Yesterday I found myself on the Zillow site and out of curiosity typed in my old house address. I lived in an old turn of the century rowhouse. Zillow came up with something. I looked at the pictures of the rooms and I would not have recognized the rooms. A flipper must have bought the house and ripped out a lot of neat things and left it plain and boring. They covered up doorways and changed windows. We used to have a built-in mirror in the hallway inside the front door. A big huge mirror that was framed and fastened to the wall. Don't know how they ever got that off. That must have taken a few burly men to get that off.
We also had those decorative cast iron heating grates in the floors with their swirling, curly design. They were gone, replaced with plain, non-descript white grates.
We had wooden pillars and molding separating rooms like you might see in a Craftman house. Gone.
Upstairs in my parents room they had a bowed, bay window with plantation shutters in the window. Very pretty. Shutters are gone and just plain windows remain.
In the kitchen we had a brick hearth where our stove was. Stove was moved to another wall and the hearth sits empty. That could have been a neat focal point in the kitchen, but it sits there wasted. I must say they redid the kitchen floor and it looked nice.
The whole place, every room, was painted white. I know the idea is to make a clean slate so the new owner can make it their's, but what a shame they had to destroy the personality of the house. I hope at least they gave some of the stuff they ripped out and gave it to a restorer who knew what to do with it.
Now I wish I had not looked it up. Sad.
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