It’s not currently official inventory (it was withdrawn from the MLS after four months on the market in June). And while 767 Castro’s website still reads “Offered at $2,295,000,” a recent Craigslist ad for the Liberty Hill Victorian reads $2,195,000 ($709 per square foot).
The new-ish master suite is a bit vertically challenged but we do like the feel (and we’d move the bed). And while not the Classic line of Heartland appliances in the kitchen, the Legend series was a nice choice.
∙ Listing: 767 Castro (4/2.5+1/1) – $2,195,000 [libertyhillgrandvictorian.com] [Floor Plans]
∙ $2195000 / 5br – Liberty Hill Grand Victorian Residence [Craigslist]
$2mil AND you get to do laundry in the kitchen!
I have to say: that’s not really Liberty Hill, it’s the castro.
The interiors are dreadful: looks like a funeral parlor, awful faux painted walls. Why does the kitchen have to look like some grandmothers old fashioned kitchen? If that’s a combo washer/dryer, they really do NOT work.
Headroom in the so called master is a joke; you really cant use about 1/2 of the actual space..
oh..yea. no parking.
Needs more archways on the main floor
I have an experienced crew (for hire) that can smooth coat the textured walls and ceilings.
Great work triangle in that kitchen. I hate having to cross the house after unloading the dryer to put those fresh towels in the fridge.
The assessed value on this is 565K. They tried to sell it for 1.5M four and a half years ago. I guess they remodelled in the interim and didn’t go forward with the garage. As is this ~2.2M number doesn’t add up in the slightest way.
nice. how much does lack of parking take off? (parking is easy within a block of this house, for what it’s worth).
and, yes, I recognize there are some problems with the house, but it is substantial and has good bones. Alot of the criticisms above are cheap to fix.
Sounds like there’s parking: “A private garage and parking pad provide 2 car parking.” Not true?
It’s leased parking. I think this pricing is off by about 300K.
I’m thinking the garage in the photo is the garage…
I think since that garage is purple, whilst this house is green, that’s probably the neighbor’s garage.
The old picture is awesome! I love when listing have that, and i wish the house next door was the one for sale.
Looking on Google maps, it appears to have a garage to the left of the black railing. Nice place.
I’m really curious about the decision to put the combo washer-dryer in the kitchen myself. It’s not like having a cabinet there would be superfluous and there’s other places in the house with plumbing that look like a W/D would fit – maybe across from the main floor bath? Which leads me to think there’s something funny about the house if that’s the only place to put the washer?
The walls are awful but an easy fix. And otherwise the kitchen is adorable.
Small garage with a curb cut here. Might be a bit narrow depending on the car.
http://www.mapjack.com/?kpymW52ybFSBBDSA
Look at that basement plan on the floor plans link. That is no garage, it is a gate and entrance to the downstairs unit (which on the plan view doesn’t show the presumably unpermitted kitchen).
I dont believe that is a garage either, but I’m check in person when I go for my walk.
That washer/dryer combo machine DOES not work well at all. I had one like that when I lived in London for a short time. Clothes come out moist and wrinkled. Nobody uses those in the US..If a house here has simply no other space for a full washer dryer, then something is screwy with that.
kitchen adorable??? OMG, you people keep saying that..kittens are adorable, cabbage patch dolls used to be adorable, now they’re just ebay junk. kitchens are NOT ever adorable..yuck.
Look at the neighbor’s door. Visualize two of them side by side taking up that entire “garage” span. Think a clown car or one of those purple tourist three wheel jobbies would fit? Maybe. Probably not a Mini Cooper.
I’m curious about the decision to put a shower in the bedroom of the inlaw unit. I’m even more curious where they put the toilet.
anyone know, when you have exposed brick in the shower, is it really possible to seal the brick & mortar adequately so it doesn’t crumble or get moldy? What would you use for that?
The whole place seems really cramped.
Exposed brick is a great dust/dirt collector. In a shower??? What are these people thinking?
I had a washer/dryer in London also. It was junk. Plus, there was no better place to put it?
I noticed the wood stove in that upstairs aerie. Is it even legal to burn wood during a pollution alert in the winter? I presume they put it there because there is no other source of heat—I mean, it’s not the kind of room where the family would congregate around a friendly fire.
The owners should’ve quit several “improvements” ago.
Anyone know the listing history of this? It was listed with 2 price changes from March to June of last year.
does that brick in shower mean the place has a brick foundation and they were stupid enough not to replace the foundation?
This is a good thread showing examples of really, really bad decisions by the owners in terms of “renovation”.
1.driveway is too narrow for any kind of parking. garage? where?
2. wood stove? not cool or healthy to burn wood at all in the city.
3. brick in the shower? wtf? shower in the bedroom?
ridiculous. brick can NOT be sealed or cleaned in a wet location like that. brick foundations are a major source of collapse in an earthquake.
4. the washer/dryer combo? dumb, dumb, dumb. they dont work..period.
Front-loading washer/dryer combos are standard in many space-starved cities and they work. The drying part is done through condensation using cold water as a cooling source. Full cycles last almost 2 hours though and capacity is 1/2 our full sized appliances.
“Is it even legal to burn wood during a pollution alert in the winter?”
No wood burning on Spare the Air days. We had three in a row last week.
But I don’t understand the objections to the wood stove, when few would object to a fireplace.
“The drying part is done through condensation using cold water as a cooling source. “
Huh ? Please elaborate.
