Tasteful Friends- 1960's relic in NC

It fills me with nostalgia so I don't hate it but it needs to be burned to the ground anyway.

Ain’t nobody need to see dat.

4200 sq ft with a indoor pool, tennis court and pond for $300k? Insanity.

I love the exterior and the grounds. As for the interior, yeah, it's dated but the current prevalent home decor color palette of neutral and white shades is so blah and sterile that I enjoyed look at it.

4200 sq ft with a indoor pool, tennis court and pond for $300k? Insanity.

It's between Raleigh & Fayetteville out in the middle of NOWHERE. That said, I'd buy the place just for that pink bathroom!

Even though its EXTREMELY dated, it's well fairly maintained. I picture the people who lives here as being like the family the movie "The Ice Storm". Just think of all the crazy key parties that happened in that place.

I love it a little bit. For the nostalgia. When I was a kid, we’d consider this a “rich people” house. My sister had a friend whose father was an architect and their second floor had a walkway/bridge that went over the living room to the other side of the second floor. We thought that was stellar.

I love it. I would dress up and wear pantsuits and pop pills all day in that place.

If i ever did hard drugs again, I would do them in that house. It would be fun to do magic mushrooms or acid there. sigh. i miss my 20s.

[quote]I love it. I would dress up and wear pantsuits and pop pills all day in that place.

If ever there were a place for wearing caftans and earrings, it is this fabulous diva palace.

Somebody was just so damn proud of themselves once they put the finishing touches on this monstrosity.

Dunn is a small city of about 10,000 on I-95, so it's an easy commute to Raleigh.

Grab it.

[quote]I love it. I would dress up and wear pantsuits and pop pills all day in that place.

...have Key Parties, chase my pills with booze all day, and neglect my children

What's the neighborhood like?

I don’t hate it? I like the birdcage artwork wallpaper (?) but not repeated, just as an accent. The flagstone sunroom with the white tufted bench. The built-ins in the kitchen and the cabinets but not the counters/floors/walls/layout. The grounds look nice.

What a deal...very simple, and not particularly costly to update things. I'd take it, especially for the price.

[quote]What's the neighborhood like?

It's totally groovy

[quote]What's the neighborhood like?

Lots of bachelors and dads

Where's that website you put in a zip code and get the local crime stats?

You could do so much with this! New tile in the kitchen, and tear off the wallpaper and paint it; leave the original tile in the bathrooms and repaint; replace the carpets throughout with hardwood floors and repaint everything... It could really be fabulous if done right. I love it.

I feel it's the set of the Golden Girls sequel.

..R7

Go to your room, honey

The adults want to talk

I love it a little bit. For the nostalgia. When I was a kid, we’d consider this a “rich people” house. My sister had a friend whose father was an architect and their second floor had a walkway/bridge that went over the living room to the other side of the second floor. We thought that was stellar.

My parents had friends that owned a glass shop (replacing windshields, that kind of thing) and they had a house sort like this one & their only daughter had a bedroom with a 4 poster bed & pink deep pile shag carpet. I was mad with jealousy!

Question for tasteful friends: how do people who renovate and flip houses have the energy? I work. I wouldn't want to do these projects over and over nor could I. I have the energy to do my job, shop, cook dinner, socialite a bit, if I'm lucky get laid. Etc.

R22 I remember those mail order catalogs!

I love it! I’d only change the kitchen ceiling on account of the migraines it would induce.

The yellow rec room is my favorite part. I want it to be 1973 again right now.

R24, my aunt and uncle did this with old farmhouses in CT. Uncle was retired and she worked part time. She had a real kind of Martha Stewart eye, and wealthy New Yorkers loved what they did with the houses. It wasn’t really “flipping” because they lived in the houses the whole time and it took several years to get it all done. But it was quite profitable.

'60s guts with '70s shlock overlay. Fairly easy fix thru deconstructionism

More importantly, how high are those ceilings?

TRANGE for this to pop up on here. I'm very familiar with this neighborhood and house, having dated a guy (sadly deceased now) whose parents owned a house on the same street as this one. His "stepmother" since '79 (who was 40 years younger than his father!) still lives there so I've seen the progression of this house/ the neighborhood as I do quite a bit of design/floral/event work for her- she's quite fun.

Anyway- My ex was friends with the 4 children of the owner and used to have jam sessions (my ex had a fledgling punk rock band in the 70's that at its peak toured/opened for the Ramones, but-that's another story) in the music room with the two sons of the owner (before they went off with their mother for 2 years to "tour" Europe (to avoid being drafted). Their dad/ the owner of this home was politically connected and knew when his sons numbers were coming up.

*STRANGE

While I was with my ex, his stepmother (who was 2 years younger than my ex, ha!) recommended me to the family and I met with the eldest daughter of the owner regarding floral arrangements/ decor for a political fundraiser they were holding (this was A LONG WHILE ago-I'm a eldergay, obviously). When I marveled at how "preserved" the home was, she took me on a in depth tour. She said that her father refused to change anything unless necessary as he was still deeply in love with her mother/ his deceased wife (who had a stroke sometime in the early 80's and lived until around the mid 90's). The daughter was one of four children. As wedding presents dear old dad (who owned the entire neighborhood land at one point) built homes in the neighborhood for each of them, essentially creating a compound, with about 20 other houses built and sold to the owners select friends. It essentially became a total Peyton Place. They had a full time housekeeper and her husband who managed the grounds/served as a driver who lived in the basement apt. until the owner passed- they wore frilly maid/chauffeur uniforms and were considered part of the family. That housekeeper's daughter now works for a member of the family as her nanny.

