Tasteful Friends, I have an idea.

This home at 1.2 million has quite a history. It's unclear based on the photos how much original material is left, but ten acres in a prime location. It was likely built as a weekend place for wealthy NYers, but it's been a dormitory for a private school for many years. Its Colonial Revival roots are gracious, and I imagine it's going to take 600k plus to make it right.

Husbear and I are finally retired and mostly out of medical perils. We just signed an acceptance counter offer on a cute little 3br 2ba ranch style with a great backyard garden in the heart of beautiful Wine Country in Northern California.

It's move-in ready, but there's room for improvements. It was owned by an elderly English lady. We'll start by changing the old lady-look by painting the dusty rose-colored walls a MANly light gray on the exterior and interior. I'd post the link but don't want to expose our address. We sold our house in the big city and paid cash for this place, which is significantly larger and more modern than our old place. No more mortgage! The kitchen does "need" updating (formica countertops, linoleum flooring) but it is not ugly and is fully functional. The dishwasher is a scream. It looks to be from the 1960s and is in perfect condition.

We'd need to save for a while before we could do major renovations. We're done with paying interest on anything ever again.

We could knock out a square space that separates the kitchen and the main living area to open it up, and add a kitchen island. It is currently a nice sized kitchen pantry on one side and a coat closet on the other. But we think we like the storage space and that the kitchen is separate. Also, there is a covered outdoor area off of the dinning area that we could enclose by simply putting up a wall of windows and a slider to turn it into an enclosed sun porch or as an extension of the dinning area. I'm not in the mood for dealing with contractors and construction.

For the past 4 years, I've been house-obsessed. We found a gem for a reasonable price (by CA standards) in a county that is Deep Blue.

No, I do not find r1 attractive nor interesting. It looks massive. The rural location is probably beautiful.

Too big r1. I prefer a small, interesting house.

I have the same habit, only at an obsessive level. I find maybe three or four properties a week of interest, most of which need some or a moderate amount of renovation or restoration.

Here's an apartment of 200m2 (2150sf) in Modica, Sicily in a late Baroque palazzo. It's a good size and plan, on the upper floor of the palazzo, with a little L-shaped patio of its own and great views and balconies. The price is maybe not a huge bargain for the location, but it's a lot of architecture for the money. It needs very little obvious work to my eye. I like the old-fashioned kitchen, the floors are great, the decorated ceilings I would leave as they are. The rest of the walls need painting and maybe some of the 4 bathrooms might need some improvement, but I like it as it is. It just needs a few small things to taste and then decoration and furnishing.

Listing to follow.

Listing for R5

Holy fuck that's absolutely stunning R5/R6! The view, authenticity and beauty. Affordable too.

I don't like those old houses sitting right on roads in Connecticut.

This house is a few hours from where I currently live, and, I could be very happy in Larghan House, Blairgowrie, without having to change much, with the exception of a few floral sofas which I would remove/burn.

Would kill for that house r9.

Madison, Indiana is full of federal houses from the early nmineteenth century OP . Cheap too. You could practice to your heart's contet

Lovely house, R9. I normally gripe about low ceilings, and these are quite low, yet I like most everything about the house: the contrast between front and rear elevations, the walled mature and unfussy green garden, the wing of the house with studio/games room that doesn´t communicate to the rest of the house, the kitchen and back kitchen, the views from every window.... I hate that teal color on the fitted carpeting and might replace it with woven grass matting, a better grade of oriental rugs would look great, the furniture is a comfortable mix, the upholstered pieces are the most expendable though some are okay. It's the rare house I wouldn't hesitate to buy furnished and take my time upgrading various things. And the setting and feel of the place is great. It reminds me of some houses I knew well over the years.

The Italian job is fucking stunning, wow. The ad says there's no heating, although I suppose the climate in Sicily is mild, even in the winter.

