"You can, AND MUST, see more photos here."

March 3, 2017 1:29 PM

PoPville, self-styled as "DC's Neighborhood Blog," often posts real estate listings to informally survey readers on whether they're a "Good Deal, or Not?" If you like eclectic and retro interior design, today's feature is indeed a good deal. The best deal.
posted by capricorn (73 comments total)

So as I'm looking at the pictures, I'm unable to form a coherent sentence but the phrases "Nikki Sixx" and "piles of cocaine" come to mind.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:42 PM on March 3, 2017 [11 favorites]

I applaud the homeowner's commitment to the theme, if not their choices for that theme. 50% of it would just need a couple coats of paint to make it nice and bland again.

All new kitchen cabinets and bathroom...fixes might be expensive though.

The attic bedroom was super cozy looking!
posted by sharp pointy objects at 1:49 PM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I kept thinking, "I'd happily live there. Too bad I have better things to spend my millions on."
posted by cjorgensen at 1:53 PM on March 3, 2017

I think I built this house in the Sims once
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:59 PM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]

I like how the agent sequenced the photos in the listing -- start with the normal exterior and slowwwwwly jack up the crazy so by the time you get to the kitchen & bathrooms you're nice and warmed up.
posted by feckless at 2:01 PM on March 3, 2017 [17 favorites]

Twitches porn mustache...yes...yes...
posted by Confess, Fletch at 2:02 PM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

this is why Adam and Barbara got so upset
posted by Countess Elena at 2:02 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

If I lived in town I would take out as many mortgages as necessary to become this B&B owner. The lightning trim on the staircase!
posted by peppercorn at 2:05 PM on March 3, 2017 [6 favorites]

I love that there is one of those square grand pianos in the living room.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:09 PM on March 3, 2017

Gay folk lived in or visited the Chicago in the late 90s will be pleased to see a Sidetracks bathroom absolutely represented in photo #15.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:09 PM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]

Red walls in most rooms, fine.

RED HALF BATHROOM NOOOOOOO
posted by GuyZero at 2:10 PM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

Now I can't stop humming "U Can't Touch This". Please tell me MC Hammer decorated this house in 1990.
posted by w0mbat at 2:11 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

That is amazing. The stairs are gorgeous.

The price on this seems fine to me, considering the size, the location, and the fact that though the interior may not be to everyone's taste, it looks to be very well cared for. Or is my sense of real estate costs is so skewed by living in San Francisco for the last 17 years that $1.4 mill really out of line?
posted by rtha at 2:12 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think I built this house in the Sims once

Particularly the TVs facing nothing (or too small for the where people may sit) because as everyone knows, sims watch TV standing.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:14 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

The price on this seems fine to me, considering the size, the location

Sadly, not really. GreatSchools sez the local schools are not well-rated. So that's a major blow against it. For a million-and-a-half I'd expect to be near better rated schools.

That said, it's pretty huge, 4,000 sq feet and has a lot of rooms. And a big garage. So it's got that going for it.
posted by GuyZero at 2:15 PM on March 3, 2017

I've never cared about kitchens too much, but I want to eat breakfast in that kitchen just once. JUST ONCE.
posted by xingcat at 2:16 PM on March 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

This could get me to move to the US, if not for Trump. I love it.
posted by mumimor at 2:23 PM on March 3, 2017

I think I built this house in the Sims once

Coincidentally, I'm absolutely certain somebody has peed on the floor in that house just because they forgot to go for two days.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:24 PM on March 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

(To be absolutely clear for the record, I love this house.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:25 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

For a million-and-a-half I'd expect to be near better rated schools.

lol dc real estate
posted by everybody had matching towels at 2:25 PM on March 3, 2017 [23 favorites]

The price on this seems fine to me, considering the size, the location

Sadly, not really. GreatSchools sez the local schools are not well-rated. So that's a major blow against it. For a million-and-a-half I'd expect to be near better rated schools.

Hahahaha it is in DC proper, which has terrible public schools in general. Plus anyone spending 1.4M on a house in an urban area is probably sending their kids to private school.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:28 PM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

ME, SCROLLING THROUGH PHOTOS:

...OK, this looks unexceptionable, I don't see--

--Well, OK, that trim is--

--Wait, what did they do to the stairs? I don't--

--THE KITCHEN THE KITCHEN OW MY EYES OW--

--AAAAGGGH THE BATHROOM IS SCORCHING WITH THE FLAMES OF HELL
posted by thomas j wise at 2:30 PM on March 3, 2017 [12 favorites]

Other than the glass tables and tiny city-living sized yard, I really like this place. They even had the good taste to get a nice massage chair with the separate foot massager and the utterly pointless massage company branded ottoman table things. And it's close enough to Rock Creek Park to run there every day.

