Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Yeah, that seems to be a pretty standard colonial. Lots of compartmentalization. Seems like it's been kept nicely and mostly clean. Lot is annoyingly large though, especially if you hate yardwork. That said, the yard could be filled with more interesting things, such as volleyball/badminton yet, a shed, a pool, a patio area, or if you're really into the looks of luxury, a gazebo.
Looks bigger than its square footage (1,956) suggests. I wonder what that bit that juts out to the side is.
The 1957 house in Windsor is one of the few you've shown that would probably be in my price range if it were in the UK. It doesn't look bad either, although you're right that it isn't very up-to-date. Perhaps that's why they've dropped the price by nearly 10%.
That last one in Bloomfield - wow. I'm not surprised they're struggling to sell. It's not exactly derelict, but you'd have to spend a fair amount to bring that up to scratch. You could always buy it as an investment, spend a minimal amount on it and rent it out to desperate tenants, I suppose, if there are any in that part of the world.
mlsli.com
Yes, the red wallpaper in the Fairfield house is definitely a bit much.
The home invasion related to the other house is a reminder of the risk of living in a nice house in a well-off neighbourhood - people tend to assume you've probably got stuff worth stealing. I don't know if there are a lot of gated communities in Connecticut, but that does seem to be increasingly common in the US generally as a response to fear of crime. They still aren't too common in the UK.
Oops, I think sending that site his way was too much for him to handle.
I should have just thrown a single listing agent at him.
Ooh, a ranch.
Ooh, a white brick wall.
Ooh, comfy carpet!
Ooh! Skylit kitchen, round white counters, and rolly dining chairs!
My old house had kitchen cabinetry with that appearance (white with wooden handle rims on top or bottom.
Bathroom would be well served by removal of wallpaper.
Attic "office" seems nice and cozy, but wallpaper is a bit annoying.
Again, the wallpaper in the bathroom should go. ...and is that CARPET IN THE BATHROOM, GROWING UP THE SIDE OF THE TOILET? WTF?
Ehh, the siding is shakes. My least favorite kind.
Nice cozy eat-in kitchen area.
I like two-way fireplaces like that.
Ooh, that first-floor floorplan looks nice. It keeps some visual compartmentalization but also opens up a lot of rooms to each other. Kinda interesting how they took up the space by putting an "island" of armchairs and a coffee table in the middle of the room, rather than surrounding everything with couches and then leaving a big coffee table. Looks oddly like a sitting room this way, but I don't mind; I kinda like it. Those chairs and table next to the window look perfectly situated for that niche.
Is that sofa...shrinkwrapped or something?
Ugh, dining room carpet and latticeback chairs.
The high windows in the bedroom are kinda distinctive for older houses. Still, I don't think I'd object to them too much.
I really don't mind the washer in the kitchen. The only reason I'd have to object is that it reinforces the whole "women should be in the kitchen" schtick.
And my mom keeps the dining room chairs' seats plastic-wrapped to prevent stuff from staining them.
And come to think of it, yeah, I think I prefer lower windows. But then again, those windows are at ground level, and for a bedroom.
I've seen a few washing machines in kitchens while house-hunting around Queens and western Nassau Counties.
Thoughts on this:-
1. The white walls and wooden floors are actually reminiscent of my current flat's interior decor. The size, location and number of rooms on the other hand...
2. The place has been on the market 3 years and they've dropped the price by nearly 20%. That shows that (a) there aren't many people in the market for this kind of house and (b) even rich people aren't lashing out like they were a few years back.
3. Amusingly, this seems to be in a place named after an English town but misspelled. Barnstaple is in Devon. I have actually heard of Hyannisport, though - isn't it a really upmarket sort of place where you might find Kennedys or Bushes living?
I like the spiral staircase. I also like the nice comfy white carpet.
That family room, though...I see how it was made to look like a study, but then it seems to be irrationally juxtaposed (through double doors) to the backyard, which is an icon of recreation. And then there's the TV on the ground in the corner...couldn't they just have put it on a chair or table?
