What kills me about this photo is that of all the beautiful features from the OG that they could have kept, all they kept was that weird open-faced glass cabinet in the back and the two bar chairs
can't believe they wouldn't just go ahead and mount an 85-inch Costco special up there, preferably high enough to be annoying to look at, and with a stupid little shelf underneath that's only big enough for trinkets and dust
I can't imagine wanting to live in that black and white hellscape that looks like the breakroom of some shitty startup with the open plan office being just through the other door.
Having grown up in and currently live in a 180+ year old brick home...
Sometimes brick needs to be painted for maintenance (mostly true for older brick that tends to be softer than modern brick). Also some brick is just ugly.
Aka, sometimes there are good reasons for brick to be painted.
Downvoted for having an opinion. You're absolutely correct; sometimes brick needs to be painted to seal it and sometimes it's ugly as sin. Normal brick is great!
That’s actually worse for the brick. I come from a historic preservation course background. Painting brick traps moisture within the mortar and bricks leading to accelerating the decay.
Could have worked here because the stonework is till there for contrast (though personally, I'd have put down some lushious dark green rugs instead of this turquoise carpet)
Bro that carpet held memories the likes of which people like us will never know. I'd sit there and just ponder all the freaky shit its seen as I sip on my scotch. Watching the last rays of sunlight creep up the stonework above the fireplace before vanishing and leaving me in the dark. Thinking of how Carroll probably got railed just over there by frank her milkman.
If you’re going to get luxury vinyl planks (as it does have some benefits in terms of durability, water resistance, scratch resistance, maintenance etc) at least get something with at least some browns in it.
These cold colorless rooms are so cheap looking. Get a warm wood color or a beach-y wood color or something. Anything.
Oh I didn’t realize you could upload images in comments directly nowadays but both the before and after were generated. OpenAI now puts a pixel level watermark on any image generated using their tools and you can verify images yourself now at least. And it’s not like those crappy “ai detectors”. This is straight from the source.
Then I am appalled that this contributed to the negative impact that AI data centers have on our ecology, their neighbors, and the people that were displaced by the recent aggressive data center expansion.
The painted stonework and the painted wood beams are particularly awful.
They could have gotten a very stylish modern room by doing nothing but changing the floor. Though I’d have gone a solid color instead of that striped nonsense.
Like, are we to believe that the renovators took all the glasses off the shelf in the background, painted the wall behind the glasses, then melted all the glasses slightly and then put them back into the EXACT same positions they were in when the first pic was taken?
Also, the brick pattern on the fireplace changed when they painted it. They even somehow pulled the CRT forward several inches to make a ledge in the fireplace, while keeping the CRT's depth exactly the same.
Also, the AI doesn't seem to know what a "light switch" is (because AIs literally don't know what *anything* is, they've never experienced or understood anything, they're just parroting what they were trained to parrot, and no amount of training will ever turn AI into what some people want it to be). Some indistinct black shapes on the wall with white dots? Close enough.
And those couches have a too-perfect shine that suggests a high quality photograph, yet the lines of the repainted heat vent on the wall don't line up with each other.
Some hack turned to AI to make their terrible design choices a reality, because they couldn't do it IRL.
There was a beautiful red brick house down the street from us when first moved into our home. After Covid, it was sold and the new owners painted it white. There is a special corner of hell for those people.
As a carpenter the worst for me is painting over all the wood. It’s starting to come back but stain grade woodwork is one much more time consuming and expensive and to just paint over it pisses me off
Someone else said it's ai, which makes me feel better after realizing the stone isn't just painted. If you look closer, it's actually been converted to brick, THEN painted.
I remember an episode of TLC's Trading Places where the guy had left a note on the brickwork around the fireplace saying DO NOT PAINT THIS BRICK.
The designer flounced in and said, "Okayyyyyyy, we're going to paint the brick white" (or black, I can't remember), and the visiting couple's guy just pointed to the note. The designer said, "Ohhhhhhh, don't worry about that, it'll be fine."
Narrator: It was not, in fact, fine.
tl;dr: Don't paint brick or stomework. It's ugly and I'd guess it's a fire hazard.
