Color House

For those of you who like strong colors, I think I found the house for you—

I especially like the knife holder in the kitchen, and the basement floor in the TV room section. And note that the love of color carries through to the occupants' clothes closet! Seems like it's possible that the owners are selling so they can buy a bigger house and go more all-in on bold colors and custom built-ins.

Don't you get the feeling the people who live in that house must be pretty cheerful folks? Not all doom, gloom, and depression, at least*.

Mike

*I do have to say that the current fashion for grays and even blacks in houses—gray vinyl floors are everywhere, all the walls painted gray, and exteriors painted black, which has got to be the real estate equivalent of a sadness beard—is not to my liking either. I guess my love of black-and-white stops somewhere.

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Featured Comments from:

louis mccullagh: "Actually this occurs in huge numbers in homes. Ask an estate agent, there are a huge number of house (etc.) buyers who will (irrespective of the age of the fittings) rip out kitchens and bathrooms (and other elements) when they buy a house. Indeed many when finished will then soon sell and move on to another property. This even happens if they actually designed and built the house from scratch. They aim to have show houses, and then get bored or dissatisfied with their own efforts."

Mike replies: It seems self-defeating. Doesn't it just limit the number of potential buyers?

There was a house on a corner near where I used to live in Wisconsin. It had extensive gardens all around it, in an extensive system of tiers and terraces built up with railroad ties. One day a For Sale sign went up. A few weeks later I was walking the dog past it and the owner happened to be out watering. We got into a friendly conversation. Eventually I mentioned to him that, in my opinion, he was probably going to have to take the gardens out if he wanted to sell the place. Well, his attitude took a big change at that. He explained that the gardens were the house's best feature, that he'd been working on them for years, and did I have any idea of the monetary value of all those plants? He pointed at a few that were near us and named their cost to buy. And so on. I heard him out, then simply explained that I'm not a gardener, so if I were looking at his house, the gardens would put me off, because there was no way I would want to take on the care of all that.

Well, the house sat on the market for months and months, through several changes of realtors. Finally after seven or eight months I came by and at least three-quarters of the gardens had been removed and replaced with sod. The house sold shortly thereafter.

hugh crawford: "Are houses really that cheap in Peoria? The house itself other than the entryway is pretty beige. That lighting isn’t helping at all, no sense of what the actual lighting looks like, looks like the photographer just plopped down a giant Chinese lantern behind the camera in each shot. Love the furnishings but they mainly show how beige the actual house is. Are houses really that cheap in Peoria?"

Mike replies: I think houses throughout the Midwest are pretty cheap, actually. Take a look at this house in Milwaukee. Not saying it's to everyone's taste, but it's 7,000 square feet (650 square meters), it's in a desirable neighborhood close to downtown, the lake, parks, public beaches, and a hospital, and it's very nicely built and finished, with a modern kitchen and nice woodwork. Then consider what £1,420,000/€1,657,000 would buy in London or Paris, or how far $1.8m would go in Manhattan, Orange County, Miami, San Francisco, Washington D.C., etc. There's more demand pressure on lower-priced houses, of course, so it's not like you're going to find livable small houses for $80k in Milwaukee or Peoria. But you can do pretty well for $160–200k, all things considered. As an example, take a look at this sturdy little 1930 brick bungalow in Peoria which sold for $176,000.

Ken Lunders: "That is the most hideous staging I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. My eyes may never recover!"

Mike replies: I've actually seen worse, more than once. But as Hugh said, most of the idiosyncratic color in that house is in the furniture and wall hangings, so it would be relatively easy to reverse. The kitchen (counters especially), built-in sideboard, and the floor in the basement TV room are the biggest exceptions.

But don't you get the feeling that the people who decorated that house laugh a lot? That could be wrong. I just imagine them being pretty merry.

Stelios: "If you think that is colourful you should see my house. Blacks and greys are banned. Whites tolerated in small areas (and ceilings)."

