Tasteful friends, your thoughts on this Hyde Park charmer

Perfect, once it's denuded of the terrible decor, descented and tidied back to something resembling living space.

Great price for the location. No put-on, for sure.

A bitch LOVED her jugs!

Love it.

The setting and outbuildings and the fact that it seems to have a full basement make it seem like an incredible value.

Pleasant inside and the garden especially. The garage and garden shed, the topography, and the stone walls and wood fence are the best features. Inside it's nice, but quite small, with long skinny rooms that would work if you want some version of the current owners Spartan Shaker Cape Cod (hang your chairs on the wall pegs, and commence to dance, or quilt, or churn butter, or something.) You either like all of that beaded board (walls and ceilings) or you don't. To me it's the home of some fussy queens retired to a overly contemplative, overly analytical life in Hyde Park, and the 1915 prairie school house look is a too spare for me, but at least it has a point of view and achieves what it set out to do with some style.

The kitchen is handsome, yet somehow in this small space everything useful is far apart from anything else useful, and you'd always be dealing with a series of decisions as to which make-do work surface is the least hateful for the task at hand.

The serious letdown for me is the facade of the (built in 1948) house. It's just so very dull and mean, with those cheap little stove chimneys and, well, not much else. You could replace the ugly roof with wood shingles or standing seam metal and that would improve the look a lot, and maybe add a wide Dutch door to replace the throughly insignificant one...but neither is enough to rescue it.

I don't hate it, it's actually very nice in many ways for a small, modest house, but it's not my taste.

Not bad, but isn't the general area full of addicts?

R5, I don’t disagree with your comments, but are you looking at it as a primary residence? I think the drawbacks you cite are less of a concern in a weekend place. And all that storage space in the outbuildings would be great for a NYC resident (if they are reasonably weather proof, but there are precautions you can take) . I might go look at it if it’s still available in a few months!

It needs a new roof.

And a lot of other mod cons if you really plan on living there.

R7, yes, absolutely, as a weekend place (which I assumed is how the current owners use it) my nitpicking matters a lot less. For me the price is the attractive thing; Hyde Park is a nice nexus of historic sites (though it's been years since I've been there), but I'm not sure the house would call me to make the trip back and forth.

Electric lines just behind the house?

R4 Does having a full basement add to the value of a house?

Jugs are overpowering this room.

Otherwise, love this house.

Chimney looks too skinny.

Love the sink, but it does look far away from the stove & fridge. That free-standing table in the middle is there just for photos. Not practical because it creates too many skinny spaces.

That stupid (right side, under table, under window) impedes movement.

R11 - yes, almost always. You don’t have to use it, so it’s hard to imagine a property where it would be a negative. How much it adds is HUGELY variable and depends on regional preferences, the specific site, and the characteristics of the basement (a basement with a 6’ ceiling that floods is obviously less desirable than a dry basement with an 8’ ceiling.

This particular property seems to be on a slopped lot and has at least two garage stalls. One in a freestanding structure and another drive under garage in the main house. So that space under the house is probably very usable.

R14 Well yay! I had a repairman come out to do some work on my basement and he kept commenting how AWESOME it was. He was in love with my basement. It made me laugh.