I couldn’t resist continuing this conversation after coming across a house that has been castrated, bastardized, sterilized, and all but ripped from its roots.  Sorry about the language folks, but just when I think sometimes I’ve had enough, said enough, this happens.  Of course it’s not the only one, but ohmygosh, all I can ask is why???

http://www.findnewenglandhomes.com/property_information.asp?mls=71518725

Why would anyone turn a house built in 1720 into a sterile cookie cutter concoction?  Why make antique walls flat and straight, clean and new, or sand color, character and wear from floors that took two hundred years to achieve?!  Why expose brick where it was never meant to show, and put ugly wood over fireplaces where surely lovely paneling had been?  What is the mindset here?

Are there really not enough buyers out there looking to live in the real thing?  Is the only way to sell an old house these days to open it up, sand the hell out of it and paint it a sterile white?

I call it Nantucket contemporary.  I’ve seen a lot of them, new and old, in magazines, and in person.  Not quite as bad as this one, but definitely made to look like half asylum, half home.

The bright side? At least it’s still standing.  At least the outside covering is still those wonderful weathered shingles, and the proportions of the house are great.  The chimney seems good – but too bad about that metal flue sticking up.  The walkway, the paving, the garage doors, ugh.

Just had to vent.  If nothing else, this is an example of what not to do to an old house.

Maybe someday, some kind soul will save it, again, the right way.