It’s actually fucking hideous and they completely destroyed all the preserved historical features. I love minimalism in some situations but Americans are insanely bad at it. It looks like a soulless IKEA office.
I’m also so sick of Americans thinking all Scandinavian design means “gray and dull.” Beata Heuman is a Swedish interior designer are her work is actually colorful and inviting.
While the emphasis in Scandi design is on natural colors, there's also an emphasis on having pops of bright color to bust up all that drab.
So sure, you'll have birch colored floors, gray walls, and white trim...but there will also be a wildly patterned couch or chair with cushions in crazy bright colors, or artwork that just about blasts off the walls because it's so vivid. This creates focus on the decorative aspects of the room so that the background fades and you can focus on those aspects.
Having an entire house and furnishings arrayed in a dull natural-toned palette just makes the whole thing scream "boooooring".
House shopping and we landed on a house that was in our budget and had so much character. When touring it, we learned that it was a flipper owned by two agents. They hired the worst contractor. The new hardware on the kitchen cabinets is crooked, the newly refinished hardwood was scratched pretty badly in a few spots, new carpet is cheap, etc. They ruined a beautiful house and they've been trying to get what it's worth in good condition. We gave them a low offer and got rejected. That was over a month ago and they've called our realtor a couple of times to let us know they are willing to take a lower offer. It's never low enough for us to want to bite, but I figure if we wait long enough, they'll get desperate.
I'm in the same boat - I bought a house that sat vacant for a few years and then was "rehabbed" by a flipper (Narrator's voice: don't do this, kiddies).
It looked amazing on repeated walk throughs and on inspection, although there were some...hmm...issues, like light switches that didn't turn anything on (kitchen had been remodeled extensively) or the builder-grade carpet upstairs (but the wildly expensive Carrara marble shower). It was a weird mix of nice, somewhat higher end stuff (like a Verona dual fuel stove) and then cheap stuff like...not retiling one of the bathrooms or replacing its vanity which were clearly original to when the house was built. None of those things were a deal breaker, though. Cosmetics, right? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Well, the real shit came through six months later, when previously-cracked/spackled/painted/caulked walls cracked again, ceiling moulding that had been caulked and painted over started separating from the walls, deck railing held together with literal silicone caulk that was painted over started to really wobble if someone, y'know, used the railing to go down the stairs to the pool. Lots of quick-fix stuff started coming up that showed there were serious problems underneath.
The worst was a roof leak that ran down inside of a window; we ended up having to have the entire window replaced because it kept shrinking from the inside of the frame due to the water. Once the workers got into it, it became obvious that around the wall, the window frame, and the frame itself had been silicone-caulked repeatedly (and painted over) long enough to look new and hold up for a short before the heavy rains got to it. There was so much water damage that they ended up having to reconstruct almost the entire window frame and redo all the drywall and insulation, all the way down to the studs.
There's water issues in the basement and the Pergo is starting to buckle/lift in one spot, we think from water running down in between the wall and the basement slabs. But I have a beautiful quartz bar! Gosh!
The sump pump quit working three weeks after winter rains started, so we had to replace that. The propane on-demand water heater was not only vented incorrectly but piped backwards (dangerous AF), as were the hot / cold water outlets for my washing machine (I figured that one out by myself and swapped the hoses, but yeah...the red side is the cold side and the blue side is the hot side in my shitty house). The AC fuse box upstairs apparently caught on fire at one point (they think from a lightning strike arc or possibly bad wiring, I'm leaning toward the latter), which said fire fortunately extinguished itself bcause it was in the unfinished attic space and could have literally burned down the house before we knew what was happening.
The water is incredibly acidic here, so when the acidity destroyed the connector to the house water system and water started spraying everywhere, my son tried to turn it off using the valve...which also snapped off in his hand. Our pressure tank was done incorrectly so it was constantly running, which kept our well pump constantly running, and so THAT died on us too. 14 grand in fixes later, including a whole house system with water softening and iron removal as well as a new pump for another five grand. Not to mention several bathroom sink and toilet fittings that literally distintegrated from the water itself, as well as the kitchen sink fitting which had a barely hand tightened pipe, leading to water damage underneath.
