Saturday, June 21, 2008

The house I grew up in is back on the market again!

My parents sold the house to a couple of flippers, who came in and basically gutted the place and sold it a year or so later. There's a couple of photos on the website that show some of the changes, and some of it is completely unrecognizable to me. There's a photo of what I guess is the master bathroom which has two sinks, but hell if I know how they did it -- there was absolutely no room for that in the house I know! I like what they did with the kitchen and the new porch attached to the back is quite lovely, but my father's gorgeous gardens are gone. A wall has been built between the dining room and the sitting room, which makes both rooms far too small. I'm dying to know what they did with the basement, which was for most of my adolescence my domain, but there are no pictures. I may have to sneak down one of these weekends if there's an open house.

The Home I Don't Know Anymore

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A special call out to my sister, who got harvested of her gall bladder this weekend. Get better quick!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow!
The place looks very different! I bet you never knew the "L" could look so....civilized.
Much, much nicer than when we lived there.

Andy

Anonymous said...

Sayre went to an open house the last time the house was on the market. Here's how they did it--They took out the master bathroom and converted the master bedroom to a huge bathroom and dressing room combination. They took out the closet wall in the front bedroom and turned it into the master bedroom.

They left the hall bathroom pretty much the same, but painted it RED.

They turned the bedroom under the diningroom back into a garage/workshop, and moved the laundry there.

The computer room became a nursery.

I don't know what they did with the ell, but I'm guessing they opened a doorway into the family room.

Even with the expensive renovations, it is still house with a lot of drawbacks. I do like the kitchen and the new porch, though.

I don't know where they got the extra 300 square feet, as the footprint of the house is 30' X 50'. I guess they are counting the new porch on the back.

Mom

Sayre said...

As a testament to the local real estate market, the house is listed for $50,000 less than it sold for to the current owners... I was absolutely amazed that "our" house was up for sale for $440,000 (and the price went UP), which is what drew me to the open house. I had to see for myself what they did to make it worth that much. They did do an amazing job. The downstairs is actually pretty much like it was. The Ell was opened up and the shot with the double bed in the light colored room is in there. Jerry's room was painted a dark hunter green and was the man-cave. It was actually pretty cool - except for my room being turned into the junk/garage/workshop room. The fake wall was still there, though!

Visit my blog to see how I'm doing - definitely on the mend! Thanks for the thoughts - and the flowers! John sent them from all of you and they are just gorgeous - my favorite kind (even though I don't know what they're called).

Anonymous said...

Looking at that photo of the nursery again, I think it must be the old diningroom. That would make sense, as the kitchen is listed as "eat-in". There is a chandilier, and the proportions are wrong for the computer room. I'll watch for an open house---I'm too curious for my own good!

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that the changes appear to be primarily cosmetic.The plumbing was in trouble with calcium buildup, none of the fixtures matched when we got it. The wiring was hopelessly inadequate for a modern current draw. Not visible, the expensive cure for the basement flooding, one reason the front garden was destroyed.
The $ 400,000 tag is impressive, but we calculated that to make it "marketable" we would have to spend over $ 200,000 and decided, what the hell--and left. dad