Estate Sale Finds in 2009!

[newhallone]

What a great find! Nice set's.

That house with the roundie was pretty cool. Hopefully someone who appreciates mid-century modern buys it and restores/keeps it original. So many have been ruined by bad remodeling. My buddy recently bought a nice MCM ranch on Lake Michigan from the original owners. It needed quite a bit of work, because the old couple let things slide in their old age. Even came with much of the original furniture. My buddy is putting everything back into shape. I have been telling him he needs a Roundie.

[DaveWM]

Vintage furnishings are great. Anybody remember the old marble kidney shaped coffee tables, the ones with 3 legs set off with brass boots?

We did not have a lot of "stuff" back in the 60's but what we had was quality built and cool looking (like roundies). Now in the 70's things started to go down hill fast...

[andy]

000

[drh4683]

Originally Posted by andy

I'm in the market for my first house, and I would like something 50's/60's modern, but it is hard to find ones that haven't been ruined. Particularly in this tough housing market, there's a lot of pressure to do a cheap an cheerful remodel before even putting it on the market. They paint everything in sight white, replace all the light fixtures, and put down ugly fake wood flooring.

Me too, Andy. I'm looking for my first house as well. I've looked at quite a few different places and also looking for a clean original 50's-60's house. This particular house that had the 16 wasn't on the market yet.

Nothing is worse that finding a nice modern 50's house only to see it was ruined by someone tearing out all of the original kitchen and replace it with crap and everything gets painted white. There is something about the clean original 50's/60's house that makes it very comfortable and welcoming inside. I like the wood paneled basements with the 9x9 tile floors and the brass cone lights around the perimeter on the walls for example. Alot is to be said for the original kitchen with original appliances as well. Remodels look like hell most of the time and I personally think its ugly and it looks cheap.

A good friend of my Mom's is a realtor and she knows exactly what Im looking for. Im looking for a nice brick ranch that has never seen remodeling. I'm being particular as I know what I want is out there. Ive been to so many estate sales in which the house was completely mint and original inside. So many homes like that are around chicago but for some reason, its hard to find them on the market right now. Once I get my own place, hopefully within the next year, I can then have a nice original upstairs and live like a human being. Its rather annoying to have all my things contained within my basement. Not suggesting my living room would become a workshop, but it will be nice to have a house to my own with all of my own things (and be out of everyone elses way).

You guys might remember what the basement looked like in my old house where I grew up from seeing background in my TV pictures. It was a ranch built in the 50's, had the wood paneled basement with the orange and white tile floor. I loved that house but I was still in school when my parents decided to make a move back in 2004. The house Im in now was built in 1990, so there is nothing too special about it. My plan is to get a house in the near suburbs of Chicago like where I grew up. The good news is, the type of house I want isn't going to cost a fortune as a dated house keeps the price low. Its a win-win situation for me

[Robert Grant]

@ drh,

Very interesting stuff on the history of Motorola.

You seem to know the history of all the plants very well.

I wonder if you could tell me just where the two favorite Motorola products in my collection are from?:

21T34BA 21" B/W TV set, circa 1956.
(this is the one with the AGC problem).

45P3 "Pixie" subminiature tube radio. (has a sticker on the inside with 4545 W Augusta address, now Freedmen Seating.)

(as others have noted, your PM box is full).

[freakaftr8]

I despise nothing more than a remodel in an old house! Keep it original! Thats why my 1979 style house stays 1979! Even the tile and all the redwwod and mohogany woodwork!

To me thats just as bad as gutting a vintage tv and replacing the guts with newer cheap crappy chinese BS or even better, a fishtank!

[Sandy G]

Well, SOMETIMES you hafta bite the bullet...My house was built in '46. The old lady that lived there when I bought it had re-done it in the early-mid '60s when she & her late husband moved in. The WHOLE HOUSE was a particularly nauseating shade of Insane Asylum Green, w/ soup-bean brown carpets...Even the lovely woodwork had been painted that "Gag-a-Maggot-offa-Gut-Wagon" green...The soup-bean brown carpets had at least protected a beautiful hardwood floor.Now, the house has its woodwork trim & floors restored to their former glory, & there's NO TRACE whatsoever of Rainmanville green...The house is in goldenrod, tan, & some white trim...

[AUdubon5425]

Most 50s/60s/70s houses around here were wiped out in Katrina. Those neighborhoods were cut in on land that was too low to build on in previous decades when drainage was poorer (they were up to 20 feet below sea level)

My house was built in 1964 and despite my intentions I wound up with white trim because stainable doors and trim were prohibitively expensive in 2006. All material prices were up 50-100%. Yeah, we were raped backwards and forwards.

[kx250rider]

It's a tragedy to think about all the luxury homes in Beverly Hills and Bel Air, which often had built-in hi-fi and TV, and have all but disappeared to progress in the last 15 years. I was in one home on St. Cloud Road in Bel Air, next door to Nancy Reagan's house, and it had a humongous built-in Rudolf Valentino hi-fi with McIntosh power amps, and a Tannoy 15" speaker in each room. Had also a built-in CTC-5 RCA color TV in the library, and a juke box built into the basement with control heads in several rooms. Also a Thorens turntable hidden in a drawer near the control center in the ballroom. All gone now. Probably deep in the Lopez Canyon Landfill; Tannoy speakers & all. There's now an Iranian architecture palace with marble columns and stone elephants out front, and a copper roof with turrets. Probably has now a motorized lift-up plasma TV in every room

Charles

[newhallone]

Check out Atomic Ranch magazine. It's awesome!

[fury56]

Sadly the days of East End TV and Appliance are gone. I remember when they moved into that shopping plaza at 30196 Euclid Avenue back in October 1972 becasue that is also when I started working there. and would continue to do so well into the late 70's. Yes, there were a lot of Zeniths sold.. and I remember stacking most of them in the relatively small warehouse in the back. The transistion was on from tube sets to the panels at that time.. so I still kept busy in the shop checking tubes for the older sets.. It was a great store with great people- survived the Kennedy and Cohen invasion in the 70's but could not go on forever.