To hate the removing of character from old houses?

[Mushrooms0up]

I probably am being unreasonable as it doesn’t actually have anything to do with me. But there is a gorgeous house near where I live on a private road which came up for sale a while ago. It needed a bit of TLC but looked like a lovely, lived in family house.

It’s just come back on market for a lot more money, and I’m so sad at what’s been done. The marble tiled flooring just doesn’t match the house and the character and it just seems so sterile :(
If you like that kind of look why buy a period property? What do you all think?

Here’s the before:

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=73256386&sale=91032045&country=england

And after: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/118542002#/?channel=RES_BUY

@TheHoptimist

Someone forgot to tell them that grey is no longer in fashion

Its akin to have border round the middle of the room and different wallpaper patterns above and below.

What's the new carpet and wall colour? Please don't say magnolia!

Ah it's okay, I screwed back and saw people kindly posted actual photos. It looked lovely before, oozed real character. Now it's a warehouse box.

Wellllll.... We bought a house like this it really was a bodgit and scarper. We wound up going back to brick, stone, dry lining. Upstairs lifting floors and insulating, dry lining ditto downstairs. Nothing that would ever show up in pictures. The EPC RATING on this house still hovers between E AND F. The government are aiming for minimum of C. This house is even harder to heat now it's open plan

I knew as soon as I looked at the first interior photo that at some point I was going to see crushed velvet, sickly “millennial” pink and astroturf.

I hate being right all the time.

Its a class thing really, and I feel uncomfortable at my own instinctively snooty reaction.

I grew up on a council estate and think what they've done is horrendous. It's a "taste" thing - and I know it's subjective but they've ruined it. They should have bought a new build.

After posting on this thread yesterday I admit I lay in bed last night wondering if the estate agent had clocked the number of hits the first house had, and had been able to track it down to a couple of hundred mumsnetters slagging it off on t'internet...

@AllChange2022, I have attached before photos in thread, just scroll back

@AllChange2022, F&B’s colour trend forecaster reckons 2022 colour trends will be

Stone Blue
Incarnadine (red)
Babouche (rich yellow)
School House white (warm white)
Breakfast room green

ulstercarpets.com/residential/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Farrow-and-Ball-Colour-Trends-2022.pdf

[quote BalladOfBarryAndFreda]@AllChange2022, F&B’s colour trend forecaster reckons 2022 colour trends will be

Stone Blue
Incarnadine (red)
Babouche (rich yellow)
School House white (warm white)
Breakfast room green

ulstercarpets.com/residential/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Farrow-and-Ball-Colour-Trends-2022.pdf[/quote]
Bugger. I’ve just chosen Lulworth blue for our kitchen, should I change my mind?

Just looks like your typical new build box now.
I live in an old house with all the original features. Not to everyone’s taste but wouldn’t dream of taking them out. If you buy a period house you should just accept it isn’t going to look like a modern show home!

I lived off Burton Road close to this house for years. I think it is definitely West Dids not Withington (But everyone argues about that border)

Its a great place to live but Circular Road used to be nearly all student digs or bedsits so lots of the homes were pretty run down and presumably without many original features. There's very little new build in the Didsbury area so I guess the developer was attracting a specific market - not my taste really but Didsbury village isn't short of tasteful period homes so I can't get too upset about it. We bought our first home nearby in 1996- characterful 3 bedder victorian terrace for £79k . Not even an M20 post code- and its up for £600k

Personally I've got no beef with people removing 'character' from older but still mass market properties like this, particularly if virtually rebuilding it also means updating the insulation and so on to current code.

Over the next few decades almost every property owner in the UK is going to have to massively upgrade their homes for better insulation, low carbon heating etc as part of the heat and buildings strategy. If you have to practically rebuild a house from the brickwork forward, remove fireplaces and so on, then it stands to reason that you might as well modernise the look and feel inside rather than recreate a crass facsimile of an interior from 150 years ago.

The "after" pictures actually look a lot like our house right down to identical tiles ('Soul Frost Pulido' in the kitchen, 'Marmol Carrara Blanco' in the bathroom, both from Porcelanosa, in case anyone wants to recreate the effect themselves) but ours was newly built in 2017 and we wanted a modern home.

I've noticed a lot of London period properties are done up similarly for (usually) foreign investors owners. Maybe that's what's driving this particular one?

@Blossomtoes . I wouldn’t, lulworth is a lovely colour. The right shade very much depends on the direction your kitchen faces, especially with blues.

Haven't RTFT yet, but I totally agree with you OP.

Lovely house with all it's original charm ripped out and made to look like every other identikit modern shiny finish.

The equivalent of Kardashianing a house!

[quote BalladOfBarryAndFreda]@Blossomtoes . I wouldn’t, lulworth is a lovely colour. The right shade very much depends on the direction your kitchen faces, especially with blues.[/quote]
The kitchen faces south west. The cabinets will be navy and we’re getting a thunder blue range. As you can see, I love blue! Do you think it will work?

I’m finding it hard to see properly because I’m outdoors and the sun is shining on my phone, but did they also take up the lawn and put down plastic grass? 😩

The second set of pics are unspeakably naff - what a travesty. They do say bad taste is better than no taste at all and I have to agree looking at that monstrosity.
I would have bought the first house in a heartbeat and done the bathroom and kitchen gradually over time. So many lovely features and obviously well-loved but with plenty room for some future ongoing projects.
The second looks like a very amateur development and judging by the quick turn around I think it must be. No soul, no evidence of life, no taste just a cynical money making scheme. In my opinion, they have totally devalued it. What a bloody shame.

It's beyond hideous, totally devoid of class or style. Who wants to live in a white box?

@Mushrooms0up

Thanks all - glad it’s not just me! I’m not a stickler for some modernisation and I actually quite like what they’ve done with the loft and bathrooms.

I’m just so sad at the loss of fireplaces, parquet floors, cornicing. It could have been done so nicely with a shaker style kitchen, large French doors and no marble floors. The new hallway in particular reminds me almost of a doctors office.

The jump in house price is also sad (as someone trying to afford a bog standard family house!)

We're also looking to try and buy a v average family house in the same area as you - the prices here make me wince, especially when I see horrorshows like this!

@daimbarsatemydogsbone it’s not in a town starting with C is it?

That is hideous! Grey, cheap and removed all nature from the garden! It was beautiful before!!

My neighbours (aggressive confrontational wankers who I could do a separate thread about) are in the midst of transforming their lovely pre-war house into a bland, grey eyesore that looks as if it's been plonked on top of a square, grey nuclear bunker. Plus their awful loft extension has taken all the light from my once sunny patio and inside the house. Bastards 😪 oh and they've also nicked some of my land after dropping a boundary structure. I wish they'd move.

@TheDuchessOfMN

I’m finding it hard to see properly because I’m outdoors and the sun is shining on my phone, but did they also take up the lawn and put down plastic grass? 😩

Yes bloody plastic grass!!

We are doing the opposite with our Edwardian house and ripping out the hateful botch jobs from the 1970's or thereabouts and bringing the 1910's back in!

Fortunately the previous owner didn't totally butcher the house, but some fireplaces were ripped out/ dismantled in part to board over and stick gas fires over 😬

This one we uncovered and I spent weeks stripping. Think I did a sterling job!

That’s a gorgeous fireplace @DavetheCat2001. Brilliant job.