I met my friend Molly in New York for lunch yesterday. Molly and I, despite our best intentions, almost always order the same thing. We almost always go to a dinner when I’m in town. Upon arrival, we both started talking so fast that we didn’t have time to look at the menu. We both claim to be looking at it, but neither of us is. Then the waitress arrives and we both order melted tuna. Fortunately, most New York City diners are good at melting tuna.
Yesterday, we ordered our tuna melts and Molly gave me some bodega flowers. The usual gossip live show sold out so quickly that very few of my friends could come, which makes Molly look good. All this is a lead to talk about this bodega flower. They were bright orange. “What a fun color!” I said, thrilled. I kept them on the table while we melted our tuna and didn’t pay much attention to them.
I took the flowers to Penn Station on my train. I sat in the empty seat next to them while working on my computer. Before we arrived, I took them to the small vestibule through the train door, because the train doesn’t stop very long in Philadelphia and you have to be ready to jump. Waiting for the door to open, I stared at the flower in my hand. They were so orange. Like the orange of the Tennessee volunteers, like the color of an orange M&M. But then I noticed something.
It’s not just that the flowers were orange. It was also some leaves. The upper part of the stem was also orange. The flowers were not orange. They were spray-painted oranges!
Immediately, I love them more. What a stupid thing. How perfect.
I’m talking about flowers because they remind me of the house we’re going to see today. This house was sent by Elizabeth. She lives with her family in the next town and watches Jillo because her parents might be moving closer! They will not go to this house! While a quick and poorly thought out design remedy may be good for a bodega flower that lasts four days, this is not what you want at home.
Before we get into it, this house is located in Essex, Connecticut. All I know about Connecticut is: Yale and tennis moms (?) Near New York, so I needed some context. As it turns out, I wasn’t completely wrong. Elizabeth told me that Essex was “generally considered a gas stop between New York and Cape Cod.” Okay, nice to know. He added, “Architecturally we see a lot of colonies, capes and farms. Choose a converted / restored and modernized structure and don’t mind if it retains its original charm * something *. But not like that. Never like it.” Don’t. “
Are you scared I’m scared. Let’s get into this.
At first glance, this seems to me to be the case. Maybe even better. I like color, and I like small Lookout / Crow’s nest. I’m a little scared of how that window on the right looks crooked, but I guess we can call it captivating.
Situated on 2,246 square feet, the house has two beds and two baths. It was built in 1880 (fun!) And it sits on a little over half an acre of land. It is listed below 1.1 million. Because the real estate bubble is so bloated, it didn’t raise a red flag for me, but it did for Elizabeth. “$ 1 million is not a foreign price for a home in this area, but usually they are very close to the water. For example, ‘Connecticut River is your backyard,’ near the water, “Elizabeth said.” This house should be $ 700,000. [other] The price of the house is the same, close to the water, and more than double the size. “If you like beautiful things, I suggest you stop now. Just click that other link. Don’t come in with me. Save yourself.
At first glance, things seem to be going well. I’ve always been skeptical about a house listed on this price point that has photos that look like they were taken randomly with an iPhone, but I like this entrance. I like long windows. I really like this slate diamond patterned tile floor. I don’t know what these doors that open only at the top, like you’re hoping to get to a horse, are called. But I find them exciting.
Right here, we have a large entrance room:
Now, I’m not the kind of designer who (very popular) hates all wood and thinks it should be painted immediately. I actually like this room a lot. I think the big windows are beautiful, and I like that they open onto the patio. I like that the roof and the walls and the floor are all the same kind of wood. I think a really big carpet and a few big paintings can do a lot for you here. There are many options for working in this room. You can darken the ceiling. You can get really bold (not wooden) furniture. You can get a great big chandelier.
But what is that?
Oh no. No no no no.
It’s the kitchen.
Elizabeth hates this house. Logical to me! Many bad decisions have been made. I think you can make wooden cabinets look cool and smooth, but the rooms need a coherent and thoughtful contrast. The counters (if you can tell them) are too light or too dark. They have to choose a direction and I hate that they tile. I guess it’s technically acceptable but it hurts me.
The terracotta tiles are nice, but they don’t look sealed and they collide with the wood. White appliances are ugly. Most of the equipment is ugly, but they have very “rental units near a college freight house”.
But the actual kitchen itself is not the problem. This is the horrible lattice wall and door that we saw on our way to the entrance.
