Comments by "Lucinda Jackson" (@Lucinda_Jackson) on "Touring Elaborate Foursquare built in 1899 | This House Tours" video.
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I really loved the house itself. It’s beautiful and very imposing from the street and has a great presence, excepting the ultra modern lights on either side of that magnificent entrance. I’m even surprisingly okay with the replacement door with oval glass. It has a nice layout and flow and I think the ground floor is lovely. I would have liked more trim and millwork in the original wood finish instead of white everywhere, but there are still enough great details and features left from the original home to give it a warmer feel. The pocket doors, windows, fireplaces, doors with transoms, etc all show the home’s charm. I don’t even mind the kitchen - a family still needs to live in the space and the kitchen needs to accommodate a current lifestyle. It could be made a bit less modern with a few different choices in decor, such as the lights and island seating. I’d say the first floor is a good blend of historic and modern and very livable and I liked it.
I also loved the attic. The crisp blue and white (and that beautiful tile in the little bathroom!) are so appealing and, with all the windows, helps to keep things light and bright. Attics can often be a bit dark. And, as you said, painted woodwork wouldn’t have been uncommon in an attic space. It’s doubtful that it would have been a dark shade of blue - more likely it would have been white or cream with color on the walls - but I think it still comes across well as it helps to accentuate and show off the features of the rooms while breaking up the relentless sea of white in the house.
Where things get lost, IMO, is on the second floor. All that remains leaving any of the home’s original character intact are the beautiful doors with their hardware. Everything else is a stark, very modern, white. One bedroom had a beautiful fireplace mantel and I think it’s pretty painted white (prettier when white against color on the walls IMO), but then they painted the apron tiles in front of the fireplace with flat, white paint! Who paints porcelain tiles? The originals should have been refurbished or replaced, not just had an odd looking coat of flat white paint slapped on both tiles and grout. Just a terrible shortcut! Then there’s the stripped down brick fireplace in the master bedroom. Also very modern and not something that’s at all historically accurate or even attractive in that space. The baths were done in a very modern and cold grey and white - which, aside from being a bad choice for the house, will soon be going out of style. The second floor just looks, frankly, like a generic, cheap, flip house. Oh, and there’s the matter of the absolutely drop dead gorgeous piece of original furniture in that bathroom. Why, oh why, did they place it in n a room with high humidity AND ruin it by cutting it down to fit that space?? Perhaps it had been cut down by previous occupants to fit that space?
All in all, the house was lovely - just sad that the design choices were so inappropriately generic.
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@ThisHouse
I was expecting much worse! It didn’t come across as being in terrible condition when it was last sold. Much of the work was in the downstairs with new floors and windows, a revamped kitchen and powder room, etc. And the work was all great! I already liked the first floor except for a few touches here and there that were simply a matter of differing choices. I don’t even have a problem with leaving the rest of the millwork painted there - windows and doorways would have been much more expensive and difficult to match so probably easier, better and perfectly fine to paint all of that.
It’s the entry where I felt the loss of the wood. I grew up next door to a house somewhat like this one - less grand, or on a slightly smaller scale - and I always loved the wood. That mirror with the bench, the big storage bench along with the paneling behind it, and that newel post and staircase were all oak and very dignified and imposing in their natural state. It was awe-inspiring every time and I loved that the woman who lived there enjoyed having a little girl admire and explore her home! Maybe my reaction was colored more than a little by my memories of how it would have looked. You may find it interesting that, being on a slightly less grand scale, the servant’s staircase wasn’t a full set of stairs to the second floor, but led to a landing halfway up where the help would continue on the main stairs.
As for the second and third floors, I pretty much stand by my original comments there as well. There was no reason I could see from the pictures (which may be the key) to remove the fireplace surround and mantel in the owner’s suite and strip the wall to brick except for some modern, urban coolness factor. I see that the fantastic built-in was, in fact, in that spot before and looks like it always was. And it looks like it was always awkwardly jammed into the corner. It’s difficult to see from the angles of the photos, but there may have been drywall applied to the old plaster wall there which makes it look as if it has been cut. Either way, I was clearly wrong there! I do hate, though, that it’s now in a bathroom…
I think sometimes I forget how much additional work has been done that isn’t apparent at first - work that quickly eats up budgets. Like the removal of paint on the facade. I was worried about not feeling the light fixtures were just right when they had spent the time and money to preserve the building by removing the paint that was suffocating the building! And removal of the stair lift and it’s power “stuff” at the top of the stairs in the hall and those awful wads of electrical wires everywhere in what I think was the basement!!
Thanks so much, Ken, for giving the link - I appreciate it as I appreciate your channel and all the hard work you do. 💕
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