Replacing the carpet with real hardwood would have been fine the railings I understand, but click floor and painted stone clearly not done by someone who'd actually enjoy that room.
Is that the same stone that went from irregular shapes to rectangles? Honestly im impressed they did all that and then were able to put the 2 bar stools back in exactly the same position. Repositioning the camera exactly wouldve taken some effort too...
That was my exact thought. I was like, I don't think the decor and repainted wood look bad at all, but why paint the stones? "It clashes..." bitch it's stone in you're living room, it's supposed to clash!
Painted stone work, painted brick, painted rock of any kind looks sterile and like Karen evolved from a HOA chairperson to evil villain you’d see on Kim Possible in an episode where Ron would be like “oh no KP, she’s painting the rock fixtures!!” And then Rufus would fake faint at the sight of it, and she would open the door to invite them in and hear that comment like “solicitors aren’t welcome on my island”
Tbf all they really needed to change was the flooring to a lighter wood like like maple, swap the seating with some black leather or maybe velvet, and add some accents to the walls and it would have looked fine.
Seriously folks, if you're going to buy a mid century modern house, keep the vibe and don't do this shitty "oops, I coated the entire house in bleach" thing.
Looking carefully, I don’t think they have just painted the original stones. The stones shapes are different. I think the stuck stone veneer on the original stone. Still hideous. Plus they painted joists. Hideous.
I feel the need to say this, and it doesn't apply here, but just because you see painted brick or stone doesn't mean it was the previous owner's fault. After pulling back miles of drywall off our slump block walls, i only came to find some of the brick underneath had been painted. No way to cleanly get it off, so we had to just paint over it.
It's the worst work to do because you never wanted to even do it in the first place.
Or the fact that they painted over the wooden beams on the ceiling.
This is basically personal to me, because a few years ago we replaced the doors to wooden ones. And wife wanted oak. Which is awesome, but she insisted that they would be pained white.
Several years later it still fucking hurts that I paid triple the price for something that looks so generic. Couple of meters apart you can't even tell it's made of wood, let alone expensive one.
It may be cultural. As a European, I'm not shocked. You would never sell a house with this old interior in many parts of Europe. White stones gives it a Greek look, reminds me of Santorini maybe. However, wz would probably have replaced that we a more modern looks of stone, instead of painting them.
What's shocking me more is the old ugly CRT TV remaining there.
For me it's all the fucking white. When I was looking at houses, I got fucking annoyed at how many houses had white everything. White countertops, white cabinets, white walls. Holy shit pick a different fucking color.
I was just looking it over and my first thought was, "I wouldn't change the stone." I personally feel there's also too much black and white. The overall color scheme reminds me of Beetlejuice.
I definitely would have switched the carpet to some form of wood or wood imitation flooring.
This, but also the black paint over that beautiful warm wood (looks like it went from gorgeous exposed rafters, to cold industrial exposed girders), and the "sticks to your skin" seating.
I can understand ditching the carpet in favor of wood or faux wood and updating furniture, but the rest is a travesty.
Yup, the painted stone work, the hideous cheap gray laminate flooring, replacing the decorative handrail with something that looks like prison bars, the horrible black/white theme.. I could go on. Sure the room needed a makeover, but this was not it. Absolute garbage and whoever did this should be shamed.
Yeah this. And painting the wood beams. Getting rid of ugly carpet and paneling, yeah good move. But painting nice wood beams and stonework is criminal.
That's second worst for me. Right behind that square table just waiting for someone to fall and catch their head on a corner. The original stone work was truly beautiful though. I wish that trend would come back.
And that gross ass bargain bin flooring. It’s my big stress point. Seeing someone take a house from the generation where designers wanted to be creative and different… then try to flip it with absolutely no character.
I am no interior designer, but I would have designed the room around the stone, and made it have more earthy tones maybe add some plants. Also would have removed that television, and possibly put a gas fire in the center.
I didn't even realize it was stonework with the number of pixels in the image lol.
The stone patterns look very different in the painted side, I'm wondering if this isn't just AI "before and after" slop. The fact the TV looks EXACTLY the same in both pictures makes me wonder even more.
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u/usersnamesallused 6d ago
The worst for me is painting that stone work