I wonder how much of the furniture and decor conveys. It'd be a shame to pay that much and find on move-in day that your dishwasher suddenly no longer has a geisha on it. You'd be left staring dejectedly at your mirror bladed ceiling fan wondering how to carry on.
posted by mattamatic at 2:34 PM on March 3, 2017 [22 favorites]

Some months back, I came across an ad for a house in the UK where the entire kitchen--floors, walls, cupboards, everything--was done in red-and-black checkerboard paint and tile. And that was one of the more sedately decorated rooms in the house. I mean, you'd be awake in the morning, but.

We have a fairly terrifying house in my neck of the woods that has some really, um, interesting decor, including the mirror strips on the ceiling and random disco lights everywhere. Also one of the toilets has apparently exploded, but that's not intentional (er, I hope). Let's just say that the realtor is selling way below its expected market value (because the purchaser will have to rip everything out and start over...).
posted by thomas j wise at 2:35 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

This house was designed as a trap for Guy Fieri. Having served its purpose, it is being sold to recoup expenses on Project SunFire.
posted by Dmenet at 2:45 PM on March 3, 2017 [13 favorites]

Did I tell you about that time I was shopping for a house in Todmorden, West Yorkshire (famous for community vegetable growing, mass murderer Harold Shipman, and UFOs)?

From the outside it was a standard red-brick northern terraced house. But inside was a different story. You know that area that houses have when the staircase does a 180 turn back on itself, and you have that little landing in the middle? This house had a fully plumbed-in toilet on that bit. No washbasin. No door. Just a toilet in the middle of the stairs. Presumably whoever had owned the house was undecided about whether to site the main WC upstairs or downstairs, and just split the difference. I thought that was pretty weird until I found the bath. The bath had been plumbed in in the loft - basically you went up a ladder through a hatch into the roof space, where there was no actual flooring, just some fibreglass insulation and an old plastic Christmas tree, and there was the bath, all ready to go.

It was a very cheap house. I kind of wish I'd bought it now.
posted by pipeski at 3:04 PM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]

I was okay until I got to the kitchen.
posted by Mogur at 3:07 PM on March 3, 2017

I was okay until I got to the kitchen.

Was it the cabinets or the geisha dishwasher?
posted by GuyZero at 3:13 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

I bet you could make half your down payment back just from the blow you could scrape up out of the wainscoting.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 3:14 PM on March 3, 2017 [11 favorites]

This house is like a half-mile from me. And it is a "must-see." If it sells for more than a million, I basically have to redo my house in a similar style, right? It would be irresponsible not to.

I'm nothing if not fiscally responsible.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:15 PM on March 3, 2017 [16 favorites]

In the US, practicing lawyers generally have to take and pass an examination for the bar. Pass rates tend to be pretty high in most places, particularly for first-time takers coming out of an accredited law school. Still, everybody gets super-anxious, and likes to check into a hotel nearby the night before and work out all your shit and make sure you have flashcards and are sorted.

Yours truly decides to have dinner before checking in, and by the time I get out to the super-staid corporate major hotel chain I have my reservation at, they tell me that all the regular rooms have been apportioned, and that I, uh, have to take the elevator to the top flor, then take my suitcase out, go to the end of the call, and climb the spiral staricase. I have the "Sahara Fantasy Suite."

The place was decked out with faux-chains, a mural of camels walking over sand dunes, and a further spiral staircase that led nowhere, the purpose of which I can only assume was to give you an additional place to have sex right next to the door if you couldn't make it to the round bed underneath a mirrored ceiling. There was no shower, only a large round bathtub in the middle of the room. There were also no windows, and I may have done my last-minute bar prep flashcards sitting on my luggage to avoid touching the furniture.

Seeing the bathtub in that house gave me such a fucking flashback, I can't even tell you.
posted by joyceanmachine at 3:22 PM on March 3, 2017 [33 favorites]

Sadly, not really. GreatSchools sez the local schools are not well-rated. So that's a major blow against it. For a million-and-a-half I'd expect to be near better rated schools.

