beautifully restored Victorian

[CanadianJohn]

Readers might be interested in looking thru the photographs of this restored Victorian For sale: 719 Victoria AVENUE, Windsor, Ontario N9A4N3 - 24029444 | REALTOR.ca

The price works out to about 500,000 UK pounds. The price reflects the unfortunate fact that the property is downtown, which has more than its fair share of addicts/homeless/street people. To make matters worse, it is less than a block from a very large soup kitchen and 'sanctuary' program (Downtown Mission).

But it is beautifully restored.

It's stunning! Is it yours?

When you're alone, and life is making you lonely
You can always go
Downtown

<sorry, I'll get my coat 😂>

Not sure what the OP is looking for from their post but the throws on the beds need straightening. That's why it's not selling! 😉

No, it's not mine. It's only been listed for sale for ONE DAY, so a bit early to start worrying. I enjoy looking a pics of Victorian houses, and I thought others might too.

This depresses me, my house is more expensive, smaller & a doer upper. Even with hundreds of thousands spent on it it won’t be this beautiful.

I had a friend who lived in a big house in Windsor, Interior. I spent Xmas with them one year, about 22 years ago I think it was. It was an odd experience. No-one walked anywhere, there didn't seem to be any sense of community, the houses were all really far apart and the roads extremely long. They had an unused swimming pool under the house.
So many odd memories of this, thanks OP. Not a person I'm still in touch with.

Oh autocarrot that's a good'n! ONTARIO not Interior ffs! 🙄

There isn't any coving. Is that normal in the US? I don't think I have ever seen a Victorian house in the UK without coving.

Ontario is in Canada, not the US

Exterior lovely, interior spacious but a bit soulless.

The building is gorgeous from the outside but for me lacks character and a sense of age/history inside. Having said that, it's still lovely, and I'd love to live in a house like that. Not possible for that price in most of the UK unfortunately!

@AllTheWatersTurnedToClouds whoops. Thanks.

How could it be normal in the US when Ontario is in CANADA. It’s a quite large province, largest population of provinces in Canada, home to the capital and biggest city…….

If you look closely, you'll see there is crown moulding or cornice between wall and ceilings throughout.

I live in a house of similar vintage in the US that is converted into three apartments. All the rooms on all floors have the same cornice in all rooms.

It's possible there has been a loss of original more ornate coving, but I suspect this house always had this more restrained cornice (wood trim, not plasterwork).

It's like a mini Casa Loma.

Construction techniques and styles tend to be very similar across regions with similar climates in North America. Older housing in cities and old suburbs of the upper midwest and stretching into NY (Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, and NYC) has a lot in common with older housing in Toronto and Ottawa.

Well it is certainly beautiful. If some people are finding it ‘soulless’ I understand, but I imagine that it hasn’t been lived in at all since it’s refurb. So it has been polished up within an inch of its life, but no human life has lived there (yet).
The elusive trick, and this goes for all houses - everywhere, how do you maintain the best of the show home vibe, while still enjoying a normal everyday life?
I would love to know the answer…

It is beautifully restored, but they're not joking about that location. It's only a few blocks from the entrance to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Convenient for the hospital emergency department as well.

Beautifully restored? They haven't restored a thing. Everything is brand new!

I think American (and yes I know it’s on Canada, but it has that vibe) homes tend to be quite like this. I can’t articulate what it is but I tend to think that if you put a picture of a house in the UK next to one of a house in America you would be able to tell the difference just with the general feeling of it.

Is it just me or was the room with the odd triangle alcoves very strange? The one with several sofas, table football and then a huge bed in an alcove. Was that the basement? A bedroom? I wanted to see what was lining the alcoves. It going on like fabric. Anyway, it was strange and not Victorian in style at all.

I also didn't like many of the colourways chosen but it is beautiful from the outside.

For PPs it's a bit soulless as its been a rental.

I think it's really two things: one, north American homes tend to be newer, though this one isn't. You can see that it is older by looking at details like the baseboards, not to mention masonry construction. My understanding is that the type of plasterwork you see in British Victorian homes is less common in North America due to a shortage of skilled craftsmen, though it is possible it was removed in past decades. (Having Victorians renovated can be achingly complicated and expensive if it's under historic preservation law because this is even harder today.) Mass-produced postwar housing, which is a lot of what you see, was designed for rapid construction, and a lot of it has no detail whatsoever.

The second thing is that estate agents here really emphasise removing personality from homes when they're put up for sale, even more so than British ones. When you add in the massive trend for neutral colours and decor it makes homes look like you walked into a catalogue. This one is breaking the rules with those wall colours!

if you saw a North American home that was photographed the way people actually lived in it, it would still look different, not least because there are basic differences in architecture and layout, but it would not be characterless like a real estate listing.

It would not originally be open plan - too hard to heat, I like rooms.

Those photos are oversaturated and that kitchen is bad. Otherwise, tidy out all those furnishings and it's nice enough. The character is lacking a bit though.

I'm not sure about that. Those look like original door frames, and that's not real open plan. I think in some cases they removed double doors that separated some of the main rooms. Being able to maintain air flow in summer was a significant consideration.

It looks nice from the outside.

There are no floor plans no room measurements, no overall sq ft. Also no photographs of outside space, distance from station/transport/Airport. Therefore it is impossible to give a comparative value with a UK house although from what the op has said, I'm guessing the parallel might be somewhere like Croydon or Kilburn.

I've renovated a couple of late Victorian houses in the UK. In my opinion that is a very poor renovation that is not sympathetic with the original period of the house. The curtains are spectacularly awful, as is the kitchen and what I think must be a loft area.