apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

just paint, whats the big fuss?

not as if they tore anything out, put in sliding glass doors...

I think I prefer the after(white) myself

The "before" is bothering me, as the owner is so proud of herself for doing an authentic historic renovation and so very wrong about (a) what Craftsman style involved and (b) whether the house is Craftsman in the first place. I feel like I should tiptoe away to leave her with her grief.

I agree with wende -- the owner is too proud and too precious about her decor which is not Craftsman. Last I checked Craftsman is not about frou frou.

While I agree that the original was far from a perfect renovation painting that much millwork ought to be a crime.

What a funny post on the Craftsman. I am not familiar enough on the Craftsman style to say one way or the other about authenticity. But I will say, putting that much effort into anything and then seeing it again after you've left always hurts a little bit.
But to repeat what everyone else said I agree with Wende. I have had friends who have completely redesigned their homes and they never talked about it as much as that post did.
That's why they say you should never 'go back' always move forward:)

i have a similar level of bitterness about the house where i grew up, which was also built in a locally significant architectural style. at some point my mother decided to repaint it canary yellow with tiffany blue shutters and bright white trim, which is not 'authentic' to the period or style, but somehow it worked. then my parents split up and sold the house. the new owners ripped out the shutters for no apparent reason (we'd just had them redone a few years before selling the house, so they weren't rotten or falling off or anything), ruining both the look and the relative authenticity of the architectural style. i drove by last time i was in town and it looked like they hadn't done an exterior paint job since they bought the place. the lovely yellow paint was dingy, and the white trim was cracked. it was a complete turnaround from when we lived there -- from prettiest and most distinctive house on the block to total eyesore in under a decade. i still feel really bitter about it.

bitter enough to write a blog? i don't know. but bitter. and certainly if i saw it listed somewhere with photographic evidence of it's total crapitude, i'd find a way to get word into the grapevine of what a fantastic home it used to be before the new owners got their hands on it.

I can't see her version of the place. The pictures have overloaded their bandwidth.

I have a friend who made a lot of "improvements" to her townhouse and then sold it. She was very upset when she found out that the new owner completely gutted it and redid everything.

The moral of the story? Not everyone has your taste. I'm guessing that's why shows like "Moving Up" on TLC are so successful.

We completely gutted our house and it doesn't resemble what it was when we bought it. Do I care what the former owner thinks? No. I doubt that the people who moved into this bitter woman's place did either.

It's no longer your house. Get over it.

The fogey in me is always a little disturbed by change myself, but I'm also always surprised when people expect the house they've sold to stay the same. Uh, it ain't your house no more! When my parents sold the house both I and my father grew up in, it was torn down...and a parking lot was put in its place! Talk about a real change! In fact, practically the whole street's gone. So, just be glad you can actually drive down the street and see the house, whatever state it's in!