My hunch is that anyone spending a million and a half dollars on a house in DC probably doesn't intend to send their kids to public school.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:27 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

In picture 16, the bedroom / bathroom: are those two TV sets?
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:35 PM on March 3, 2017

In picture 16, the bedroom / bathroom: are those two TV sets?

A tv (above) and a gas fireplace (below.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:40 PM on March 3, 2017

Darn, I guess I shouldn't do up my own kitchen like that if I want to preserve my resale value.
posted by yohko at 3:52 PM on March 3, 2017

I like the imprint of the tennis racquet on the inexplicably Grimace-purple bed, like clearly they thought the racquet needed to be in the shot, but the bed wasn't doing it justice.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 4:16 PM on March 3, 2017

I feel like this is the sister house to the palace that Gardenburger built, which is incidentally on the market as well!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 4:18 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I showed this to an elderly friend, who was unimpressed.

"My folks almost bought a house when I was a kid," she commented. "It had really odd decor, too, so they didn't buy it. Too bad because the walls in one of the rooms upstairs were covered with graffiti."
"Graffiti? From vandals?"
"Well, not really graffiti, more like drawings, and they were by James Thurber, who did them when visiting the owners. My folks didn't like the rest of the house, which is too bad."

Ever since she told me of this I lie awake dreaming of that house and wondering if it, and the drawings, are still there. Because THAT would be the best room, if not the best house, ever.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:18 PM on March 3, 2017 [12 favorites]

In the next few years, we're going to be adding a new half-bath here at chez palmcorder, and we're starting to work through what that's going to look like.

Mostly, we're thinking in terms of optimizing for space-efficiency, usability, environmental impact, and cost, like grownups do-- but there is a very small yet very insistent part of me that sometimes screams, "FUCK IT! I WANT A DISCO SHITTER!"

And then I wind up spending a bunch of time that I absolutely cannot spare poring over stuff like this and this.

Help me.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 4:24 PM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]

That's about four blocks from us. Our house looks a lot more like it did in 1924 than that house does.
posted by fedward at 4:29 PM on March 3, 2017

It's like someone showed the interior decorator Eddie Van Halen's guitar and a photo of Liberace and whipped her in the back from a gilded chariot until they were satisfied the job was done
posted by Navelgazer at 5:12 PM on March 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

This house is the final Pokémon form of these shoes.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:14 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Imagine if they had left the bathroom and kitchen fixtures original like the last bathroom photo.
You guys, I recently saw an episode of House Hunters Renovation where the home buyers chose GREEN marble on the walls and counters of their very expensive LA bungalow kitchen rehab. I think the days of bedroom marble hot tubs may be coming back! And really, who am I to argue? I sort of love it.
Real question: why did the price of this house jump $50,000 right after it was listed?
posted by areaperson at 5:19 PM on March 3, 2017

Rarely do I find a situation in which I can quote from Zoolander and mean it but when looking through those photos I found myself saying out loud "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
posted by komara at 5:20 PM on March 3, 2017

In picture 16, the bedroom / bathroom: are those two TV sets?

A tv (above) and a gas fireplace (below.)

I'm pretty sure the bottom one is a tv too. I mean it looks a lot more like a tv then a gas fireplace, and also there's a giant marble bathtub in the middle of the room. The only thing to expect is the unexpected.

I may have done my last-minute bar prep flashcards sitting on my luggage to avoid touching the furniture.

I spent most of a weeks vacation wrapped in, sitting on, shielded by a throw blanket I'd brought because the place we rented was so gross. We found a gnawed chicken bone on the coffee table when we checked in. *shiver*
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 5:22 PM on March 3, 2017

On the schools, note that DC is weird compared to much of the country: something close to half of DC students go to charter schools and they can also apply to any public school in the district. If you're on metro in the morning you'll see kids from all over the district heading to the more popular schools.
posted by adamsc at 5:28 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure I'd never have the guts to actually do this decor but, boy, is it great! Especially the kitchen. And soft things to sit on everywhere. And the fabulous porch. The biggest drawback is the DC climate.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:31 PM on March 3, 2017

They really like triangles. And cocaine, clearly.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:54 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Am I missing something? Where is the soundproof MUSIC studio?

Plus, the existence of an in-law suite and "separate self-contained Lower Unit" suggests (at least to this Midwesterner) that they rented part of the house out.

