Tasteful friends, look at this abode

Frau palace! And...ugh...an Hermes blanket draped over the sofa - so tacky! Very "trying too hard".

It's beautiful, but unless they have 17 kids, they didn't "need more room." So why are they really selling the home?

So many trends, so little time.

Like the wisteria and the bathroom floors.

I have a basket of dirty knickers on top of my drier. I guess I need to rethink the decor in my laundry room.

I agree about the wisteria. it is lovely.

It might just be the camera angle, but I would not like my home to be that close to the street with such a big drop off. i would have installed a fence or a hedge.

The animal print carpet up the stairs is atrocious. There is always something off-putting about these “Frau Perfection” homes; you can sense the high-strung Disney Princess Incest Survivor personality behind them and it’s scary. Imagine the behind-closed-doors histrionic explosions about innocuous things. Makes me glad to not be straight.

Perfect, pristine, contemporary taste. Everything bought new within the past year. No personality.

The jewelry-draped Buddha is disrespectful.

Ugly light fixtures—-seems to be a theorem.

Very interesting palette.

Not enough white.

Yeah, r6. Looking at those pictures I was thinking how awful it would be to be her kid.

When I was a college student in Boston, I met a nice young woman who was from Newton, only she pronounced it “New-DON” I have never heard anyone else pronounce it that way. But I didnt know anyone else from Newton

Hideous in every detail. It would like buying a Bed, Bath & Beyond that had a "decorator's eye" manager.

But "hideous" isn't enough. Soullessly zombie-like, as if put together by prions.

Nice house, good bones, but too much white and not enough personality like what R7 says.

Needs a truckload of chintz

Who buys all those shoes for a child? Unless she has quadruplets, the little bastards are never going to get any wear out of any one pair.

The perpetrator.

Who the fuck is Erin Gates? Nevermind, the house and design are beyond boring.

This supports my theory that wealthy Boston women, while well put together, are notoriously frumpy and unattractive

Animal print is the calling card of a creatively bankrupt “designer”.

The house has lovely bones.

Dreadful. Worse than Cats.

Boring. They’re obviously rich—why can’t invest in some decent artwork to put on the wall?

The only reason I can think she's moving is for more outdoor space--there's not even room for a swing set let alone for kids to run around.

There is no no cultured assembly of fine things acquired over the years. Everything looks bought recently and perfectly matched.

Still considering all of that, it is mostly very nicely done. A pretty and tasteful home.

R13

[quote] Soullessly zombie-like, as if put together by prions

Great description! I have seen some other interiors for which it is even more apt.

You know what you look like to me, with your good laundry room wallpaper and your cheap animal prints? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good consultation has given you some ambiguous notion of design, but you’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Mrs. Gates? And that bad taste you’ve tried so desperately to shed – pure trailer park. What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? And oh, how quickly the boys found you! All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the Elements. Of. Style. blog.

Amazing, R25

I love it.

The three exceptions are: gold fixtures in some bathrooms, the chairs in the kitchen (YUCK), and some of the decorations in children's room. If you are using gold at all (gold, bronze or brass), it should be an antique or heirloom piece. Easy to throw out the chairs. You are going to need to repaint the children's rooms.

I love the outdoor space and furniture. But where's the pool.

Even H&M Home, FFS, wore it better.

Wayfair.com wore it better.

The J C Penney home design studio wore it better.

R28 With a space like that and with natural light like that, it is easy to do it better.

Erin Tubridy Gates is the founder and principal designer of Erin Gates Design and is also the creator of the award winning design blog Elements of Style. Raised in Connecticut by a creative mother and self-taught architectural designer, Erin learned to love every aspect of the home building and decorating process from a very young age…

The deco is doing the job and distracting most of you about the small rooms.

The deco is doing the job and distracting most of you about the small rooms.

bump

Grew up 5 minutes from this house. My aunts house was three doors down. It's right on the edge of the Newton center playground.

And it's pronounced New-un by the locals. No t and certainly no d.

So bland. But very saleable. A style that people buy because it’s neutral. It’s not “designed” - it’s engineered.

Most of the rooms were colorless. We are able to see color for a reason except for those that are colorblind and would like to be able to see color. I will never understand the blah factor.

Once again we have an historical house whose interior is now DEVOID of ANY historical details. The interior looks like something that would appear in one of those slick Oprah Winfrey magazines.

R36 Neutral colors are easy to live with. The effect can be serene and restful. They also visually unify a space. There is so much visual chaos outside the home. A neutral color palette provides a respite.

r38 it's boring

R39 To you. But for people with lives that are anything but boring, a serene restful unified decor is what they want.

I don't understand why parents don't put a low, temporary clothing rack for kids. There's actually a tiny, unstable-looking foot stool. Is some little kids supposed to stand on that stool and grab a hanger?

The house is definitely livable, but everything was bought all at the same time and it looks like it.

My cock shrunk into my body looking at this pics.