R11: I don't see any late Federal or Greek Revival houses for sale in Madison, Indiana t the moment. Those are the styles that define the town visually. There are a couple of later 19thC houses that are nice, one of which is for sale. It doesn't appear to need anything, though the 3-bay carriage house offers room for conversion to an art studio or other purpose.

If I can’t have the house at r9, I may settle for this pile in Auchterarder.

R9's is almost perfect.

Sorry, I don’t wish to kill the thread with houses from Scotland, but there must surely be a DLer in the market for a 14th century castle?

I think it’s pretty ugly on the exterior and the proximity of the cottages is unfortunate, but the interior almost makes up for it. There’s not much daylight getting in though. I love the library, and the green bedroom.

I seem to be the only one who doesn't like R9. Mother of god, that green carpet. Why are there 2 tables in the dining room. Why are there 2 kitchens, one looks like a toy kitchen.

R18, the smaller kitchen is the scullery, where most of the washing up and dirtier domestic tasks would traditionally be done.

I agree, the 2 tables look odd in such proximity, but the one in the window is (I think) a smaller table for breakfasting in the morning light, whereas the larger table is for formal evening dining, closer to the fire.

R19 Thank you for answering me (the obviously dumb American) so nicely.

So apparently you all love old larger homes with structural and maintenance issues in the middle of nowhere, along with insufficient insulation, heating, AC or electricity.

You have this dream of being part of a little village community but realize it's a tight-knit group of inter-related people who don't like outsiders, let alone two gays. Then you have to drive an hour or more to anything fun or something to do and resent the quiet drive back as both of you think - why the fuck did we move all the way out here? Your friends visited once several years ago and that was enough for them.

Try to sell and you can't - because nobody wants to live out there either which is why it was so cheap in the first place.

I foresee a murder-suicide in your futures.

[quote]So apparently you all love old larger homes with structural and maintenance issues in the middle of nowhere, along with insufficient insulation, heating, AC or electricity.

Ha, R22l1. I don't see an old house in your future. When I see a great old house, I set about thinking what it would be like to live there and cataloguing the many concessions I would make to live there.

All houses have maintenance issues if you live in them long enough. In a large house not every owner entertains heating and cooling the entire place every day to an optimum level of comfort; they pick a base level of comfort for the house then fine tune the comfort for the rooms they are using at that time of the year or for the needs if the moment.

Gay men are both some if the best and some of the worst restorers of houses, in that they can have a tendency to restore the life out of an old house down to a molecular level, not happy until old atom has been replaced with a new one. They don't know where to start nor where to end sometimes. I prefer an under-restored house to one that someone had tried to straighten and correct and insulate and replace with new technology until it's 90% new materials and technology built around the memory of s house that isn't there anymore.

I don't know many historic house owners who live in great discomfort as their sacrifice to an ideal of purity and original fabric. But neither do they dig up every foundation stone and reengineer it against earthquakes and correct every crooked edge or floorboard with a centuries old scar. If your instinct is ro replace everything old with everything new, don't buy an old house. You'll only ruin the house and break the bank doing it.

R22 - so you enjoy doing a lot of maintenance, not having a comfortable temp in your home where you're going to have to spend most of your time because there's nothing close by, and realize there are a lot of concessions to live there.

So basically - "I like the idea of living in a manor like home so I can feel special and look at some beautiful architectural elements while I sweat my balls or freeze my ass off out in the middle of nowhere?"

What's the upside besides that?

This 16thC palace house from the time of Cervantes is fantastic. Places like this make me toy with the idea of buying the biggest house in a small town and maybe pairing it with a tiny apartment in a big city for balance and sanity.

The low prices is due to the location in an atmospheric but population shedding rural area of Spain.

That stair hall with the wall of keys... I want it. I love that it's in sound but original state, having escaped layers of later shitty renovations and bad taste. A minimal restoration, some attention to bathrooms and kitchen, some heating/cooling for some zones of the house, and a lifetime of buying furnishings for the place. Not a bad idea.