Our septic tank has a system where there are levers that trip when the tank gets too high. Ours were apparently wired backwards, so the alarm was going off continously. The solution for THAT, apparently, was to turn the alarm off. We didn't realize the tank had reached critical levels of poo until you could smell the septic gas coming from the lower part of the house's sink and shower drains. That's a problem when you don't have a gravity drain septic tank, because if you get actual solid shit in the leach lines that our pump actually pumps UPHILL, then the whole thing has to be redone (not cheap, of course). The emergency pumpout was over 700 bucks in winter, and the rewiring cost us another 1500.
tl;dr - So yeah, guys - don't buy a fucking flip/rehab house. It may be beautiful, but with a little time, all the lipstick that housepig is wearing will come right off and you will be utterly dismayed at how much was painted, covered up, walled off, floored over.
And architecture..and interior design ..and humanity in general. I say off with their heads. Or at least a lifetime ban from every Home Depot in the world.
ETA, nice! I've been craving some popcorn. Thanks!
This is a trend in DC. Take a charming brick home with radiators and beautiful fire places and ivy, rip it all out and paint everything white/grey. Zero character and charm.
Blame the Gaines couple on FixerUpper. That fucked farm aesthetic is spreading like measles.
Also, DO NOT GLAZE IVY. Ivy destroys masonry. Remove it entirely. Just don't also PAINT THE FUCKING BRICK, which ALSO ruins it unless you use a masonry white wash.
I grew up in that neighborhood. My parents bought their house (about half the size of the linked one) for $125k in the 80s. They were a teacher and a civil servant, the neighborhood was nice and safe but a place normal middle class people like my parents could afford.
They sold their place in the late 2000s but I still have friends' parents who live there and they say that basically every single one of the people buying the now-multi-million dollar houses are the absolute worst people.
One notable example is that a small neighborhood grocery store that had been there since the 1950s closed down and the new neighbors were such NIMBYs that they used their money and influence to mount legal challenges that kept the site abandoned and vacant for 12 years because the grocery chain that bought the site wanted to put apartments above the new store and the new money jerkoffs didn't want "those kinds of people" to be able to afford to live in their neighborhood.
There is one person in the neighborhood who is literally on an FAA watchlist because they send 1000+ complaints a year to the FAA about airplane noise above their house despite the flight path having existed since the 1930s.
There's a cesspool of a local forum website where all of the rich newcomers post anonymously and it's full of such spectacularly out of touch posts like "how can anyone be expected to survive on only $350,000 a year?!"
On one hand I'm a little disappointed that even with a very good income I'm priced out of the neighborhood I grew up in but on the other hand I don't think I could stand living next to one of those chodes.
YES it’s the same in northern Virginia. Every new house they are building in my area is massive, with black and white exteriors and cheap plastic interior features. They are hideous, not to mention way overpriced in a market that’s already way overpriced.
Nooo! I don't hate it because it's modern, I hate it because it ruined the character of this house in a historic neighborhood with "inspired Scandinavian contemporary design." That's a Colonial brick house, assholes. Trying to remake it into Scandi modern is like trying to turn a pan of muffins into sushi.
ETA: Aww thanks for the award! Popcorn is the perfect emoji for this sub ;)
Right?!? That area has a few modern homes. Not many, but a few. Buy one of those! Or buy something small and kinda shitty that reeks of mold and cat pee (which the area still has a few of too) and rip it down and build something modern. This makes me sad.
It should be a crime to remove built-ins like on the stairs to replace them with generic bullshit. It had character, it had style, it was updated without being obnoxious about it. Only to be replaced by nothing special.
It wasn't culturally driven, it was capitalistically driven. With automation clean edges are cheaper, with paint basic colors are less expensive.
In the 70s movies showed the future with bright tunics lStar Trek), and highly complex edges (think Star Wars Destroyers, and Aliens). But now we know every spaceport will look exactly the same.
I miss architectural details and woodworking masterpieces in homes. There are historical mansions and houses I’ve toured that I just spent hours looking at the craftsmanship and details in the mantles, doorframes, and staircases. There is nothing worth looking at in the renovation at all.
It's not even minimalism though, minimalism doesn't mean sucking all the color and material from architecture.