As for the patio (did I say deck earlier? I guess I meant patio), I like that it's paved with stone tiles. I guess rich people get to enjoy patios while the rest of us deal with rickety wooden decks.
Back to the interior...there's an odd clashing between traditional styling and brown colors and contemporary styling and light colors. Picture 11 is a good example of this clash.
In picture 12, did they really just leave a lonely refreshments table in the middle of the breakfast area? Seriously? Now that's a poor sense of style.
Is putting such a heavy bust on top of a grand piano an okay idea?
Is that a reclining chair with a side wall?
And I do like how the garage is placed beneath the house. I always prefer it this way, because I feel that garages look like way too big of a deal when placed in the foreground of houses. This problem is compounded by contemporaries that leave garages to take up a significant (and often most prominent) chunk of the front face of the house.
With the Katonah one, I find it interesting that they claim the style is Tudor. To me, it seems much more like a faux-mediaeval baronial hall. I associate Tudor with that black-and-white half-timbered look that you see in this country in (a) a few genuine surviving Tudor houses usually in old market towns and (b) an awful lot of mock-Tudor houses built in English suburbs in the early 20th century (so-called "Stockbroker Tudor").
Mock-Tudor was, well, much mocked at the time. It became symbolic of new money and social climbing (horror!), although that's all long died out now.
I like the stained glass though. My parents have some of that in the windows of their front room.
I suppose I should revive this thread with something.
http://www.mlsli.com/unidetailsredo_test.CFM?MLNum=2448306&typeprop=1&start=1&rpp=10
This is the cheapest house in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens. And it's actually in Rego Park. It's still listed at $498K. It's a tiny 1955 attached house with just 2 bedrooms. Seems like a major distinctive feature is that it has a garage. That's attached, too.
Unfortunately, there's only one picture, but I can still complain about it: I really hate it when they widen pictures like this.
http://www.mlsli.com/unidetailsredo_test.CFM?MLNum=2452314&typeprop=1&start=1&rpp=10
Now this one's got a lot more pictures for us to critique.
Looks like a cute brick house. The red shakes at the top of the house just look ugly though. The backyard looks...littered with leaves and dead grass, but decently sized for a suburban New York City backyard, I guess.
Looks like the interior's completely updated. Done well or done cheaply, I can't really tell, but from the bathroom pictures (see the stuff between the mirror tiles and on the shower stall floor), I'm gonna go with cheaply.
I damn well hope that that sink in the third bathroom pictured (the one with the tub) isn't as close to the toilet as it seems. Granted, I've actually lived in a NYC apartment whose bathroom had a sink and toilet spaced almost as closely. (Though that was in Manhattan, and properties in this somewhat-higher-end residential neighborhood of Queens ought to be able to afford more space than that.)
Of course, you can update the walls and flooring and windows as much as you want, but the house is still old, and the radiator heating infrastructure is, of course, still there. It's not uncommon to see a house or apartment with a brand sparkling new interior except for old, painted-and-repainted radiator grills. Of course, that's partly why they got that cover in picture 13.
I like how it has a finished attic room. I've never gotten the chance to live in a house that had a room with severely sloping ceilings like this, but I think the experience would be interesting.
And did I say that the entire house was updated? Not the basement, apparently; you can still see the 50s tiles. Looks like this is where the junk is kept, including old tires. As well as the laundry area.
The description states that this property has a private driveway. I'm darn surprised that it has a private driveway at all. From looking at the front of the house, I'd have expected a party driveway.
Regarding the second link:
The colours look terrible, dull grey then redbrick colour toegether eesh.
The kitchen also looks off, the cupboards do look like they gel well (colour/style wise) with the appliances.
Also a mirror wall so you can see yourself shit?
Classy...
I think some people like mirrors in small bathrooms since it gives an illusion of spaciness.