This thread should be titled "Grey Gardens International".

In this episode, John and Ed are two busy city gays looking to get away from it all and move into a charming older home that they can restore. Neither can speak the language or has done any renovation work in their lives. We'll show them 3 options, none are remotely what they're looking for, in areas they're not familiar with or the laws or customs. None have reliable internet service or cell phone coverage.

"We're going to turn it into a B&B" says the couple excitedly, harkening back to to a concept that peaked in 1989.

"We're quitting our jobs, selling our condos and putting our life savings into this, so it has to work!" exclaimed the couple during happier times, six months before the divorce trial and and nine months before John was arrested on first degree murder charges.

"A prison cell with 3 squares and swarthy, lustful inmates is a massive step up to how I've been living the past 10 months!" squealed John. "Everyone's idea of paradise is unique to their own."

I keep coming back to this apartment in Lille, France.

85 square meters would be 915 square feet. It's a 2 BR duplex (kitchen/living room downstairs, 2 bedrooms upstairs) for 1415 Euro/month ($1575/month in USD) which includes water and heat. It comes with a 3-year lease.

The kitchen is very bare (oven and cooktop only), but the living room keeps me coming back.

why do the ceiling heights vary so much?

R27: There is no one answer. Many like to attribute all decisions in architecture and building to climate or to technology, but money, taste, fashion, are also in play.

Many times I have been in an 18thC or earlier house museum and heard visitors in rooms with high ceilings of 16 feet or 5 meters mis-explain them with "yes, because people were so much shorter then." They never saw the fault in their logic.

Rich people have favored very high ceilings for centuries, millennia even. And in some climates even poor people have the luxury of high ceilings to keep their houses cooler. New England houses from the 18thC (and even many large Victorian houses of a period where ceiling height was important status marker) have low ceilings to amplify the effect of fires to keep cold rooms a bit warmer.

It all depends of some matrix of taste, time period, wealth, budget, climate, heating/chilling technology, etc.

R26 - for 1400 euros a month, seems like a deal. 1hr train from Paris, 1h25 min from London.

You could do much much worse. Lille is one of the bigger cities in France with total pop over 1.5 million, so you should have everything you need.

Here's a cost comparison between NYC and Lille (centro). The average price for a one-bedroom apartment in Lille is given as 795/mo.

A lot of things are less or more often much more affordable in Lille,.a few things not. The Numbeo city comparisons are always interesting and generally reliable in painting a broad picture.

R30 - Right - but the apt listed is 2 BR. Doesn't seem bad to me - only 30 euros and 1 hour to Paris du Nord on TGV every hour.

Cheap living overall while not giving up much. There are 6 gay bars and clubs - so nightlife does exist for gays.

I had this idea for a thread...

You didn'jt look very hard R14. I do see some federalist homes for sale which were updated to Italianate, but I assure you they are there. And Greek Revival too.

Now this would be a proper challenge

It depends on your age, health, wealth and patience. I, too, look at properties I could theoretically afford and dream. Then, the reality that it will cost 3X as much and 3X as long to fix sinks in. Plus I don’t want a huge place when I would really only live in a few rooms. But then, I’n pretty old.

R35 - that's wise at any age - excess space when you only need a few rooms is always a waste.

In OP's original house, I'd be obsessed with the amount of semen spilled over the years in those dormitory bedrooms. The floors might look like they have been polyurethaned, but those of us on DL recognize a nacreous layer of permacum when we see it.

[quote]so you enjoy doing a lot of maintenance, not having a comfortable temp in your home where you're going to have to spend most of your time because there's nothing close by, and realize there are a lot of concessions to live there.

[quote]So basically - "I like the idea of living in a manor like home so I can feel special and look at some beautiful architectural elements while I sweat my balls or freeze my ass off out in the middle of nowhere?"

[quote]What's the upside besides that?

