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TWO FOR THE PRICE OF…TWO!
I’m not saying these identical twin cuties — unwinterized 1BR cottages in the Maidstone Park area of Springs (East Hampton), N.Y. — are a steal or anything. The asking price for both, newly reduced, is 449K.
But there’s something tantalizing about them and their possibilities.
They’re on one-third of an acre, a five-minute walk to magnificent Maidstone Beach, a long, never-crowded white sand beach on Gardiner’s Bay, and great kayaking/paddleboarding spots.
Outdoor shower
They’re barely 400 square feet apiece. They sit on cinderblocks and have no fireplaces. But they’re well-maintained and tastefully appointed, with decent baths and kitchens. A pair of friends could share the property, or it could be a modest family compound.
Patios and landscaping would go a long way. They’ve been on the market for a while (I first saw them last winter, when the asking price was over half a million). You know what that means: negotiable!
For more info and interior photos, go here.
UPDATE, April 2011: The photos that originally accompanied this post, which I took while looking over the moon gate of this cottage as described below, were accidentally deleted from my WordPress media library, along with the photos on several months’ worth of other posts from 2009. (Don’t ask.) I have been gradually restoring the bad posts, but in some cases, I can no longer retrieve the original photos to use in my fixes. This post is one example, so I’m using images from the Zillow listing of sold properties, because I want to preserve the post for reference. The cottage sold in September 2010 for $520,000.
THERE’S NOTHING ILLEGAL about taking pictures of other people’s houses, is there, and publishing them on a blog? What about courtyards, if you have to peek over the fence to get the shot? Well, let’s hope not, because today, on a brisk stroll around the neighborhood, I saw the charming, simple courtyard, above, and had a vision for my own front yard.
I found this corner property in the Maidstone Park area awfully inspiring. It’s a bit uber-cottagey for me, but I love the concept and the execution: a moon gate, an arbor, boxwoods, a shed with French doors, and a sunny brick dining patio. There’s no driveway, just a parking pad covered with pea gravel in front of the moon gate, big enough for one SUV.
It’s all going into the mental hopper as I continue my extended decision-making process regarding a place to park the car(s) and whether/what kind of gate and fence to have at the entry (to exclude deer, or simply to provide a sense of enclosure?)
My ultimate solution will be quite different from this one (I have no need for a dining table in front of the house when I have almost half an acre in back), but the symmetry of this scheme really appeals to my orderly side.
It’s a magazine cover if I ever saw one.
East Hampton, N.Y.
I LOVE SHUTTERS — louvered, paneled, pickets, cut-outs — though I’ve never really lived in a house that has them. My present cottage on Long Island is not gonna be the one. Shutters don’t make sense with 1980s casement windows (but those windows sure are tight, so I’m not complaining).
East Hampton again. Love the boxwoods, too.
Meanwhile, I look at shutters everywhere I go. They can really make a house, adding color and definition to an otherwise blah facade. If they’re operable, so much the better.
Philadelphia is a great shutter city.
A Colonial in Society Hill, Philadelphia
An early 19th c. commercial building in the Kensington area of Philly
Brooklyn and Manhattan row houses, for some reason, rarely have shutters, which makes the few houses that do stand out all the more.
Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, above and below
Red Hook, Dutchess County, N.Y.
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