Wow, I have never been on a tour with laminate counters. Was this new or old laminate? Were a lot of the spaces modern?

Did you like these kitchens?

The last tour I was on had at least one "one true kitchen", one MCM, one craftsman with the stacked stone. Trying to remember the rest.

It's a fundraiser for the neighborhood association and a curiosity tour.

These are pretty typical people's houses; you won't see a really high-end project unless it's unfinished. (No $1M budgets or anything)...people with the good stuff don't want strangers walking through their houses. The exceptions are usually people who are artists or business/residences where they may also have something to sell (not that day) & want some exposure.

Interesting. Thanks for the stats. :) We don't really have this kind of thing. We have AIA tours of architects' works, and we have tours of historic homes, but plain old houses, not so much. OTOH, you can do your own every Sunday with the real estate agents' open houses for sale. :) LOTS of bad remodels to be seen that way. :)

None of the houses blew me away but I am a really tough audience. Some of them were pretty decent. The most interesting concept, modern with white quartz and suspension cables--had some really poor workmanship here and there, so that detracted. The cobbled kitchens were interesting.

Interesting, in my former town (NYC burb) we had kitchen tours to raise money for the schools, and also historic home tours to raise money for the historic society.

They were really nice. Most kitchens were done in the last 2 years or so, and the KD and GC might be on hand to answer questions (they also advertised in the brochure). I would say the kitchen were all at least 50k.

People love these tours and they are great fundraisers.

The suburbs have a completely different type of tour and it is usually brand new stuff to drum up business for the developer or the builders/architects etc. --Or sometimes a charity. Those houses will be elaborate with huge kitchens but mostly in the Old World style with glazed finishes and Ogee-edged granite etc.

Yes, the fundraising comes from ticket sales as well as KD/architect/GC advertising. Our town was all older homes, but within that there was Victorian, Tudor, Craftsman, Colonial and then a few folks who took a departure and went MCM. The few tours I went on, the kitchens were re excellent and all different. I'm sure the main line burbs do the same thing ... it's a relatively painless way to raise money.

That type of tour might be more common in wealthy, rather homogeneous neighborhoods where homeowners feel more comfortable with the type of person who'd be wandering through. Owners of large houses can choose how much of the castle they wish to share.

My small town's Christmas tour was cancelled last year as no one wanted to be on it. I was talked into participating ten years ago before when my children were small, before we had done any renovations. It was not painless! As I frantically tried to decorate and clean the house, I considered forcing the kids to stay outside for a few days but it was December.

There is a tour in the neighborhood east of mine that consists of historic houses, with a bit more upscale interiors in terms of restoration or adaptive reuse, but the tickets are expensive ($50) I think, and it is more regulated as a tour.

The one I went on has some really "normal" houses on it, which is really more the point of that one, I think. The ones that interest me the most are the ones where someone has been there for decades. The ones that I don't love is where I can tell the people are kinda showing off. On the one hand I think pride of ownership and accomplishment is great. On the other hand, I think it is bad form for the owners to be there when the tour is going on. (There are volunteer babysitters throughout the house).

There have also been a couple "during", and then a couple years later "after" which are interesting.

The thing about this sampling is that it is obviously made up of people proud enough to allow people to troop through and critique, and most of the kitchens have been done by the current owners. However, they don't seem to correspond to the GW sampling. That is neither good nor bad, just different.

Where I live AAUW puts on a Kitchen Tour every spring. The homes are either new builds or remodels. Most are very upscale with high end appliances and cabinets. There are a lot of historical homes in this area and they seem to be the most interesting kitchens. This year will be the 15th annual tour and it supports scholarships for young women in our area to go to collage and educational programs in our local schools

There's always the new builder's showcase here, which I usually skip, as it's just bragging as to who can cram the most inauthentic upscale appearance into a faux norman castle cracker box without losing any money doing it. The workmanship is usually pretty bad, such as the builder who brags about having granite in every build, but obviously buys a container load of cheap prefab colors straight from China and has his carpenter cut them dry into lots of small puzzle pieces to fit the de rigeur oddly angled space wasting kitchens.

The home and garden tour that I try to make is of an older historic district that features a wide variety of homes constructed from 1840 through 1960. I love the architectural details these homes have mostly left alone, and the kitchens are usually an interesting exercise in space planning and adaption for modern conveniences. Most of the kitchens are rather small and closed to the rest of the home unless other spaces were grabbed to be able to be used.