By now, you are all well versed in my hatred of open-concept floor planning. There are some things I didn’t know I hated most, but here it is: open floor plan with semi-open partition walls. Why! Why !? Choosing to hang a pot on this mesh that looks weak? There are many cabinets in this kitchen. Why do you have to do this? Why are there these strange doors? Why is your kitchen a prison? All this is extra annoying when you notice that the ceiling is so beautiful. The half-wall behind this awesome cabinet and under the awesome lattice is made of beautiful wood. Why is it hidden?
No thanks!
After that, we have the same big open house what more?
It is very interesting to me that even the person taking the photo knows that it is best if you pretend that none of these spaces are connected to each other. Can I suggest a tried and true approach to make it more realistic: regular fucking walls?
Someone decided at some point that it must be a house and now we must be cursed by it. Now the wooden floor no longer matches. What happened? Who changed this floor? Why didn’t they all change? If you are going to find a floor that matches the wooden roof and wall, then you have to choose any floor that is not only wooden, but I know what.
Two strange cage things are suspended from the ceiling / wall in the dining room section. What are they? I’ve tried to google “wall cage” and “old house cage” and many more variations of it. I even tried a book that one of you told me to buy but I haven’t read it yet, but there was nothing in it. So, I was forced to save the verdict, but my heart said “no.”
That’s enough. Let’s go upstairs. Where are the stairs? I don’t know, it’s vague. Here is a bedroom:
It’s annoying. The ceiling looks strangely low. There is a bathroom:
There are three photos of this bathroom, but I promise you will only need one. It includes: a window is set without equal framing on each side; An unequal cable; A strange old light shoved into the corner; A pond so small you will surely find water everywhere; A tile with an accent that matches nothing; A toilet paper roll is basically on the ground; Glass bricks that are completely inconsistent in design; And a shower but no bath. Wood on the bathroom ceiling, seems like a very bad idea to me. My opinion is supported by the fact that one of the beams looks rotten. U.
Oh great. What we needed: Another great room.
You may notice that the stairs are open. That’s good. We could have all the noise from both of our great rooms together.
Here we have some more awesome things. Support beams of arched ceilings in the middle of large rooms are bad. It apparently breaks everything down. Yet again I urge people to consider only a single regular wall. The windows, which are very nice, seem to be off center. In a house full of wood, the bookshelves are white and have a raffle trim. None of the furniture looks like it was picked by the same person There is another structural beam that supports the wall three feet away. Imagine Shin’s wound we could get.
What do we have here in turn?
The sound you hear is like I repeatedly bang my head against my desk.
Okay so we have a regular wall here. Sadly, that sounds ridiculous because there are no other walls. On top of this house, we have another house without walls. How great can a great room be? This house is really trying to find out.
Inside that wall is another bedroom. It’s annoying, so we don’t look at it, but I want you to know that it has carpet. I want to let you know that the stained glass window you see on the wall there is a real window that you can see through the mouth of the bed. That’s normal.
Spiral staircase? They are also carpeted. Their center support poles? It is topped by a horse hitching hook.
You may be asking yourself: Does the railing of that strange ceiling room match the railing of the spiral staircase? No. None of the railings match. A flower rising from the living room. A strange mesh up to the bedroom. And on the third floor is actually another kitchen trellis. You can push the 100 percent trellis by leaning on it, so you can’t just hear everything in this room and get lots of shin spots, you can lean and fall incorrectly. What everyone wants!
We have … carpets on the loft here. Great. We have another big window, one on the opposite wall. But we split it up with this loft space so now it looks like shit. Here are some skylights open, so you can accidentally flood your office. Exciting! Danger! I hate it so much.
Below, I found another bathroom:
There’s nothing better than ruining some perfectly nice classic piece around it with silly shit. Why are these half walls here? It’s not hiding anything from the person in the tub. Why this tub, which is big and beautiful, has a spigot that looks like it belongs to a sink. Why, after the beautiful wood of this house, do I have to torture with this dirty layered floor?
Let’s get out of here.
Ah. This is at least nice. Let’s lie down in the grass and maybe the horrible lattice and horrible bifurcated windows will disappear from our consciousness. Maybe we can leave this house with a reminder that it is better to cut corners in a bouquet of flowers, even fun. But in the granary of the 1880s, in virtually any home, the cuts will simply pile up until you have a house jigsaw puzzle where all the charm is overshadowed by bad choices.
This week’s house is listed at ো 1,099,000 for eight days in the district. Email me if you bought this house. If you have an unlimited budget, I have some ideas for how it can be governed.