It's TMI time! My current bathroom in my (rented) flat has a half-wall mirror exactly opposite the toilet. Fortunately, it's the top-half of the wall so I don't actually have to watch myself on the lavatory, but it's still pretty unnecessary.
Actually, the worst I had in that department was a bedroom with fitted closets at the foot of the bed with full length mirrors on the outside of each door. It was basically about one step away from having a mirror in the ceiling above the bed and I can only assume the place had once been owned by a major exhibitionist.
Oh my god this thread is back! I've been wanting to bring it back for months but I'm honestly kind of scared too, because I've gotten way too active. But I've got some good stuff from the past few days.
Glenn's first link didn't work. The second did...that's the kind of house Peter Parker lived in in the Spider-Man movies! I'm not that impressed by it on the whole. But I am impressed by your nearly picture-by-picture critique. I think you're better at this than me.
Let's have some selections from my searching yesterday. I've been spending a lot of time in western CT, Litchfield County mainly, though there was a detour to Ridgefield. And yesterday I then went back to around Bradley Airport, sort of: Windsor Locks and Suffield. Actually, everything I just described kind of happened yesterday.
It's pretty easy to find 1920's Tudors all over the place, but I try to find dated ones, and that's much harder. Figures that one would turn up in Windsor Locks of all places. (Windsor Locks is, for those not in the know, a smallish town sandwiched between the state's main airport and the Connecticut River.) It's arguably one of the nicest houses for sale in the town right now. And one of the most expensive, though only $335K. Cheap town, that one.
http://www.raveis.com/prop/G602239/46_center_st_windsorlocks_ct/ Ok, I don't get how to do links anymore. I tried to make the text of it something other than the URL, but it didn't work. Whatever. There it is. Nice but in a faded way. You can tell good full lives were lived there.
Ok, next up, you want a mirrored bathroom Ian? Well let me take you out west, to what would make a decent second home for a large family, a good-sized contemporary-ish that still very much carries the spirit of 1973: http://www.raveis.com/eprop/L139070/56_ore_hill_road_salisbury_ct/
Notice the amber-glass lights in picture 5. Notice the strange brown kitchen cabinets in picture 6...are those metal or plastic or something? And yes, in picture 8, the master bathroom, in which the color scheme is pinkish-purplish...and mirrored. You can try to watch yourself shit, but the sink kind of gets in the way.
In my next post: Ridiculous commercial complexes in western CT, namely a former church/school/gym combo, and a decent-sized inn/hotel. Coming after that: a house trapped in 1990 except for modern TVs, and a house that is mostly underground.
Evergreen - You will become a real estate salesman. It is your destiny...
Pink seems popular for bathrooms for some reason. My parents' home has a pink bathroom suite, and so did their previous house. My current one is white, which I don't recommend. It really emphasises the dirt.
re the house in windsor locks
Ooh! A magnificent Tudor house, with brick siding all over! over 2600 square feet! For just $335K? Would buy? Oh wait, it's 1929. Okay, I'll look inside first.
> radiator heat
Well, at least it's not forced hot air heat.
> BREATHTAKING 25X14 LR W/FP STEPS DOWN INTO BRIGHT, 18X14 DEN
This sounds nice.
> picture 2: backyard with driveway
It appears that the two-car garage is entered from behind, effectively "hiding" the garage from the front. I like that a lot, actually; the only thing that would be better than this is if the garage is "hidden" beneath the house (which usually happens only if the house is situated on a slope).
> picture 3: living room with carpet, furniture
This is a bit too old-fashioned for me. Well, actually, that's not really the problem. The problem is that there's too much furniture, and whatever space is not taken up by the furniture is visually occupied by the carpet. It's just too much. Would be better if it were more sparse, even if you kept the same colors.
> picture 4: den with window seat
See, this is a lot better. The single-color carpet and sparsely-placed (compared to the previous room) furniture produce a feeling of comfort, rather than crowdedness.
> picture 5
Ooh, they have a piano. I always perk up when I see one.