Zack S: "This house is ready for Wes Anderson to shoot his next movie in."

Wayne: "My guess is this is a digitally staged house. It all looks too neat and nice, no personal anything, shadows not convincing, etc. Google street shows a dull-looking house although the pic is a couple years old. It may be vacant which would make it easy. This techniques was done across the street from me. Up for sale, pics online, nothing like what's inside."

Herman Krieger: "Rebuilding kitchens sounds counterproductive."

Mike replies: Groan! Herman, you get the last word.

Comments

[BG]

Nice work with colors! But the floors have that gawd-awful ersatz glue-down vinyl crap that is supposed to remind you of what wood floors once looked like. Yuck.

[John Camp]

I note that the red-door house is in Peoria. Doesn't your son and grandson live around there?

Here's one of those longer blog comments that nobody reads. The NYT has a feature in which they introduce a couple and tell you about their house hunt, budget and etc. Then they tell you about three possibilities they look at, ask you which one you would choose (with stats from other readers) and finally, which one they actually choose. I'm fascinated by disparities between Manhattan and the Midwest. People in Manhattan spend $1 million for eight hundred square feet. Period. Many don't even have a washing machine or dryer.

Then not too long ago, they profiled a woman with quite a small budget looking for a place in Minneapolis, and Minneapolis ain't exactly chopped liver. If I remember correctly, she spent something like $260,000 for a 1500-square foot house with a nice backyard not far from some beautiful, walkable lakes, and ten minutes from downtown on a bus. Manhattan has some nice cultural advantages, but not that nice.

[hugh crawford]

Oh, and there is an infinite difference between beige walls and white walls. MoMA has white walls, Motel 6 and hospitals have beige.

[louis mccullagh]

My comment about house changes is also relevant to the $1million audio system. Money spent on renovating perfectly good houses is unquantifiable and with a bit of commonsense unnecessary.
Building/decorating houses to 'SHOW' off is very similar to the audio guy. It is like an illness.

How much do you need to spend to be able to slap water on yourself or to cook some veg and meat. It is nothing to do with washing and cooking but another deeper need.

[Luke]

Jeebus. What a mess.

[WJW]

I live in Central Texas and the black exterior is getting big around here for flipped houses with three done recently within a few blocks of me. All three were originally some sort of medium color brick and now look kinda bleahhh! At least the brick had some variation in color and texture.

I would take one look and walk away since I can't imagine painting the house black will do great things for summer cooling bills. 105 and sunny on a black building.....

[Richard G]

The picture of the front of the house makes me think of Robert Adams. Either thevarchitect or the owner must have got sick of black and white photography. Or more likely always hated it.

[Michael Moffa]

Mike, used to work very close to the color house when I lived in Morton. There is a road in Detweiler park that rivals any road in California for driving pleasure. Used to take the Miata there all the time. But the road buried in the park was special as no one used it and it had a copy of the corkscrew at Laguna Seca in reverse. Absolutely amazing.

Mike in Auburn

[Rick Popham]

Mike! There's a pool table!

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Hmm, guess I don’t like strong colour, at least not in houses.

If I approached that kitchen after a night out, it would likely make things worse. And the basement floor looks like the consequences…

But more seriously, there’s not much in the way of a garden & plants outside. Is it really cold in Peoria? Having stated that, the trend for dark greys etc in housing exterior (here in Australia too) really goes against common sense & cost efficiency in cooling.

I get your point about the bright colours & joyful home life, but maybe that’s the intended impression, given it’s up for sale. The cynic in me asks what are all the bright colours distracting us from?

[Andrew Sheppard]

All I can think is 'wow your housing is cheap'- and the thought that £250k is 'cheap' says enough on its own...Imagining being able to buy a house here is like imagining being able breathe water, and that price wouldn't buy you a small 2up/2 down. It probably wouldn't buy you a one-bed. Americans should spend more time being thrilled at how cheap their housing and fuel is - they really don't know when they're lucky.