If so, they must have been terrifying landlords. "WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING WITH THAT DRESSER??? IF IT'S NOT PURPLE WITH CHROME LIGHTNING BOLT ACCENTS IT DOESN'T COME IN THIS HOUSE!!!"
posted by soundguy99 at 6:25 PM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the bottom one is a tv too. I mean it looks a lot more like a tv then a gas fireplace, and also there's a giant marble bathtub in the middle of the room. The only thing to expect is the unexpected.


Which makes me all the more curious about the person or people who lived here. 2 televisions -- the person obviously worked in government. A fairly staid but tasteful porch and entry way for receiving visitors and as you move in and up it's more twisted along the way. The attic contains at least 3 beds, a table and chairs and a bathroom. Yeah, guest suite, but a pretty well outfitted one. What was going on up there?

I think this house is unironically amazing and fairly priced for the size and location.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:28 PM on March 3, 2017

Obviously they hired the same people who finished the interior decor of a large gray stucco house on Franklin Street in Checy Chase View. I saw it when it came on market a few years ago.

Kitchen -- EXACTLY like the old Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. Light marble or travertine counter tops, dark wood, brass, stained glass lights.

Massive dark wood moldings everywhere, grand staircase leading to disproportionately small loft. (More than one staircase, of course, with one to the real upstairs.)

Master bedroom has cathedral ceiling, 75-inch flat screen TV (before they became common) opposite the bed.

Master bath done in faux black with big prismatic rainbow sparkle flakes; copper wall tiles.
Cathedral ceiling (!)

The house was acquired by the consulate of Senegal, but I'm not sure they're still there.
posted by bad grammar at 6:48 PM on March 3, 2017

Chevy Chase View.
But interior paint colors were nothing special.
The FPP's house's decor suggests the owner was a well paid official or lawyer with secret ambitions to be an interior designer and a crush on Diana Vreeland, who famously had her walls painted red. If you open any cabinet hundreds of copies of Architectural Digest tumble out.

Sometimes DC'ers have sick secret fantasies about being Manhattan. See the Melissa Chiu Hirshhorn Museum party scandal. This is also why many Washingtonians detest Trump (beside numerous rational reasons).
posted by bad grammar at 7:00 PM on March 3, 2017

OMG.

We went and looked at a house that we got this >< close to buying, which had "great bones" as they say, but it was owned by an artist, and she painted Every. Single. Wall. a different, fully-saturated, eye-popping color. EVERY WALL AN ACCENT WALL, I SAY! Then to tie it all together, she would run a hideous, foot-tall wallpaper border around the whole room up at the ceiling, with the four different color walls. Every room. Every wall. Forest Green was the only color we saw repeat, and the place had five bedrooms!

The other thing that we slightly weird about it was that the husband was a musician so they had like four pianos in the house, in progressively weirder places I suppose as it got harder to figure out where to put the ever-multiplying pianos.

My parents bought a house where the previous owner installed a fully functional 1950s diner -- soda fountain, griddle, counter, chrome, red vinyl, turquoise walls, black and white tile, seats 16 at tables, plus the bar -- in the basement. He sold the house because he built himself a new one with a bigger diner in it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:32 PM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]

I like how all the weirdness is in the middle cluster of pictures, shielded on both sides by fairly stodgy-looking exteriors and rooms. Like maybe you wouldn't notice the bizarre decor until you were already drawn in by the lovely porch and the boring lower floor.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:11 PM on March 3, 2017

Why am I not surprised this is in DC, where apparently massive amounts of kink are kept hidden behind a stodgy facade while they castigate the rest of the nation for daring to show theirs.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:07 PM on March 3, 2017

You guys! I walk my dogs past this house all the time. I had no idea...

Price is consistent with other recent sales in the neighborhood.
posted by Cocodrillo at 4:45 AM on March 4, 2017

The biggest drawback is the DC climate.

We went from 80 degrees to 20 degrees in the span of like 2 days this week, what's not to love??

Why am I not surprised this is in DC, where apparently massive amounts of kink are kept hidden behind a stodgy facade while they castigate the rest of the nation for daring to show theirs.

Stop electing the worst people in your various states to federal office and sending them here!
posted by sallybrown at 5:33 AM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]

The kitchen seemed a bit much, and then the bathrooms stretched my conception of quirky past the breaking point.

