Today’s walkabout is a bit of a cheat because these aren’t my pictures… but it is within walking distance, so I’m counting it…

When I’m bored, I frequently look at real estate listings. Why? I don’t really know… maybe to see where prices are at now… but more likely just to see inside other peoples houses… Whatever the reason, I was looking the other day, and a new house came up for sale in town.

It was the little asphalt sided one I posted about in mid-August – one that was the same style as our own.

This was VERY exciting for me, because from what I could tell, it hadn’t been changed much from the original. Because of that, I wondered if it would still have some of the original character that was stripped from ours.

I started clicking through the pictures.

Like ours, it was in desperate need of a new refresh… but look at that baseboard!!! And door and window trim!!!!

The funny thing about that is Dave and I were talking about putting those same circle corner pieces around the windows. Not just because they look nice but because he won’t have to mitre as much!!! Now there’s no guarantee they are actually original because those windows, while not new, have been changed at some point.

I also wonder if that little bump out with the windows is original. I’ve seen it on a few, but not all of the houses of this style in town. If it existed on our house, it’s long gone now, because that’s the side where they added the addition to ours (and contains Dave’s studio).

But the baseboard I’m pretty sure if original, because we have some like it on our staircase, the only place where they didn’t strip it our in our house.

And speaking of those stairs…

I can confirm that we have that EXACT newel post and bannister spindles, so I’m guessing that’s original. Ours is completely painted though (and will be repainted when we get to that part of the house). What’s interesting is we have original baseboard running up the stairs, but they seem to have taken it out in this house. And I wonder if that floor is original it looks like pine to me, but I’m not an expert.

The real estate listing for this house is here, but as it’s sold already, I’m not sure how long the link will work for.

Dave was VERY upset when I showed him the listing and he saw that the price was about 1/3 what we paid for ours. But I reminded him that prices in general haven’t actually dropped that far – someone must have REALLY wanted to get rid of this one.

Also… though this one does have an addition for the kitchen, it’s a fair bit smaller than our place – we have two extra bedrooms, and our rooms are bigger in general. There’s also only one bathroom in this house (we have two full bathrooms), an it’s only a single garage. And there’s no basement at all, where we have half basement/half crawl space under ours. And when you go through the other pictures on the site, the original plaster is really bad in some places, so we’d still be hanging drywall (his biggest peeve about this place).

That made him feel a good deal better. I for one, am still thrilled with our place. And with these pictures, I have somewhat of a historical reference, so we can add some of that character back in!