Tasteful Friends Reality Edition

So much stainless steel in the kitchen is jarring; kind of ruins the vintage feel. LOVE the staircase, though. The other rooms are fine, and the backyard area is nice.

No garage? All that steel in the kitchen and yet a microwave on the countertop just seems off.

Agree, a bit heavy on the polished surfaces for an old house. No fireplace is a bummer. But price seems good. I love these old East Coast houses in quaint towns. Did John Updike live in Beverly, is there also a Beverly Farms?

Updike lived in nearby Ipswich, then in Beverly Farms, a train stop and surrounding neighborhood located in Beverly, MA.

Tarbox was Ipswich, allegedly, not Beverly.

The glassed in sunroom in front screams for an OTT Christmas tree.

This is one of the few post-war colonials that provides a straight forward staircase. Usually, they turn at just enough angles to make large mattresses and chairs impossible to move to the second floor.

I love the high-gloss amber ceiling and its chandelier. I wish the sunroom had parquet flooring, but that’s something I saw on a different colonial - one where the owner was set loose with a full wood-working set.

Pleasant enough outside, a bit blah inside, although the colour used on the staircase is quite nice. That kitchen looks like it was put in in the 90's. Its functional enough I guess. I would want to change a lot in this place before I'd consider it move in ready though

Clearly this flip was done by somebody not originally from Massachusetts or even New England. The style is way, way too good for a native (and that's saying something because it looks like the interior decorator just graduated from a colorful kindergarten). There are also telltale signs, such as it actually has a covered porch. For some odd reason, despite the horrible weather 11 months out of the year, New Englanders don't believe in porches, covered or not. But no fear, the house is in Massachusetts, so there's no garage (and when there is, the natives fill it with junk and park outside).

The exercise room on the second floor is a disaster. The sounds will reverberate throughout the house. It's probably just staged. Otherwise, they've had to do some reinforcement work because there's no way a house built in Boston and the 1920s could support heavy workout equipment on the second floor and not suffer damage/collapse.

Note no pictures of the basement despite that the laundry "room" is down there. Like all NE basements, it's dirty, dark, damp and cold (which pretty much describes all of New England inside and out) and has that damp musty basement smell that you cannot get rid of in NE no matter what you try.

On the plus side, the outdoor spaces are nice and quite exceptional for NE. The lot borders woods, so there are only neighbors to the left and right, although the lot is narrow (resulting in a tandem driveway). It's located very close (0.02 of a mile) to a school, so there will be morning and afternoon traffic jams, people parked in idling cars for 20-to-30 minute periods, and screaming illiterate (it's Beverly) children.

I hope the buyer enjoys their home, but it's not for me.

Those random ugly colors throughout the house look terrible. The turquoise is fucking terrible.

I've never seen a dishwasher directly next to a range like that. very poorly planned kitchen.

It's ALMOST good - but somebody just couldn't restrain themselves. The dining room chandelier and that yellow ceiling?

The weird mirror in the bathroom and is that fiesta ware on the shelves? The kitchen stainless steel and frosted covers are random and make it look cheap.

The living room furniture isn't appropriately sized for the room. That Eames style chair and ottoman sticks out way too much and the lights give a glare to the TV screen - I don't see how you could watch anything.

It's all fixable and 75% is well done but they just went needlessly 'extra' with some bold designs, mirrors/reflective shit and other things that just didn't pay off.

Gay couple or a gay man lives there? I see all men's clothing in the bedroom.

The interior is heinous and tacky on every level. The outside is classic and charming.

Three-season porch

Too cold for a Christmas tree in there.

R12 - I wouldn't say heinous - but agreed they made some tacky choices that dominate many rooms and it just kills the overall appeal.

I'm at a point when I see an Eames chair and ottoman, I just think show-off and lacking originality. It's a shame because they are great chairs - but the style is as common as IKEA.

Do the curtain rods in the living room swing back and forth in front of the windows? I don't think I've ever seen that and not sure how I feel about it.

The frosted doors on so many cabinets just KILL me. I don't need to see what's visibly from here a Heinz 57 ketchup bottle, vitamins, soy sauce, and other items. What was the point of THAT? Oh - and let's put in a frosted slide door into the dining room because...I want my guests to see me cooking but not actually see what I'm cooking?

What's with the blue pottery above the fridge and on the sides?

And all those cheap lighting fixtures from LampsPlus EVERYWHERE. The dining room is just offensive - and those stupid steel tracks for those wimpy directional lights?

I feel like there were 2 personalities living here - probably a gay couple - and the tasteful one lost some arguments with their tacky partner.

A grad school classmate lives in that town. It draws people who can't afford Marblehead or Swampscott, closer to the water. It's a nice house but the sunporch is probably too big (and people in New England do have them, usually in back) and there's too much stainless and not enough real cabinet space in the kitchen.