The Potential Ruination of a Great House

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This incredible house has a long post on Old House Dreams.

 

Nice house, right?

Fabulous house, right?

Amazing house, right?

Yet this historic structure may soon be “updated” by a young couple who want to flip houses for a profit. The couple has no restoration experience and no restoration sensibility. Nor do they apparently even have experience rehabbing old houses.

My heart just feels sick.

The couple has apparently purchased another wonderful historic home, and the following images show their plans for the house.

 

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The couple plan to take a perfectly lovely historic home and transform it into something entirely different. They plan to add a huge eyebrow dormer window, another porch roof above the main porch, a car port (with a stained-glass gable end no less), and a ton of bushes.

 

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The house today. All I would do is paint the exterior in period-correct colors, and install more attractive roofing. The place would then POP.

 

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Here, the plan is to gut historic rooms and ceilings and create a two-story library. While such a library might be a good idea in a new $20M McMansion in, say, Hollywood, does it make any sense in a historic home?

 

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In the kitchen, the idea is to wholly gut all the original features and replace them with a McMansion-style kitchen.

 

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While the current bathroom is clearly not original, why does the proposed plans look like nothing appropriate for a historic home?

 

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This bathroom DOES have likely original features, such as the sink, tub, and wood walls. Admittingly, the bathroom is not currently very appealing, but once RESTORED it could be stunning.

 

On the couple’s Facebook page, they comment that they could not wait to demo the “non-original” tiles around a mantle. When it was pointed out that the about tiles WERE original, they refused to accept this.

Sigh. I feel so sad.

2 Comments

  1. ken on March 12, 2015 at 10:38 pm

    This makes me so sad.

  2. Kim M on October 26, 2022 at 11:48 pm

    These kind of stories make me feel sick to my stomach and very sad in my heart. If people want a modern house full of the latest trends, I think they should build a new house, or at least purchase a “new-ish” house to update, and please leave the old houses for the people who love and appreciate them. I know, I know, it’s a free country and people can do whatever they please…. but in the little world I’ve made up in my brain, people would be thoughtful enough to consider this point of view. In 10 or 20 years, there won’t be any old houses left that have not been ruined. It makes my heart ache, I grieve over things like this.

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