This is how condensing dryers work:
http://www.creativelaundry.com/product_line/combination-washer-dryers.cfm#2
Advantages are that a standard 110V/20A circuit is all that is needed (no gas or 220V) and no venting is required.
Disadvantages are they don’t work very well and they create quite a bit of humidity if there is not good ventilation – think steamed up windows every time you do a load of laundry.
Odd — this place refers to having a laundry room on the lower floor (I assume in the space marked “Hall” on the floor plan).
Also, is there a bare toilet in the in-law/bedroom as well in addition to the shower?
they DON’T WORK!
Thanks for the link OneEyedMan. So the water condenser unit doesn’t actually dry the clothes but instead it dries the air before release into the room. It works kind of like the way that an air conditioner dries air. The energy savings come from not increasing the load on the home AC or heating system.
My favorite dryer of all is a simple clothesline.
Anon,
Firewood is astonishingly expensive. So, unless you are a lumberjack, you have to buy the stuff. In this case, the stove is in a rather uninviting upstairs bedroom…meaning, you schlep the wood up and schlep the ashes down. The only reason to be in that room is to sleep and a gas/electric heater makes a heck of a lot more sense.
I’ve always had a house with a fireplace or two. That said, I much prefer a gas insert….it’s just so much cleaner and simpler. And, the chance of burning a hole in your nice oriental rug is about nil! Fireplace screens don’t always work.
A product similar to this ingenious device can be found in public restrooms…..it’s that air blower. After using, you wipe your still wet hands on your pants!!!
“Firewood is astonishingly expensive.”
Not if you’re resourceful. I’ve acquired 100% of my wood free by scavenging the urban forest for recently downed trees. Arborists know that if they buck up logs into 18″ or shorter chunks, they tend to “evaporate” away if left near the street, saving them the expense of disposal.
Some effort is involved though since you’ve got to collect the logs, transport them home, split, and cure the wood. But that physical activity makes a nice contrast to manipulating abstract concepts on a computer screen (as well as a great upper body workout !)
Scavenging for wood in the sparse urban forest of SF isn’t as easy as the rest of the bay area, but if you can connect to an arborist they will steer you towards their recent jobs.
As for this upstairs wood stove, I agree that hauling the fuel up the stairs is not very convenient.
Yeah, condensation dryers are a smart invention. No extra pipes, no gas line. Just keep your expectations low. Most models I have owned will work well if you do fill them up to 70% capacity.
And noearch, they work for 90% of humans. Of course when you are a higher type of being nothing is good enough…
Hold on! The Shower is IN the bedroom (downstairs) Now that is something special.
“In this case, the stove is in a rather uninviting upstairs bedroom…meaning, you schlep the wood up and schlep the ashes down.”
Anon @ 9:21AM here. I saw it as an objection to a wood stove entirely — not the location of the stove, but you are correct that location is very poor.
What’s not to like about a wood fire on a rainy winter nite? I prefer my gas fireplace insert…..but, it really isn’t the same.
That stove on a lower floor, I could possibly see. And then, cut a vent hole in the floor to allow the warm air into that room.
Oh snap, I didn’t notice the picture of the brick shower in the corner of the inlaw bedroom before. It looks like a mildew trap, yuck.
That is not adorable.
“Oh snap, I didn’t notice the picture of the brick shower in the corner of the inlaw bedroom before. It looks like a mildew trap, yuck. ”
Valiant effort to hide it, but you can tell because the vanity is visible both next to the bed and next to the shower. Where’s the toilet?
In the floorplan, the space next to the in-law is marked as “studio,” so I guess they didn’t want to put the bathroom there and maintain it as a studio instead.
No that’s not adorable. it’s trying to be “charming”…but in reality it’s the wrong location for a shower, period…….and keeping any brick in a house is major seismic hazard..
on another note: I would like to see all NEW wood burning fireplaces not allowed in new construction or remodeling. bottom line is that they contribute to air pollution in urban areas. Gas fireplaces are clean, safe and do the same thing.
noearch — LA already has this reg:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/08/local/me-fireplace8
In addition to “Spare the Air” type regs, there’s a ban on new wood burning fireplaces in new construction (since March 2009) or remodeling (since October 2008):
“Builders will be prohibited from installing wood-burning fireplaces in new homes, and it will be illegal to install one when remodeling. Gas-burning fireplaces will be allowed.
Restaurants with wood-fired ovens, such as California Pizza Kitchen, will not be affected by daily bans. Nor will homeowners who rely on a fireplace for heat or have properties at an elevation above 3,000 feet.”
noearch – it depends on what you consider pollution. Granted wood burning creates particulate pollution which aggravates asthmatics. Natural gas fireplaces produce almost zero particulates. The BAAMQD spare the air day restrictions address particulates quite nicely. Too bad they don’t cover the largest source of particulates : refinery, diesel, and jet fuel exhaust. Imagine shutting down Chevron, truck deliveries and airports on spare the air days. That …. uh ….. wooden(sic) fly.
On the other hand, anything fired by natural gas generates a net positive increase of greenhouse gases. Wood fire is nearly carbon neutral.
I can’t get the whole story without an online subscription, but this was a fascinating article that showed how half the world still uses wood fires for cooking and the associated pollution and deforestation associated with same.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/21/091221fa_fact_bilger
milkshake- pollution is pollution. period. gas burning fireplaces is the only way to go in a dense urban area.
Gas is in almost every heating system in this town. If it feeds a fireplace and it’s efficient, then that’s for the best. It’s not like there’s a perfectly clean and carbon neutral replacement yet. Of course electricity could become clean one day. That would be a great way to get there.