The upside is living in a beautiful place that's as comfortable as you want. The upside is knowing that a house that has stood for 200 years or 600 is likely to be around for a lot longer than a house built in the past 50 years, and all the more so if you have restored the house. The upside is having a house that is the equivalent of a painting found in a museum, rather than a poster of a painting from Ikea. The upside is having a house that reflects something of your self and your interests -- beyond the brief of a 3-bedroom, 3-bath house with an open kitchen plan and a 2-car garage within a certain post code.

We know what becomes of the food that we eat, yet some people enjoy the experience of food while others are content to chow down feed from a trough. Is that "feeling special"? Is it sacrifice not to just your head in the trough?

Having an HVAC tech make a service call to check the system every year and replace some filters is not a lot of maintenance. Not heating or cooling the floor or rooms of the house that you are not using is not freezing one's ass off, it's just being mindful of energy use when there is no point in controlling the temperature of a large house as though it were a studio apartment.

Some people choose houses with all of the care they give to buying a bag of socks at Costco. Some people want more. I've never lived in anything but historic houses and apartments, and I've never suffered cold or any but temporary inconvenience while renovations were in progress, and always for the reward of a place that gives me pleasure.

For me it's less a question of sacrifice than aesthetics and priorities. I buy classic clothes that last rather than follow fashion trends, I prefer to read old books to NYT bestsellers, I prefer unique paintings and furniture rather than Ikea or Restoration Hardware, I prefer historic houses over new.

Another ancient house in Spain, this one in Cataluña. It's has10 bedrooms and 731m2 (7900 sf) plus a large patio of 120m2 for €595,000 ($664,000). It's 16thC or earlier, with many changes over time obviously, but very atmospheric with a great variety of room sizes, including several quite large rooms. And it has its own chapel with an espadaña and gilded Baroque altar, for fuck's sake. The library is terrific and would be the room I spent the most time in. The condition and level of maintenance seems quite good. There are at least three bathrooms shown in the Virtual tour photos, all a bit dated maybe but not bad, and opportunity to add more if you were inclined. The kitchen with a w/c is set apart and connected by a narrow passageway to the main house to isolate heat and cooking smells. It's not shown in photos which suggests a typical kitchen in a large old Spanish house: old-fashioned fitted with giant sinks and maybe a built-in stove and maybe a traditional grille built into a chimney, the only modern concessions a refrigerator/freezer or two . Such kitchens were the domain of a cook and the cleaner/s. They are usually quite large and have great charm, easily modernized a bit without losing their character to fit life without a lot of domestic staff.

The patio is a lovely space with toldos or awnings to protect against the sun. It's a little underutilized in parts and could do with many more plants. A lot of houses like this are owned by various heirs and kept as a sort of family shrine for all the things no one wants to part with yet no one wants for their own. Annual property taxes are extremely low in Spain so it's easy to hold onto something like this for many years without a lot of expense.

If I bought it, I would ask for everything in it less true personal effects. There is very little of any individual value, but few things so awful that they are not useful until you could start upgrading with better quality pieces. You can see portable electric space heaters in various rooms. I would see that the kitchen was restored and new appliances and features added as needed. I would add HVAC zoned for for major parts of the house and then controllable by room. Eventually I would upgrade the bathrooms to more or less the same but with better tile and finishes. And I would buy furniture and art like crazy. Luxury for me is the architecture and the patio and all those rooms and those many bookshelves, not a lot of mod-cons and a bathroom for every bedroom. No way would I add more than a small bathroom or two, at most. If I ever filled the ten bedrooms with beds and then with people, it would be a very rare thing and my friends would have to go down the hall to share bathrooms.

Distances: to Tarragona 20m drive, 1hr bus / to Sitges 1.20 drive, 3hr bus / to Barcelona 1.20 drive, 3hr train

A Google Maps Streetview screen grab of the facade of the house at R39, with bouganvilla.

