek there (even though we were far too old to be doing it...ha!) I was always creeped out by the basement. Part of it was finished and we'd watch t.v. and play board games down there. Plus her parents built this playhouse kind of thing for her brother. I guess it was supposed to be a Ninja Turtle sewer or something. Anyway...that part of the basement was okay. But then another section was unfinished. And I mean REALLY unfinished. Like just dirt for a floor. They used it for storing a bunch of old junk. It was so dark. I often wondered what kinds of creatures lived back there. Ugh...getting grossed out just thinking about it now. Some of our guy friends would hide back there and jump out at us. Jerks.

[adidas]

https://www.domain.com.au/24-lang-road-centennial-park-nsw-2021-2013187548

 

i used to walk past this house and dream ....

[Rowan]

6 hours ago, adidas said:

https://www.domain.com.au/24-lang-road-centennial-park-nsw-2021-2013187548

 

i used to walk past this house and dream ....

OH, wow! That would be an amazing home....

[LadyCrow1313]

One of my favorite movie houses of all time was the aunt's house in Practical Magic. I'm pretty sure that it is a real house, & I'd love to be able to live there. (Or if it is a mock house, they did a helluva job with its construction.)

7 hours ago, adidas said:

https://www.domain.com.au/24-lang-road-centennial-park-nsw-2021-2013187548

 

i used to walk past this house and dream ....

One of my favorite pictures was of the curved window well with padded seats; I can just imagine sitting there & reading books all day.

[PennySycamore]

54 minutes ago, LadyCrow1313 said:

One of my favorite movie houses of all time was the aunt's house in Practical Magic. I'm pretty sure that it is a real house, & I'd love to be able to live there. (Or if it is a mock house, they did a helluva job with its construction.)

One of my favorite pictures was of the curved window well with padded seats; I can just imagine sitting there & reading books all day.

That window seat in the bay was one of my favorites, too @LadyCrow1313!  It's really a beautiful house.  

Speaking of movie houses, I like the spectacular modern house atop Mount Rushmore and the dad's house in the original Parent Trap.  I've heard that the Walt Disney company still gets requests for the house plans.  The house was not ever real so no plans exist.  I also like the aunt's house in Pollyanna.