L@@K! Photos from Real Estate Listings (see remarks)

id just buy ten houses next to each other one for each of my pure bread borzois

i would be fine with a half acre with mature shade trees, woodland, swimming lake, etc. lot as long as everyone else had 20ft wide lots on 3000 sq ft so it was still walkable.

For $50k more you can get this pretty sweet mid-century modern. Admittedly smaller but much bigger lot.

I'm going to call bullshit on mid-century modern - that's a split-level no matter how nice they made it.

Yeah curbside is ugly as fuck and split level = horrible thing that did not survive as an architectural concept because AWFUL

I’d live there

I can molecularly date that place to 1976 or nearby, based on a family friend's place.
Loving the IKEA ripoff of Robert Motherwell hanging sideways.

Curbside is ugly but a lot of it is the color.

yeah that's a split but it's an early one--there is a small contingent of spits/"raised ranches" that originate from 60s contemporary homes and lead to the mass-produced split of the late 70s and 80s.

I was ready to sneer at the outside but tbh the inside seemed extremely pleasant and I was quite won over.

we looked at a home extremely similar to that one in the beautiful town of harvard, ma. if they're of the same vintage, the kitchens are set up like isolation units and everything feels like you could punch a hole in it pretty easily.

Yeah that’s a 1963 home, not a shitty 70s split.

it looks nice but it's probably still kind of shitty is my point though

Yeah, inside is nice for a split. The best feature is the triangular windows up under the eaves, which give it the feel of an Eichler house.

Budget for painting the doors red, then blue, then red, and so on, with neither really working.

Whole exterior def needs new paint

I'm in what must be a very small minority of people who like the 70s split levels. My elementary school best friends lived in side splits, which felt so much more spacious and varied than the bungalows in the neighbourhood. I like the sense of separation/distance you get from the levels, plus the two lower levels had options to partition the floors into separate spaces. I'd live in one! The real dream is a house with a sunken living room though.

The second house I bought was a 1964 split level and I loved it, it just felt so different and modern compared to all the normal two-story early 1900s houses I knew growing. Given the choice between that and the 1938 two story I live in now I'd take the split level without even thinking about it.

like all my friends in my hometown lived in these split entry houses where you go in the front door and there's immediately half-staircases down (to a finished basement) and up (to a normal 1 story house layout). is that a 'raised ranch'?

i never got to host anything because i was the only one without a finished basement (the only acceptable hangout spot for teens)

Yeah, I really enjoyed split-levels. Don't know why anyone would complain about them.

you lose living space to a garage (this is not unique to this layout, but it sucks).

A row of split levels on small lots will form a housing band structure where everyone can move freely between houses (if they are warm enough, wearing a sweater)

you lose living space to a garage (this is not unique to this layout, but it sucks).

not necessarily! many splits in my home town (and prb other western Canadian places) have detached garages. those are the best ones, otherwise yeah the house frontage is too dominated by the garage (like the one linked above).

My house is a split level built in 59. I really like the layout of it. My area is very sloped so it kind of fits the landscape - first level is the front entrance, second level opens right to the back patio.

i never got to host anything because i was the only one without a finished basement

I've always been jealous of you Yankees with your finished basements!

My house is a split level built in 59. I really like the layout of it. My area is very sloped so it kind of fits the landscape - first level is the front entrance, second level opens right to the back patio.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Monday, February 14, 2022 8:10 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the best way to do a split level. Gives it the architectural interest/changing views that are missing for me when it is just a box on a flat parcel.

my issues with splits are disliking bedrooms and living space being on the same level, and too much finished space on the lower level which rarely gets good light. the side-split multilevel which someone mentioned is a cooler design, but at least here they're much less common.

but my happy place for home style is somewhere in the 19th century (and occasionally the 18th century) so i recognize my bias here.

Stairs = bad for getting old and/or mobility disabled. One-level living = better age-in-place layout.

of course. i know plenty of people that have dealt with that.

I'm 49 and I can see how our stairs (that don't have full railings) could be an issue in 20 years.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2432-Fair-Rd-Abilene-KS-67410/113177058_zpid/

oooh nice find

woah

oh yes please

“My power distribution substation or yours?”

I was so close to posting this on the Noise Colony thread:

https://i.imgur.com/rBneO85.jpg

https://www.terravivos.com/secure/vivosxpoint.htm

But it's a little creepy.

if my survival is contingent on my moving to south dakota i'll just see you guys later i guess

Drop off at Vivos Xpoint Elementary is a real pain in the ass, but the test scores are high

380k!

always wanted to live in a quake level

Southwest South Dakota would be one of the most irradiated places on the planet after a nuclear holocaust, due to fallout from strikes on (I assume) launch sites in Montana

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fallout_map_USA_(FEMA).jpg

always wanted to live in a quake level

This facility has lots of potential in whatever way you choose to go. A home, apartments or a Bed and Breakfast are just some ideas.

I know it's not what they actually meant, but I love the idea of someone turning that bunker into a bed and breakfast.

Or maybe it actually is what they meant? "Facility"

I think it might be what they actually meant, like a novelty thing. I would imagine it is pretty profitable when you get spotlighted on one of those "Weirdest/coolest Airbnb" type lists.

After you spend the $500,000 it would probably take to make that place habitable and palatable

it's in total shit condition!

both doo dah's missile silo and pplains's creepy survivalist bunker link are kind of staggering in different ways. the bunker people really are disturbing... all these references to "the event" and "the outside." i know there's people who think like that, and i've read post-apocalyptic novels with compounds of scary nuts living in places like that, but to see it rendered as a sales pitch in the present day gives me the willies.

i got those same willies when i read this article, enough that i still remember feeling 'em a few years later:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

I stopped short of posting the SD bunkers the first time when I saw their promo material began with the George Floyd protests.

But hell, send those people out into the middle of nowhere and bury them in the dirt. I don't care.