Designing In The Late 1960s

What were they thinking?

Photo used with Permission by Ken Bailey from Real Estate Pros & More

Remember the old days when people designed their houses? Have you watched any of those television shows on HGTV before? They are always finding houses where there are old designs that you wonder, what they were thinking when they designed it?

Maybe it’s old blue carpet or some kind of terrible wallpaper. You’ve seen it before. They used to put weird colors on their walls, floors, sinks, and bath tubs. You can find some old designs on properties that are for sale or rent on popular websites like Realtor.com.

I was on Realtor.com looking at houses in my old neighborhood in New York State. The first place I found was actually right down the road from where I once lived.

The front of the house looked nice. It’s painted powder-blue. The two car garage has a white door. The rear of the house boasted a nice wooden deck. It looks new.

The house was built in 1968. Everything about the outside was exceptional. Notice how I said the outside. The inside was a mess. One look at the photos of the inside and you wouldn’t believe it. Could these photos look that terrible? Yes, they are. But this house is old. We need to take that into consideration. We don’t know its history. Maybe the people who owned it couldn’t afford to upgrade it. We are not judging them.

Once you enter the front door, you are in the foyer. It has some kind of laminate floor that looks like rocks.

The carpet in the whole house is either a dark green or blue. It’s hard to tell. Who knows how much of it is dirt. It’s obvious that the carpet has never been changed.

There are different kinds of wallpaper. What were they thinking? They weren’t. It’s different.

If I was writing a description of this, I would try something like this.

This is how I would write it:

A late 1960s gem. The outside is immaculate. The inside needs a little help. If you can look past the carpets, a few cosmetic changes can make this your complete home.

It looks like they tried to fix at least one of the bathrooms. They put in a nice vanity with a modern sink. They put a new toilet in too. It’s white, so no crazy colors.

As you can see in the photo at the beginning of this story, the other bathroom has a light blue sink and is mounted to the wall.

Now the real funny part.

If you happen to trip coming out of the shower, the toilet will break your fall.

It’s hilarious. There is hardly any space to get into the shower in the first place. How did this ever get designed this way? Who thought it was good design!

It’s crazy that this was the “in” design back in the day.

Conclusion

I commend the realtor, Ken Bailey, as he had a tough sell. As I have seen with other properties that had “old” designs, these properties can take a long time to get someone interested in them.

All this house needed was someone special to take care of it.

You can view the house and all the photos I talked about here.

Update: as I write this tonight, the house is pending.

Feel free to comment.

Until next time, happy reading.

-Matt