A beautiful old house in my neighborhood is for sale only a year or so after it sold last. The only difference in the listing photographs seems to be the master suite having been de-wallpapered.
I wish I could find the old photos, the wallpaper was hilarious. Imagine a glorious Victorian room, with a big round turret room off to the side, and the walls are covered with pale blue wallpaper with clouds all over them. Clouds! Add to that picture floor to ceiling drapes and valences of the same pattern, which was also all over the bed linen! OMG, it just needed someone posing in the same cloudy pattern bathrobe and disappearing into the background.
I missed being able to go to the open house and I’m sorry about that because it is listed as owner/agent and I wanted to grill the person about the wallpaper. I wonder if they left a memento mori somewhere, like inside the closet.
Wow! We just oversaw the sale of the in laws house in the last year, first couple of photos and I thought, hmmm, this is very familiar, maybe 1964 and boom, zillow says it was built in 1964. When we paid the painter to remove wallpaper, he came back to try to negotiate extra as he had not realized just how many layers of wall paper were there. We also had them scrape off or cover up the popcorn ceilings.
That entry felt so familiar, funny how that works, house & owner from a certain era.
Would you paint the fireplace rock or cover it with something?
That laundry louver door looks original, we had one of those doors, too.
Looks to me like it was updated a bit in the 1980s, those brass curtain rails, mirrored closets, fluffy valences, wallpaper with top border, they all say 1980 to me.
Ours still had quite a bit of paneling that had been painted white & I found myself wishing it bad been drywalled over, but we just repainted it for the sale
Kitchen window looking at a brick wall?
What kind of shape is that pool decking in? Ours was a mess.
An awful lot of concrete around that house…and then the precipitous slope! I assume they know it is secure? I guess one could put in planters to break up the concrete…at least no worries about dead grass! The vista is great. It would be a fabulous sport for an infinity pool, but I shudder to think what kind of engineering might be required on that slope.
I don’t get much say in the design decisions with this house. My first gentle battle was convincing them to get rid of the green carpet. They loved it! Believe it or not. But the carpet is old and worn so it needs to get torn out.
Grandma loves the 80s poufy valances…what can I say? In fact, my agent had to call me into their current house as a “neutral third party” to make a list of what had to be changed/ removed to put their house up for sale. Tons of silk flower arrangements, puffy valances, silk flowers/vines on the wall. They are buying the decor they just left
Doubt they will do anything to break up the concrete wasteland in back yard. They are going to put solar panels on the roof and change all the windows, focused on energy saving. They don’t seem to care about the outdated decor.
But to them it’s not outdated decor. It’s the decor that makes them feel at home. The move itself is a huge adjustment at that age so the familiar style of decorating is probably comforting.
I do agree all the concrete front and back is stark. The water feature is pretty.
Wow. I love that house. It could be a set in a “Rockford Files” episode. The furniture screams “1973”. I can’t wait to see what you do.
I renovated a 1908 house that had lots of wallpaper and after removing some we discovered the builder must have done a less than perfect plaster job with the objective of wallpapering every room. We had 1/4" drywall installed over everything and removed the baseboards and brought them out 1/4". There are electrical box shims that bring the receptacles out in an approved, safe manor. It was a lot faster than having to reskim all the walls. I distinctly remember removing all the upstairs ceilings and putting 1/2" drywall up. Fun times.
I am sorry, but what there is to renovate other than wall paper and carpet?
For that price I can only buy a house in my target area that is half the size and is slipping off the foundation. And a two bedroom condo in San Jose downtown where Google is going to build its campus.
As 30-year old carpeting goes, it could be a lot worse. Compared to the 40-year old red and green shag carpeting in the house I’m buying, it’s positively sublime.
That expanse of concrete next to the pool is crying for an outdoor kitchen/grill/bar/eating area setup.
I used to like paneling… my current house has a paneled room. I painted it. I kind of like the look of painted paneling. Or maybe more accurately, I dislike more the cost/work that would be needed to remove and replace it.
I just noticed the view out the kitchen window behind the sink… wow.
The decor emphasizes a selling point… they did de clutter their home they sold. They took out so much stuff that they have 3 Pods off site somewhere (I cannot even imagine where all that crapola is going to go in their new home. Then they put it up for sale with the silk flowers, puffy valences, etc. They did not get any offers even though it was priced well. They found this new house and started to get desperate to sell because they were able to get their offer to buy accepted contingent on selling their house (they offered a little over asking price)
My agent could not convince them that some of the ‘decor’ needed to be removed. So, I went through and gently suggested removing the tired old silk arrangements (Buyers just see them as dust collectors and distracting to the eye), remove the puffy valences, brighten up the old tiled bathrooms with some staged color, remove some kind of silk vine thing all over kitchen walls, and remove some of the strange area rugs that were on top of the regular carpet.
Accepted offer in 3 days after that final clear out. Probably had nothing to do with it, but we like to think that was the right move.
Yes there will be photos to follow along the Grandma house remodel. They are planning a new kitchen and opening up the family room. But I won’t have any pictures until we start the project.
But today I learned that their buyers for their old home just lost their buyers. So, domino effect in these type of contingent sales. Their buyer had to turn around and subsequently cancel the purchase of their home. They are now back up for sale again and the earliest we start the project is about Sept 1st, if they can convince the Seller of their target house to wait for them.
Now I know how contractors feel trying to shuffle moving start dates on multiple projects!!!
The vista is great. It would be a fabulous sport for an infinity pool, but I shudder to think what kind of engineering might be required on that slope.