Meh... I liked the laundry nook and LOL'd at the stairway carpet.

I love the stairway carpet.

R44 it’s very brothel

I feel as though people are being very timid about decorating right now. It's like the gray era is trying to shut down, but many people are just clinging to the remnants of it.

Very tasteful. And that’s all the emotion I can muster for this home.

It must be exhausting to be these people

Animal print carpets on a stairway is a classic that you will see high end homes. There is a company in NYC called Stark that is famous for them.

R49 it’s a calling card to let you know a histrionic, high-maintenance whore lives there.

R49 that is a much nicer look, the patterned wallpaper is cool

I like the kitchen. It is surprisingly small, but there's a separate pantry. I like the cabinets (going up to the ceiling) and the built-in shelf at the "end cap" of the bar. I think it has a classic look and, in ten years, will still look good.

Here's the pantry area.

R49, I guess I'm a pleb then because I think they look awful.

Where are the good bones? Under the house?

[quote]Neutral colors are easy to live with. The effect can be serene and restful. They also visually unify a space. There is so much visual chaos outside the home. A neutral color palette provides a respite.

This argument again. And it never comes from people who are setting the world on fire, but from some sourpuss Linda Tripp-looking mug cradler.

Yes, yes, calm and Zen, so that the brilliant spectrum of your personality and intensity can shine like the sun and make that dreary cookie cutter place "shine bright like a diamond."

We all live stressful, overstimulated lives now. Perhaps that’s why the bland beige look is so appealing. We need less stimulation not more.

R57 no, the younger crowd is just too afraid to express emotions. This new decorating style, which avoids nearly any use of non-neutral colors, is basically autism shining through and the echo chamber of social media killing any creativity.

The jewelry piled on the Buddha statute and the shoes stacked one on top of the other look trashy to me. I don't care if it's just sneakers. All that house and that's how you store your shoes?

[quote]The jewelry-draped Buddha is disrespectful.

The frau-y wine mom types of white ladies LOVE using Buddhas and Ganeshas and similar items as decor, often after going on some package tour to India or Tibet and coming back pretending to be "spiritual" and worldly. I hate it. Like R48 said, these type of people are exhausting.

Buddhas are supposed to be displayed at the highest point in the room. She's such a dim wouldbe cosmopolitan.

This woman is a disrespectful cunt.

The next time I decorate a house, I’m going to include Jesus ring and necklace holders in closets and by sinks.

It’s amazing how oblivious white women are to their misdeeds. They treat everyone else’s cultures and religions like their personal decor menus.

The price seems low and I wonder why.

Love Boston and would take this in a heartbeat if I could. I agree with poster upthread that it seems almost underpriced.

It's fine to argue over paint colours (which these days seems to have taken on aspects of religion) but you can change those when you buy it. Should my Lottery ticket come in, I will redo this and show you lot, er, tasteful friends, how it should be done.

R14 - "Needs a truckload of chintz"

As noted above, wait till I buy it and put in the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets my Mum's complete set of vintage Grimwades (a/k/a Royal Winton) "Summertime" china. Of course, I will have to kill my sister for it (she inherited the set because, of course, she's a girl) and then hide the body and have them shipped from England, but needs must . . .

For those who have never seen it, here's a start on the truckload of chintz:

R63 Beat me to it: low price for Newton, one of Boston's more expensive suburbs. High property taxes (good schools, though.)

Something funny, though, in that Zillow shows it as not for sale but also as two residences (condos?) which are not for sale and whose square footage adds up to more (2800-plus sq ft) than that advertised in the blog post (2342 sq ft.) The posting/listing also says "my office will remain here" meaning, "in the neighborhood" or "in this house?"

If so, I wouldn't want the designer working downstairs.

I like the chevron flooring in one of the bathrooms. Not much else though.

This frau manages to get a lot of airtime...

Newton isn’t Boston, by the way. It’s nice and tree-lined and all that, but it’s a very suburban suburb.

I fucking hate the uniform beige look, GOD DAMN

R66 that is FUCKING AWESOME!

I can see why you'd be willing to kill for that. Try bribery first though, awesome as that china is it aint worth doing 20 to life for, unless you can hide the body real good

I got me a Royal Albert set like the one below, clawed it off my ex, bout the only good thing I ever got from that useless fucker

[quote]It's beautiful, but unless they have 17 kids, they didn't "need more room." So why are they really selling the home?

The house they are selling has 2342 square feet. That's hardly huge for an American house, and not huge for an interior designer (to be kind) as they often like to use their own houses as labs and staging areas for marketing and social media photos, etc.

The exterior of the house they are selling is a it dumpy: the scaled-down proportions of Gore Place was a nice idea, but they got them all wrong, and the detailing is shit: the tentative Federal front door surround, the squat proportions of the windows, the tell-tale toilet window above the front door, and the higgledy-piggledy additions left and right with more bad fenestration, some bad double-pane windows (right side) and badly shoved into a corner at that. The landscaping is seriously underwhelming with those underscaled foundation plantings, like irregular scoops of ice cream, and no good front edge to the property.