I'm especially wondering about what the atmosphere in that bedroom is like, in DC, in the summer, if someone is using the tub.
posted by pykrete jungle at 7:09 AM on March 4, 2017

Amazon's recommendation engine offered me this incredible chandelier with EIGHT tiffany glass parrots sitting on a giant ring. I loved it! I had no wish to own it, but I was thrilled to have seen it and I came back to look at it over and over, thus prompting Amazon to show me other such items - unfortunately none were quite as far over the top as that parrot chandelier, but they tried.

I could not think where a parrot chandelier would fit, but now I know.
posted by elizilla at 7:11 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

The least they could do is get replacement glass for the two ceiling fans that are missing it.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:08 PM on March 4, 2017

Courtesy of my friend: Poseidon's Fortress, a real MacMansion in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

"There's nothing like it anywhere near here."
posted by tickingclock at 4:45 PM on March 4, 2017

Mod note: Fixed link.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:09 PM on March 4, 2017

EIGHT tiffany glass parrots sitting on a giant ring
link please
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 5:37 PM on March 4, 2017

Here's the 8 parrot chandelier. (I think I prefer the 5 bird version because they look like they're talking to each other.)
posted by belladonna at 7:04 PM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

Oh, are we posting pictures of the aggressively whimsical, stained glass chandeliers that haunt our dreams? GOOD. Here's mine.

(To make that work in my house, I would need to get a whole different house. But ohhhh, it tempts me. )
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 7:27 PM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

you people have no whimsy in your souls, that kitchen is fucking glorious

the giant bathtub in the middle of the bedroom is so weird though, why is that a thing. i saw that in so many homes i was looking at in central america. who decided to ruin bathtubs like this? how can i stop them

i assume the red bathroom is where i would be murdered by a crazed intruder out to steal my parrot chandelier
posted by poffin boffin at 9:40 PM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

Actually, I liked many of the touches in the more restrained rooms. But I'd prefer not to sit hungover and try to get some breakfast to stay down in that kitchen.
posted by Harald74 at 10:58 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

My weirdest real-estate-related experience is from around fourteen years ago, I guess, when we were looking at houses and went to a showing of one we really couldn't afford. Probably because were were tired of looking at the meager pickings of those we could afford. Basically we had the choice between shitty location and shitty house. We ended up going for shitty location to at least get our foot in the door in the real estate market. But I digress.

The house we looked at seemed super-normal. It was decorated in a perfectly middle-of-the-road style with nice light colors and furnishings neither expensive nor all bought at Ikea, and you could deduce from looking at it that there lived a middle aged couple there who were comfortable financially and with no kids. So we looked around upstairs, and then went down to the basement where the supplied reading material from the real estate agent said there was what I guess would be called a rec room in the US. And so it was. A bar, comfy couches, that sort of thing. But no windows, since it was a part of the basement in the middle of the house. Past this room, though, was a large, well furnished bathroom including a jacuzzi. And mirrored ceiling. And there was actually no door between the bathroom and the rec room, just an opening. Hmm. So we think, then grin a bit, and observe the other people coming in having a look around and pretty much coming to the same conclusions as us. And trying not to seem like they came to the same conclusions.
posted by Harald74 at 11:12 PM on March 4, 2017

I think the kitchen would probably be an amusing quirk for about the first week, after which one would grow to loathe having to wake up and face that intense garishness every morning.

Some of the rest of the house is nice, though to my taste a lot of it goes way beyond "an eclectic style" and well into "coke-induced randonmness" territory.

All of which is moot, since I couldn't afford a house even a quarter of its asking price even if I did want to live in DC.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:24 AM on March 5, 2017

Is there any way to find out who this house belonged to? I really want to know!
posted by eggkeeper at 5:21 PM on March 5, 2017

those parrot lamps are fucking glorious
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:03 PM on March 6, 2017

Man.

a. DC real estate is insane. My 826'^2 1920s bungalow has appreciated $70k in 3 years. Like literally the entire price of a comparable house in my hometown.

b. One of the best things about making house calls in this town was seeing all the weird decor hiding behind unremarkable row house facades. Like the closet with skeleton wallpaper or the man-sized wooden Popeye sculpture. Brightwood is full of weird old houses that people have blinged out.

c. I too really want to know whose house that was. Andrew Sullivan? Gingrich?

posted by aspersioncast at 12:44 PM on March 7, 2017

I too really want to know whose house that was

It's easy to find out, but seems to have been nobody famous and we should probably not go down this path.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:51 PM on March 8, 2017 [1 favorite]