Hunting Vintage - General Discussion

[Psychobunny]

Editor's Note:

Discuss Hunting Vintage Here!

 

I can't with this version. You want a vintage home then complain that your 1860's house doesn't have closets or that you'll have to knock down walls to create an "open concept"? 

[Albino]

I'm on the fence about Nicole Curtis, but at least on Rehab Addict she respects the homes' history and detail, and always tries to reuse the original molding, windows, walls, hardware, floors, doors and cabinets.  Her decorating is a bit OTT - it's a home, not a movie set - but otherwise the houses are lovingly restored to their former glory. 

There have only been a few episodes of Hunting Vintage, but IIRC every single owner smashed down at least one wall that stood for 100 years or more, or painted over original brick fireplaces.  Just. Buy. A. New. House. The kitchens are usually small and poorly laid out, and the bathrooms are generally gross so I can completely understand re-doing them.   

Edited July 18, 2016 by Albino

[biakbiak]

27 minutes ago, Albino said:

I'm on the fence about Nicole Curtis, but at least on Rehab Addict she respects the homes' history and detail, and always tries to reuse the original molding, windows, walls, hardware, floors, doors and cabinets.  Her decorating is a bit OTT - it's a home, not a movie set - but otherwise the houses are lovingly restored to their former glory. 

There have only been a few episodes of Hunting Vintage, but IIRC every single owner smashed down at least one wall that stood for 100 years or more, or painted over original brick fireplaces.  Just. Buy. A. New. House. The kitchens are usually small and poorly laid out, and the bathrooms are generally gross so I can completely understand re-doing them.   

Are there different shows? This not at all what occurred on the past week of HV. We didn't see any remodels and the only huge reno they were putting the kitchen back into its original location and talking the 70s kitchen and making it a master suite with an addition but not blowing at walls. Two of the others Key West and Hot Springs, AK didn't even mention remodelling.

[Totale]

This show really speaks to location.  That Hot Springs Tudor was freakin' gorgeous and they got it for less than $300K.  I don't know anything about FL except that it's racing headlong towards being underwater, but I know Marblehead is cold and miserable in the winter and overrun with tourists and impossible to navigate all summer.  How bad can Hot Springs be to make twice as much house there cost 1/3 as much?  The couple that bought it struck me as trust fund babies so jobs probably weren't an issue.  At least "fill it up with kids" didn't seem to be an option for their extra space.

[Broderbits]

The Hot Springs home was in Arkansas, not Florida. The conch house was in Key West FL, an area that has always been fairly expensive. I don't remember seeing any remodels either, but my eyes sort of glazed over when I saw the hideous electric blue that couple painted one of the Tudor rooms.

So they aired 3 episodes last week, there are none on the schedule this week, what's up with that? We get blocks of Property Brothers foolishness, but it's hit or miss with the new shows that might be interesting. I just don't understand this network.

[laredhead]

Broderbits, it was probably next to impossible to find 3 buyers who didn't want to knock down walls to create an open floor plan, install granite and ss appliances, child proof every surface, and install miles of subway tile.  Not saying that some of this cannot be done in a vintage house, but to do it while maintaining the vintage feel of the house is more difficult to do and usually costs more.

I liked the Tudor house in Hot Springs, but I kept thinking about what their utility bills are going to be.  That's another extra expense with older houses that haven't been properly insulated and have not had upgrades to the HVAC systems.  One of the houses they looked at did not have central heat or air, and each room had electric space heaters.    

[AlleC17]

Good point about the utility bills.  But that Tudor house was freaking gorgeous. That blue they painted the living room was baaad.  Also, he was the artist, right?  The Tudor was the house with the solarium?  I watched too many in a row and the details are blurred, but his paintings were definitely not to my taste and looked odd being hung in such a gracious and elegant home.

[laredhead]

Yes, he was an artist, and I think she was a teacher.  The Tudor house had the solarium which I thought was pretty cool, especially since the original use was for plants and it had a water faucet in the solarium wall to make watering the plants easy.  Who would have thought of that?  I wasn't fond of the blue walls either.

[Totale]

On 7/18/2016 at 9:22 PM, AlleC17 said:

Good point about the utility bills.  But that Tudor house was freaking gorgeous.

Heating is probably not that much of an issue in Hot Springs if that was the location of the house with space heaters.  I lived in a 19th century house in a cold climate with inadequate central heating, and we used space heaters to supplement and do things like take the chill off the bathroom on a cold morning.  A/C might be more of an issue for them, but then again do you need to cool the whole cavernous space, or would window units do the trick? I wonder, if they loved some place that had never had central heat or A/C what it would cost to accomplish? They'd have to open some walls for ductwork to go in, but they'd have the benefit of 21st century tech like insulated ductwork (we lost most of our heat before it ever got to the room), a high efficiency plant and a HVAC system designed for the space rather than shoved in afterwards to replace a coal shuttle. 25-30 grand maybe? Might be worth it.

[aguabella]

Is it possible some of you were thinking of the show, Vintage Flip?  They aired one season and yes, did extensive remodeling - at least in the partial episodes that I viewed. 

In their 22 minute episodes, I don't believe HV deviated from the HH script / framework.

IIRC, VF's sort of a spinoff from Flip or Flop.  It features LA area vintage properties and the couple initially guested on F or F b4 scoring their own show.

[AuntiePam]

A new episode this week, but I'm thinking that a separate show for vintage homes isn't necessary, especially if it takes three months to put an episode together.