I can see easily why they would want to move to this much superior house with some real presence and architectural distinction. The bad news is that she will tart it up with cheap Wayfair-looking things like the last place; the good news is that I expect her impact on the house will be furnishings and "looks," not architectural changes—though to be fair the small kitchen is well done as R52 noted.

R72 - It would be churlish to say anything condescending about Royal Albert's beloved "Old Country Roses" (I have some myself), but once you've seen Grimwades' astonishing varieties of chintz . . . and whilst a piece or two of even sets of OCR can be found in almost any antique store. I have never EVER anywhere seen a set of Grimwades/Royal Winton. Replacements probably has some.

They have lots of it up on Ebay - I'm also fond of the Old Cottage Chintz pattern although I prefer the "Summertime". Check them out!

And I'll never get my hands on it because of course the niece will get it next. I love the gell so can't begrudge it.

Newton Centre is one of a handful of villages/town that make up Newton, the broader suburb of Boston. It has a very highly rated school district and is, hence, quite expensive with high property taxes. However, NC is the only one of those villages/towns, I believe, that has a real town centre.

It is only slightly less expensive than Brookline, which has the most eye-watering home prices I've seen outside of places like Greenwich, CT

R56 wrote:

[quote]This argument again. And it never comes from people who are setting the world on fire, but from some sourpuss Linda Tripp-looking mug cradler. Yes, yes, calm and Zen, so that the brilliant spectrum of your personality and intensity can shine like the sun and make that dreary cookie cutter place "shine bright like a diamond."

Note that I wrote what I did about neutral interiors without offending anyone. I simply described why many people choose that kind of color palette.

It is weird that it bothers you so. You have problems.

Decorate your home in a way that pleases you. And try feeling less threatened by others with different tastes.

For me personally, I prefer a skillful judicious use of color, but I wasn't writing about me.

[quote] I like the chevron flooring in one of the bathrooms. Not much else though.

That's one of the things that I didn't like. I'd rather have the lines flowing in one direction instead of zig-zagged like that.

To one of the above posters who is mad about the way they stack their shoes, look at what they do to their pantry.

For some bizarre reason they prefer to display their cheap groceries (goya beans and paul newman spaghetti sauce) on the upper shelves and they've put their crockpot and extra rolls of paper towels (unwrapped) on the floor of the pantry. All dust and dirt flies in on them. How nasty

Looks like there's some Barilla pasta as well.

R76 That would be odd looking

R77& R78 Well, Imsuppose they've exposed themselves now: Goya and Barilla.... Fuck 'em!

The breakfast nook is nice.

Other than that, the decor is a nightmare. It is *the* nightmare. I would be so depressed living there.

Imagine having to live in that heavily contrived house - with her.

It would be exhausting. Those poor children must be on edge every single moment of the day. They will be future opiate addicts in an attempt to dull the deep pain and stress of their pressure cooker childhoods. Like R81 says - a nightmare.

twee

The entire design is a C+.....maybe a B- on a good day. Everything is perfectly fine I suppose but not what I would have expected from an interior decorator. On Redfin you can see interior pics from the home's last sale in 2012 and it is clear that she at least improved it post purchase. When working with relatively small rooms with low ceilings such as this, I can understand the knee-jerk reaction to embrace shades of white. That said, if you are going to head down that boring road - do it really richly. Her look screams Target assemble-it-yourself particle board with the occasional Hermes throw tossed in a lazy attempt to fool the observer. Add some wainscoting and maybe vary the paint finishes to include something similar to lacquer against flat in similar but varying shades. Use more sumptuous, luxurious fabrics to upholster with and make sure that you have layers upon layers of varied sheens and textures. The light fixtures should be along the lines of sculpture and have some patina (hers look shiny, cheap and NEW - all of them). Most of her rugs are OK I guess, but nothing really works here. No depth, no sheen, no antiques or interesting wood furniture pieces. Maybe it looks better in person.

Well put, R84. Everything looks a little too new, too shiny, too underscaled, too timid, too Target, and too "decorator." Aside from the kitchen and bathrooms, there's no real design to the place, it's just decorating, plumping up slightly too small cushions and artfully draping the "iconic decorator blanket of 2012."

It's timid. The work of someone better at assembling Pinterest pages than real rooms.

Well put, R84. Everything looks a little too new, too shiny, too underscaled, too timid, too Target, and too "decorator." Aside from the kitchen and bathrooms, there's no real design to the place, it's just decorating, plumping up slightly too small cushions and artfully draping the "iconic decorator blanket of 2012."

It's timid. The work of someone better at assembling Pinterest pages than real rooms.

R84 you know what - I actually prefer the before version

I would love to see the homes some of you live in. I can just imagine...

What do you imagine they’re like, R88?

"Hi! Welcome to the house of WASP!"