> picture 7
Whoa! They have another window off to that side too! That's awesome!
> picture 8: dining room
Wallpaper + dark wood = very dated look, and not my taste. The pink-ish seats don't help.
> picture 9
They sure like their rugs, don't they? I'm not too fond of area rugs; they make cleaning more difficult. But otherwise, that looks like a very nice little office. I can just imagine the windows being open and the curtains swaying in the wind...
> picture 10: kitchen
Surprisingly bright for a house whose dining room had such a dated look. Those cabinets seem to be at least several decades old, but still look great.
See, when you have such a bright atmosphere, the dark wood chairs look much nicer.
> picture 11
Nice bulge/octagonal/whateveryoucallit window.
> picture 12
I see this is where the ceiling becomes fun. That's still a nice little upstairs foyer area, suited for being a kids' corner or extra office space that's in touch with the rest of the house. But that wallpaper's just got too much going on.
> picture 13
My only objection is the wallpaper color.
> picture 14
My only objection is the rug color.
> picture 15
My only objection is...actually, I don't really have any objections, but I do wonder whether one can open that door next to the bed. It probably leads to a rarely-used crawl-space. Okay, fine, the bedcovers and curtains could be a bit better, but that's minor.
> picture 16
Beautiful little room with a conveniently-situated radiator to keep both your desk and your bed warm! But...that wallpaper...wayyyy too much stuff going on in that wallpaper.
The house looks quite majestic from the outside, though I do wonder where all that space under those greatly pitched roofs goes.
The taxes...hot damn, Windsor Locks's property taxes are significantly cheaper than ours.
Love your analysis as always. I think I shouldn't even try to compete mostly. I'll just put the properties up with a select few comments and leave the rest to my small group of regulars. I'm going to pair up weird things with normal houses for the conceivable future.
So here's a building in the Lakeville section of Salisbury, CT, in the far northwest corner of the state. It's currently the Wake Robin Inn. (Yes, I know how to make links again.) It's neither the biggest or most luxurious of inns, but it's decent all around. I love how things like this just turn up listed as "single-family residential"...wait 'til you see what else I found in other towns. The inn's own website gives no indication it's up for sale. It seems like a real institution and it would be a shame if someone bought and closed it. Keep in mind pictures 1,3, and 19 are historical, though it's probably obvious.
However, I'm mostly posting that as a novelty. What I really wanted to show was an ordinary house from New Milford, which for the Brits is also in the western part of the state. Here it is...as I said, quite ordinary midsize colonial. Now, this is one of my favorite subjects: 90's houses. This house, being built in 1990, is exactly as old as I am, give or take a few months.
It's got that sort of appearance where it could be taken for a 70's, 80's, or 90's house, but somehow I could tell it was from when it was from. The landscaping is simple but impeccably kept. And the front yard is pretty big. The lot is, after all, over 2 acres...building houses this size on lots this size in more rural parts of CT was quite popular at that time and remains as such to this day. And as you see in the later pictures, there's a pretty good view of the rolling countryside out the back.
Inside is where it gets really interesting. Nearly everything but the flatscreen TVs appears unchanged since 1990 or thereabouts. (And there actually is an old TV in one room!) Furniture, light fixtures, artwork, curtains/shades, kitchen appliances...all original, and as the description says, immaculate. This place is the opposite of a mess. Also, note the unpainted wood trim, another characteristic of the time that you can find for decades in either direction from that point.
What I find so fascinating about this one, even moving I suppose, is that it's a time capsule of the era I grew up in, which I barely remember, and which despite being supposedly recent was quite different. Certain rooms of the house I grew up in remained like this for an awfully long time (maybe even 'til we moved out in 2000), so that just increases my nostalgia.
As soon as the furniture is taken out of this house, it will lose much of its character, though the trim and window treatments will carry a lot of it on their own. But all that will inevitably be upgraded by the next owner, and the past will be lost forever.