R38 - alright - I'm not going to try and pop your romantic bubble about owning excessively large old homes in the middle of nowhere. But the option isn't one of these vs. McMansion with IKEA furnishings.

You're working overtime trying to defend living in a faded-glory manse that no local or country citizen wants to buy so you can walk around in a smoking jacket and feel like a lord of the manor.

If you have the money and time for all of that - more power to you.

Great thread OP! I love most of the places posted here so far, but R9 is the winner by a narrow margin so far - and I would absolutely keep those cool as fuck floral sofas!. The pile in Auchterarder at R15 is a more manageable size but parts of it have been badly modernised (and staged with shit furniture but that'll go), still a lovely house though

R38 is absolutely spot on - I loathe most modern interior design and architecture, I hate the sterility and lack of soul of so much of it, unfortunately homes with the character and beauty I desire are hard to come by down under. And finding beautiful stuff to put in it is a challenge sometimes too, although it is getting easier as some of it is coming back into fashion

R22 does make some valid points re practicality, the only way I'd want to take on many of the lovely old Victorian or earlier homes I love would be as a communal effort with a number of like minded people - when I see some of the stunning Gilded Age mansions or other huge, grandiose places my first thought is "this would be great as a commune". Realistically for myself I'd want to take on something smaller, and although I would want an interior that would reflect all the design trends current in 1880, I wouldnt hesitate to incorporate modern materials and technology as needed as long as it can be hidden somehow. Heatpumps, LED lighting, Wifi, smart home tech, bring it on, but hide it under chintz skirting or behind the aspidistras.

This place has been posted before, but strikes me as a good compromise between beauty and practicality in that it is a very manageable size, in a location close to everything you'd need, but still has an outstanding interior and exterior (bar the shit furniture its staged with)

Nice house, R42. The setback from the adjoining buildings startles at first but has its advantages -- better than being set hard against the street. The kitchen and bathrooms have some detailing compatible with the period of the house but they are understated, fitting in well without overshadowing the surviving historic elements. Even the Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper that is usually used in such contrast and excess that it makes even me uneasy is used to good effect without going too far.

I noticed that in the Spanish mansion there were only electric plugs in the bedrooms. And those only had two electric outlets. Overhead lights are not satisfactory for reading or other close work in the big rooms. In some ways, our modern way of life is not compatible with these older dwellings. Fascinating to spend some time exploring, but very inconvenient for permanent living. Also, the library is wonderful - but unless you speak and read Spanish fluently, those books are only going to be there for show - and I suspect many are dull volumes of minutiae from ages long past.

R44 - shhh - or you're going to burst the fantasies of all the Hyacinth Buckets on this thread.

Consider yourself uninvited from their famous candlelit suppers in their no electrical or heated homes.

Here's another house, a bit bigger and doesnt really need any work either. Fantastic interiors, but you need to click through another link to see them. The site this is on, Circa Old Houses is a great resource for finding dream houses of this sort

One of the interior pics shows a statement on the wall saying "The Practical should not be the Enemy of the Beautiful" - couldnt put that better myself

Here's the pic I was referring to - the room in question is actually more Arts and Crafts than Victorian though but still beautiful

[quote]I noticed that in the Spanish mansion there were only electric plugs in the bedrooms. And those only had two electric outlets. Overhead lights are not satisfactory for reading or other close work in the big rooms. In some ways, our modern way of life is not compatible with these older dwellings. Fascinating to spend some time exploring, but very inconvenient for permanent living. Also, the library is wonderful - but unless you speak and read Spanish fluently, those books are only going to be there for show - and I suspect many are dull volumes of minutiae from ages long past.