This one had an enjoyable couple in Austin with a max budget of $250K.  She's a social worker and he teaches carpentry at a community college.  The first two houses were occupied -- a Tudor and a Colonial.  The third house (which they chose, duh - it was empty) was dubbed Victorian and it had Victorian touches inside -- leaded glass windows and some nice woodwork.  But the exterior had nothing Victorian about it.  The  flat front made me wonder if there'd been a porch that had deteriorated, removed, and not replaced.

[AlleC17]

I saw the tail end of this, and they were showing the interior after the move in, and she mentioned how happy she was in a Victorian...then they showed the outside and I wondered what Victorian she was talking about.  lol  Did not look at all Victorian to me, but it did look nice.

[AuntiePam]

Oops.  They were in Chicago, not Austin.  My mistake. 

There was an Austin couple yesterday but I don't remember a single thing about that episode. 

[truther]

I caught most of the Chicago episode.  I don't understand the point.  There have been HH episodes where they look at old(er) houses.  How is this different, except with a cheesy voiceover and different font graphics?

[AuntiePam]

There's no difference that I can see.  And since 99% of the shoppers seem to want something new, or older but renovated, there's no reason to have a separate show.  Or a realtor giving us history lessons.

[AuntiePam]

Another new vintage episode, this one in San Francisco.  Buyers chose a house listed at $1.6M but ended up paying $2.3M and are looking at renovating the kitchen and bathrooms.  And the house has no garage.  I've lived in houses without garages but there's always been off-street parking.  It's gotta be difficult -- moving furniture, schlepping groceries, etc. 

Maybe this one will end up on a Renovation episode. 

[Ohwell]

I watched this show for the first time last night and found it boring.  Guess I'm not the "vintage" type of house hunter.

[laredhead]

I was cringing when the Chicago woman said the half bath in one of the homes was vintage, but not the type of vintage she wanted.  Huh?  The fixtures were a shade of deep red that was popular when that house was built and they looked fine, as did the ceramic tile.  It looked as though the owners had maintained the vintage aspects of the house.  I was glad that wasn't the house they bought because she probably would have ripped everything out and put in travertine and other stuff that would not be period appropriate.  I think the house they bought has that small shower room downstairs that is floor to ceiling large tile that absolutely does not fit that house.      

[AuntiePam]

Three Vintage eps in three days -- is HGTV cleaning out the closet?  Tonight's was in Bloomington, Indiana.  The couple looked at a log cabin, a French Second Empire, and a one-of-a-kind limestone that I was sure wouldn't even have been for sale because it was so historical. 

They had a big budget so were able to buy the limestone, even though fixing a crack in the limestone was estimated to cost $100,000.  And they were redoing a lot of the interior -- moving the kitchen, adding a master suite, and removing lots of wallpaper.

And we learned about building with limestone.  I didn't know the Lincoln Memorial was made with limestone.  I thought it was granite.

[JasmineFlower]

I think it's Hunting Vintage week, they've done it before, that's why there's been 3 episodes in 3 days.

In the intro I spotted underwear designer Andrew Christian with his best friend Marcellas (fashion stylist who appears on TV sometimes), suggesting they appear in another episode soon. Is Andrew on a quest to do every single version of House Hunters that exists no matter what the form? Maybe that's an episode that already aired and I missed it, but I mean, this makes 3 shows now from what I remember. The house in Key West that he shopped for with Marcellas, the place in Mexico with the botoxed friend and now this. I'm starting to think he's got a good friend at the production company or that's an HGTV exec and they struck a deal to give him more exposure.

What little I saw of the Bloomington episode seemed like it was an unfortunate waste of money for this couple. I hope that's their forever home that they never need to sell or recoup the money, because that's a mighty expensive unique home for a place that is largely a big college town, that speaking from personal experience, doesn't feature vintage as the norm, let alone anything like this. There's different, then there's different and given he thinks this is where a Baron would live, I'm guessing the pool of buyers on this one is extremely narrow. Which is why they got $90k off of asking, not just the large crack, which unless they said explicitly, I don't think is the entire amount to fix they got off asking.

[KLovestoShop]

JasmineFlower, straight up on your post.  I would love to know how long that house was on the market.  Having been to Bloomington many times, I know real estate is different in college towns.  I can't help but get the feeling that this house will have a lot of problems other than the porch.  If that house was so historical, it would have never been sold for that low amount, unless there were other major problems.  

I did not like the husband at all, with his illusions of grandeur and wanting to be a Count.  The last straw was seeing him trying on that fur shawl, thinking that would make him royalty.  

[juliet73]

On 10/11/2016 at 11:57 PM, AuntiePam said:

Another new vintage episode, this one in San Francisco.  Buyers chose a house listed at $1.6M but ended up paying $2.3M and are looking at renovating the kitchen and bathrooms.  And the house has no garage.  I've lived in houses without garages but there's always been off-street parking.  It's gotta be difficult -- moving furniture, schlepping groceries, etc. 

Maybe this one will end up on a Renovation episode. 

I couldn't believe they went $700,000 over asking especially since there was no garage and the kitchen and baths needed to be renovated! I would have walked away. Then again, I don't have $2.5 million to spend on a house. 

[kirklandia]

I enjoyed seeing the rerun episode with the Key West houses.  Andrew and Marcellas were definitely extra!  

I did a little cyber-stalking.  Andrew bought that Key West house in July 2015.  In Feb 2016, he tweeted that he was selling it.  His appearance on House Hunters Int'l in Puerto Vallarta aired in Sept 2016.  In 2017, he was still trying to sell the Key West house. As well as his LA house...  

https://www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2017/dirt/real-estalker/andrew-christian-los-angeles-house-key-west-1202011045/amp/

Edited May 16, 2019 by kirklandia