One kitchen last year had enclosed the screen porch off of the back to be able to have a pantry and built in refrigerator, galley style. It was almost butler's pantry in styling, but since it lead to the new ground level patio, maybe you could call it the "butler's patio pantry". Two enormous Sub Zero refrigerators took up one side of the area, (they managed to shoehorn a powder room on the other side with a DR entry). The other side had transom windows atop tall open shelving that had the canned goods decoratively arranged singly on shelves 6" apart. The actual kitchen space was very small, maybe 6'x7'? It was hard to tell with people passing through it. But it held an old Garland range on a brick wall and a stainless steel counter with integrated sink and a small butcher block cart that served as the main prep space. No real upper cabinet space other than a china built in in the DR. It sorta channelled Julia Child's kitchen at it's most functional, and I loved it!

There was one single kitchen with a Viking and white painted cabinets on the whole 15 home tour. The rest of the tour was pretty much the same mish mash of "non current" styles and mish mash of price points of those styles that Pal indicated for his area. More than half of the homes had laminate counters, and more than half had "regular" appliances. And this historic disctrict is considered to be an "upscale" niche in the older part of town. People pay a lot to live in the area, and pay a lot of city taxes, and a lot to restore these houses. They just don't seem to want to pay a lot to cook in the homes! Having lived in the area at one time, (With a plain jane pilot lit gas stove and 6" deep stainless sink.) I can surely see where replacing the home's plumbing can be more of a priority than a brand new kitchen.

One HS not to far from us does kitchen tours annually as a fundraiser. Most were big old homes that had done the kit in the last year. One was a raised ranch that did the most unique kit I had ever seen in a RR. The tour was about 8-9 years ago and one had laminate & one had corian. There were at least 10 houses & the rest were granite, soapstone, marble and some had a combo of wood.

I dyslexically read the title as "Animal House" and then opened the post wondering what the real Delta House kitchen looked like.

Here in Brooklyn (one of the 5 boroughs/"towns" of New York City) there are close to a dozen house and garden tours per year. Similar to Pal's experience, the tours here are representative of various historic "brownstone neighborhoods", are organized by the respective neighborhood associations, and are annual fundraising/neighborhood promotion endeavors. (I also note that Brooklyn's sense of "neighborhood" may be the most fiercely competitive of all the boroughs. Which may account for why there are so many annual house tours in this one borough).

The Brooklyn house tour scene developed in the 60's and 70's along with the rise of the "brownstone movement" (Today the latter would simply be termed a "gentrification movement"). It was comprised of those who were intent on purchasing grand old rowhouses on the cheap (usually because they were situated in rundown neighborhoods)and restoring them to their original glory. These brownstone house tours provided excellent opportunities for tour goers to see and learn about old house infrastructure upgrades and architectural salvage and restoration. Back then, much of the excitement of the tours was to see how the home owners had taught themselves how to strip countless layers of paint off their woodwork, restored stained glass, repaired detailed plaster mouldings, etc. IOW, the emphasis then tended to be much more on DIY achievements and showcasing homeowner creativity.

Today, the various Brooklyn neighborhood house tours are still well-attended. However, since the new millennium, it appears as if most of the tours are now more heavily weighted towards showing off big money renovations and restorations. For one thing, the majority of the tour neighborhoods are no longer "rundown." If anything, years of gentrification has resulted in major demographic changes as well as mass upgrades of housing stock. As a result, the house tours now feature less of small budget/big DIY projects and much more of very grand homes that have been re-designed, further restored or outright gutted and renovated by high end architects, professional designers and contractors using high end products and materials. Still, given the current economic crisis, the pendulum on tour composition may be swinging back to a more balanced position. That is, while there will always be a tour demand for Architectural Digest type homes, the bubble bust has forced a renewed interest in the purchase of potentially grand but less expensive brownstones which are typically found in the not-yet-gentrified neighborhoods. Reminiscent of the earlier brownstone movement, tour emphasis in these areas tends to be more heavily weighted on "affordable" restoration and upgrade of the bones of the house rather than on the display of spectacular dressings and finishes. And, in most tour neighborhoods, we're once again seeing some remarkable restoration/renovation efforts which are heavier on DIY and homeowner creativity than on expense.

As for how Brooklyn house tour kitchens compare with GW kitchens -- well, leaving the question of size out of the equation -- my guess is that a good deal of them are designed and/or owned by active members or lurkers of this forum! :-)

I have never heard of home tours other than the real ritzy towns out in the Hamptons or the Gold Coast Estates on the north shore. They usually have rooms decorated by interior decorators (a different decorator per room for the tour) or are historic estates. The tickets are expensive.
I have yet to hear of home tours in the normal to rich areas. Most of the curious lookers around here come to open houses and then mention their fictitious daughter/sister/cousin/friend for whom they are looking ... complete with a story about how they want them to live nearby. Occasionally they will admit to being "nosy neighbors" and are relieved when I welcome them in anyway. Word of mouth helps sales, so you never know....