What's so inconvenient? It's as though you don't realize that one could easily add additional electrical outlets and upgrade the electrical service? It's a normal thing to do in any old house with old wiring. Just as it's normal to have a variety of ambient, task, and accent lamps and light fixtures to your taste. Of course the books in the library will all be in Spanish, and in any such house and some a lot smaller that I've ever seen in Spain there will be a great many "dull volumes of minutiae from ages long past." The owners would probably be happy to leave behind the books for exactly that reason, but most buyers would expect to have their own books, or at most mix their own titles with some from the past owners. Buying an old house, even buying an old house furnished doesn't mean you have to read all of the previous owners' books no more than it means you have to wear their underclothes folded away in the furniture. Buying someone else's house doesn't mean you are condemned to pick up their old way of life and reading habits or taste in lighting. (Just as it doesn't when you buy a house that that is three years old and had just one owner before you.)

The problem is that wiring an old house is not a simple thing. First of all, walls in 16th century houses are generally solid. That house was built hundreds of years before drywall. So you can't just open up a spot in a wall and fish wiring through. Yes, anything can get done for a price. But the price of rewiring a modern house is substantial - at least $30,000 for a house of that size. Add to that the cost of figuring out how to do it through the historic materials and that cost could easily double. There are cool things in the architecture and details of that house - but I'm not budging from my position that most people would find it rather inconvenient after a bit. Pam Ellis has written extensively about the trials of renovating a 16th century palazzo in Italy- the expense and the time commitment.

And the library full of books that you'll never read. That's a lot of maintenance - dusting, and maybe even preservation. Many of those books look like they have leather bindings, which will deteriorate over time. Paper too deteriorates over time. Again - I'd love to visit and explore. But living there would present many challenges.

[quote]First of all, walls in 16th century houses are generally solid. That house was built hundreds of years before drywall.

No shit, R49! If that house had been of drywall construction it wouldn't have lasted one century, let alone five centuries. The rest of the world shakes it head in disbelief at the American standard of flimsy frame construction and drywall finished interiors. Why start from assuming it's wrong because it isn't drywall construction?

Of course you can't fish wiring through solid masonry walls. The most you can do is drill a hole one room to another and run exposed cloth covered wiring around the perimeter of a room, adding outlets and switches as needed. It's a better looking version of what you see in the scant few plugs visible in the fotos if the interior. It was used 100+ years ago and is still the solution today for such a house. In Spain it's very easy to get building code exemptions for an historic house where you may not want outlets at the prescribed standard for new construction.

Almost every old house and a great many newer houses in Spain has too few electrical outlets, same as the world over. External wiring is simple and quick to install, using ceramic or bakelite style switches and outlets and ceramic or brass insulators to attach the wire to the walls. I had an estimate to upgrade the electrical service and replace and augment the wiring for a house in Spain 50% larger than this one and it was €12,000 to15,000 with apologies for the high price.

You are right that the expense and the time commitment of restoring or even modestly renovating a complex old house. It's not for everybody. Even a lot of people with the time and money fuck it up because they insist on starting badly with ideas that hemorrhage money, overcomplicating everything and ruining the house in the process. In restoration, spending the most money on a problem isn't always the best solution.

I’ve fallen in love with Ockham House. The grounds look a little unkempt, but I love the mix of Arts & Crafts and Edwardian influences. I love the proportions of the rooms. I love the setting. I love the whole atmosphere of the place.

It’s beautiful. I don’t care that it is huge. I don’t care that it is very likely a moneypit. Chacun a son gout. The heart wants what it wants

Oops, the link to my future home…

Terrific house, R52. It was built just before the start of WWI, with some mostly interior alterations in the 1920s and 1930s (bookcases, some fireplaces, etc.), so you can trust it's sturdy and sound. The ground floor plan is great spine of a hallway running 115' or so, with a mix of room sizes arranged along it, and all the principal rooms facing south. It has all the important comforts of 20thC house design in a house that draws from 16th and 17thC design. It's eminently both grand and comfortable, and perfect for country house weekend parties.

Not to mention, the 3-bedroom cottage, the 5-bedroom bungalow, the 2-bedroom oast house, the 2-bedroom museum. Museum?