The pond is a cesspool- it's got a rare algae strain that was studied and pronounced unfixable, even if it was drained. Think 3 eyed "The Simpsons" style fish in it and it also is home to a MASSIVE 12 foot alligator that somehow got there via the Cape Fear River. The house has a lot of crazy custom features for the era- every room has either a drop down projector screen from the ceiling or had a screen that would rise up out of a console at the end of each bed. 8 track players in every closet that were wired to ceiling speakers in each room. A suction style vac underneath every kitchen cabinet, so if you drop food on the floor, you just shove it over to the vent, press a button and it suctions it up. Refrigerated dumbwaiters to the lower apt. and to the underground prep kitchen. The atrium/sunroom had a 40-something year old Macaw that knew three words...which it said repeatedly- "God Dammit" and "Shit". A secret "panic room" off of the master bedroom, a mini-disco ball that came down from the ceiling in the living room. Bidets in most bathrooms (in the 60's that was a NOT common), video security was installed in the early 80's (that was back when it was something you had to swap out VHS tapes to do). I really wish the listing had pics of the furnishings- they were fantastic. The whole lot of furniture was was sold off in bulk to 1st Dibs, so who knows where they wound up.

The original fountain out front (not that tacky cement tier thing that's there now) had jets inside of it that would shoot up like a geyser, do dancing a motion to whatever piped in music you selected or spray water out of 4 corners in a arching motion. It also changed colors to music....think a mini Bellagio fountain show, 70's style. The kitchen has 3 dishwashers, a prep/caterers kitchen off to the side of the main kitchen, at least 3 sinks and a bar off to the back of the caterers kitchen, leading into the dining room / sunken living room that was absolutely like something out of Playboy After Dark- that's where the disco ball was. The (now deceased) owner sold his home building supply business to Home Depot in the early 80's and made a killing but the house was built during his prime and was top of the line for its time.

The original pool house was much better- super Palm Beachy/Slim Aarons-esque. It was burned down by the friendly neighborhood arsonist in the 90's, who was caught hiding in the bushes watching it burn. After he got out of prison, he moved back in the neighborhood, where he (still?) lives with his parents. The original owner listed this place in the WSJ for 1.2 mil in the 90's....but no takers so he kept it, rebuilt the pool house and enclosed the pool for his wife's hydrotherapy treatments.

R5 -You are not wrong about key parties. My partner at the time- His parents had moved from Seattle (his dad was a military surgeon) for his father to open a medical practice there in the early 70's. Their first time over, there was literally a bowl where everyone put their keys. His parents lived within a less than 1 minute walk so no need for their car keys to be dropped in the bowl and his mother (a true prude) got verrrrry suspicious when slowly but surely, people paired off and disappeared.

Another fun fact- In the "media" room/ library which is off of the atrium/sunroom (where the parrot lived), there is a revolving wall bookcase. When turned around, every type of porno video could be found. His daughter showed it to me and laughed, saying that after her mother died, she told her father that he needed to find a new partner, got him set up with a early version of Viagra and went to Priscilla's to purchase him some "inspiration", hence the video collection. Within a year, he found a new partner but sadly, she died of the exact same condition his wife had- a pulmonary embolism that caused a stroke.

The town of Dunn, NC is Frauville USA. So much tackiness, bigotry, etc. but there's a LOT of wealth there. A lot of poverty and racism too. In short- it's a hellmouth. But this post brought up quite a few memories and I have enjoyed telling about it.

Too much info

One of my childhood friends (elementary school - we ended up going to different schools after that) had a "compound" similar to this. His father was a farmer (squash, green beans, corn and livestock like hogs) and they basically took about 20 acres of farmland and built their own little compound of a main house (about 6,000/7,000 sf), a pond, a pool, guest house, etc. He had 4 wheelers, go carts, canoes and tons of toys that we played with literally all day during the summer. Looking back, they had really tacky 80's crappy furniture and everything was rather junky inside - but it seemed like a "rich person's house" due to the size and grandeur of the outside of the home and all of the land that they owned around it. Of course it was literally located in the middle of nowhere - the closest "town" was a good 30 minutes away and the closest city well over an hour. Still, it brings back memories. I had far wealthier friends whose parents built big, luxurious homes in very swanky neighborhoods in the city - but none had that "sprawl" and all of those amenities spread out in the same way. It was an interesting place but the shabby road that led up the entrance to the compound was littered (terrible word to use, but it paints the picture) with maybe a hundred teeny, tiny, decaying, very poor shacks for lack of a better word. These people were the laborers on the farm and their living conditions seemed very sad in stark comparison to the grand estate that they enabled.

Stop with the long posts or you're canceled.

R36- Some of us know here can read and enjoy this information. Go watch your little telly programs.

Would this be the first TL;DR on Tasteful Friends?

[Quote]so it's an easy commute to Raleigh.

Its around 40 miles to downtown Raleigh, pretty middle of nowhere.

There is a reason why it is so cheap.

This is the perfect DL thread! Ah, memories.

[quote]Stop with the long posts or you're canceled.

Don't stop.

Just use paragraphs.