This is house flipper/mass-developer/real estate agent-core. It's bled into popular aesthetic because so much on the market is purposely stripped by sellers and buyers often don't have the inquiry to change it. Also the massive amount of rentals that look like this where it's hard to add personal touch.
Am I the only one convinced the after images are AI? The structure of the rooms and windows are vastly different. Even accounting for the different camera angles and knocking down a wall, the kitchen doesn’t look like it matches the space to me.
SynthID people. Both Google and OpenAI tag their images with invisible "watermarks".
Be sure to check and verify on both platforms in the future though because their verification tools only detect images generated on their respective platforms.
I spoke out loud, "no, NO NO" How DARE THEY paint that gorgeous brick. The floors! The walls! The detailing! all GONE and replaced with soulless drivel.
Oh, they massively fucked up. Even DC has some fucking standards. The brick with the ivy was…stunning. I hope it stays on the market for years for the way they butchered this place.
The vines were probably actually damaging the house. When they were pulled down the brick probably looked horrible and not a consistent color. So they painted it out.
Painting over the bricks is stupid, but removing the growth probably is a good idea. That stuff can weight a LOT and unless it was accounted for in the structure it can literally pull the walls out.
The whole sterile white and black thing is just...yikes.
Yeah, I was wondering if they originally just planned to pull the ivy down but then found it had ruined the brick facade, and then thought paint would hide it?
Why would you EVER get rid of this in favor of the after? Like the after is okay but looks so run of the mill like any expensive modern house. Meanwhile that window, shelving, window seat is beautiful and could have been styled so uniquely. It’s like quintessential cozy upscale library office space. Grrrrr 😤
It's just so... severe. I can see updating some of the interior to make it more comfortable, but a lot of this just looks like change for change's sake. Mostly I just can't get over how severe the exterior change is. Even if you wanted to "modernise" the front facade, you couldn't think of anything better than whatever that's supposed to be? It looks both unfriendly and cheap.
Didn’t even get past the first slide to realize it you’re ruined the entire property. Eww, these “designers” must have gotten their degrees from a cereal box!
As benign design goes, it's not awful in and of itself. But, to do that to that house is a travesty. It took away everything that was special and made it generic.
Excellent work. They completely stripped that once beautiful house of it’s character and turned it into yet another characterless gray/black flip house.
Yes ivy WILL damage the exterior. Super bad idea to let it grow on your building. It’s pretty but it’s super damaging.
Playing devils advocate here that may be why the brick is now gone. They probably removed the ivy and the brick was super damaged, chipped, and spalled everywhere. So you either replace it brick by brick, literally. Or you just cover it up which will be much cheaper.
Granted it probably needed an extreme power wash after the ivy was gone and it was probably easier to just paint to get consistent color across entire facade.
For direct damage to the brick: depends on the species
But regardless, ivy is a pain in the ass to maintain. It grows fast, so you'd need to be up on a ladder constantly to maintain the clean look in that first image. And it can propagate from cuttings, so you have to be kind of careful when you're disposing what you've trimmed.
The way people see aesthetic "innovation" as progress are going to be in a corner soon... because... what could possibly come next to replace this style? Do we pivot back to whimsy?
A lot of the inside had already been destroyed with white paint, but ripping out what looks like original hardwood is terrible, as is that new fireplace. The biggest sin is painting the beautiful exterior brick white. As for the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry, nothing was original and was pretty hideous to begin with, but they really should have stuck with a more traditional look rather than an ultra-modern one.
Look. My kitschy 1962 bathroom needed repairs that required a complete gut. There was no saving the original tile and recreating a similar look was way, way beyond my budget. I understand that sometimes you just can't help it.
Should have updated kitchen and bathrooms and that’s it. Looks like they were already updated in the early 2000s so not destroying any character there. They just fucked up and went way too far. Spent a bunch of money to make the whole place worse
I don’t fucking understand this. Why would you redo a house like this and change so much. It looks stupid. Just buy a modern home. Leave historic homes alone omg.
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u/Three3Jane 12h ago
Thanks. I hate it. It looked interesting before, now it looks like every other soulless gray, tan, white flip house on the market for a 200% upcharge.