Alright, quick photo update on the two unfortunate houses in my 'hood. The "finished" foursquare one a few blocks away is now up for sale again, meaning it was a flip. The house was originally sold for ~120,000$, and now they're asking 189,000$. This is quite high for the neighbourhood it's in. My house was only 85K, and I think I have more square footage, however that one has a nice private yard and a new deck.
See the listing here for interior photos. All the doors are now new (cheap) 6 panel Home Depot doors, a lot of the floors were replaced, etc.
http://www.century21.ca/Property/ON/K6J_4C6/CORNWALL/BEDFORD_ST/414
I also just noticed that they ripped out some of the detail mouldings on the arches. There are two curved archways on the first floor and originally they had these sort of column caps around the top just under the curved portions. It was one of those features that was a unique architectural detail. I did not think that they had removed these. They actually got rid of an archway entirely.
I found this OLD LISTING. See the difference:
http://cornwall.estatesincanada.com/houses-for-sale/large-lotgarage-414-bedford-street_658892.html
They got rid of all the beautiful old window casings, too, and the antique furnace grates (which absolutely kills me because I would have taken them).
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The house near Mom's place has fared even worst.
A few weeks ago (maybe a month by now), she had told me they were ripping off all the brick, and putting up "ugly beige siding" (her exact words). It's pretty bad when even my Mom is saying it's awful, since she tends to be slightly indifferent. She also didn't like the awful brown windows that they installed.
These are old photos from back then (few weeks back):
You can see that everything was gutted to the studs:
Piles of bricks...
Then fast forward to yesterday, when I took these. The house looks so awful I can't even list the items that look wrong.
I was really hoping that they would reinstall the original window layout (2 on each side on the upper part), but who does that anymore. Light? Who wants that? It looks like the house is totally off balance.
God DAMN this looks bad. And what the heck is that bump-out on the roof. It looks like a shed. I can only assume it's a closet, but it looks RETARDED.
This almost makes me want to cry.
This side looks slightly less stupid, but I hate the brown windows with light yellow siding, with white trim. It's also obvious that two windows are missing, though if you want to be picky, maybe as many as 5 windows missing (2 on the top roof "room", 2 on the back of the house (one on each floor), and one right in the middle). Plus 2 basement windows, so yeah, 7-ish? That's pretty terrible. This doesn't count missing windows on the other sides of the house.
Just compare with some of the "before" photos:
While this seems like a tragedy, it could have been worse.... They could have leveled the house and built an ugly rancher box. I wish more people appreciated the old houses, and fewer people flipped houses. Thanks for sharing the photos. I enjoy seeing posts like this.
ReplyDeleteIf I had a dollar for every poor rehab like this that I've seen, I'd be a billionaire! Thanks for the updates.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy seeing the botched reno pics you post. Poor old place. At least some of it is getting reused though, instead of being completely torn down.
ReplyDeleteAs an old house lover, the second house you showed is such an abomination I don't see how a new house could be worse. That single off-center window on the third floor is the worst! What were the people thinking?
ReplyDeleteYears ago my husband, my dear friend and I were driving around looking at various f-ed up houses and imagining which ones we'd bazooka to put them out of their misery. So now whenever we see an ugly house we yell out "bazooka target". Number 2 here qualifies.
I still occasionally walk by this house. The last tragedy I saw was that they trashed the original stained glass window over the main window. I had written them a note ages ago saying that I'd salvage it if they didn't want it, and I just passed by one day and they just have a single plain ugly vinyl window in that opening.
DeleteWho takes down brick, to replace it with vinyl!
ReplyDeletePeople with no taste, or who didn't want to spend just a bit more to have the problem fixed. The house looks like a total abortion. They ripped out all the stained glass, beautiful interior archway, everything.
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