I found the latest house I bought on an open house, but I had seen some pictures online already. My Realtor feels that (in this area) open houses are for people getting ready to enter the buyer's market, nosy neighbors and people getting ready to enter the seller's market who want to get an idea how to price. Since most Realtors in our market don't sit at the open house themselves it is also a way for the juniors to get a listing from someone thinking of entering the market.

It's strange. When the market was booming, you could go to an open house and the Realtor may not even get off her phone and make eye contact because the house would sell anyway. Now there are open house on real Outliers ($3-$5M in a $500K neighborhood) and I am not sure why. Only once did a Realtor seem slightly annoyed that I was looking at a house I clearly was not in the market for. (It was $3M) But really, I doubt people in the price range waste their time going to open houses. But maybe she just thought I was weird because I said I wanted to see it before someone gutted all the bathrooms. (Jeweltone tile and porcelain and nickel fixtures, with etched glass shower doors and mirrors --5 intact, beautiful but small 1930 high-deco bathrooms that will surely hit the dumpster with the next buyer).

Where I live, ct shoreline, there are many upper middle class to wealthy house tours in various neighborhoods as funraisers with tickets usually around $25 if purchased in advance. the one I went to last year here had 2/3 white shaker with honed black granite or soap stone and marble islands. Only one modern euro looking colorful kitchen and two walnut kitchens. The designer showhouse tours are much pricier and more unique and upscale but also occur once or twice a year and two years ago the one I went to had a christopher peacock kitchen.
I prefer the more realistic neighborhood tours for they give me ideas to live with not dream of.

Interesting rundown, Palimpsest. Thanks. Here tours are usually a mixed bag, old/historic and newer lake homes, with the occasional newer subdivision-type home. You make me wish I'd analyzed better. I tend to blow off the ones that make me think of cabinet brochures and stop and gawk in the occasional charming old one. I do recall 2 of the nicer old homes in our town have kitchens from maybe the 60s or 70s, well constructed laid out, well maintained, and still going strong, but if either had any of the more gimmicky innovations of that era they're long gone.

Roarah, I'm with you except for me very large, elaborate houses never are dreamy; most of them on TV or in person are like those giant servings of dessert you might run into now and then--unless the architecture is exceptionally fine, a quick taste constitutes a surfeit.

A week ago I went to a half-dozen homes on the ABQ NM annual tour. It's mostly like the burb tour that Palimpsest describes: builder/architects drumming up business via new builds and remodels. It's free though there are other tours during the year eg for Christmas decorations that cost $25 to $75 for charity.

The last time I went was in 2007 before the crash so it was interesting to compare then and now. There were far fewer homes overall and more austere overall too (not just the kitchens). Much less ornamentation in the whole house trim, window casings, lack of corinthian corbels (still plain corbels and some dentile as this *is* NM), etc, which followed through to the kitchen.

There were no white kitchens whatsoever in fact no painted cabs. All were medium stained wood cabs, bullnose granite counters, SS appliances, and travertine BS (and often floors too). Just like the kitchen I put in my previous house in ABQ!

There was either an island or peninsula, always with seating. Most often high-end appliances like Wolf, Viking, SZ but then again I typically go to the high end houses and builders.

The baths (sorry a different forum I know) were smaller, with the showers only the size of my walk-in closet rather than the size of my bedroom. And more practical surfaces IMO: no-door designs and bigger tiles in the shower rather than stacked stone which I had seen alot of previously (how on earth do you clean that?!) .

Still, fun to see! Thanks for the topic, Palimpsest, and everyone who contributed their area's tour.

cheers

Interesting about the open houses. Different market than when I was active, but I hear it's still pretty much the same: The broker open houses are important for letting the brokers have a looksee and know what's on the market. They will also send serious buyers to these so they don't have to wait for an appointment. The Sunday open houses, as far as I know, are mostly for the lookyloos. The nosy neighbors (who, as Dianalo said, might know someone who is looking), the buyers who are trying to learn what is out there but probably aren't ready to make any offers, and most of all for the agents to meet those new buyers and sign them up (maybe what Palimpsest said). They're not actually for selling the house.

I offered on a house that I saw with my agent, I think a couple of days before the first open house. I took some advisors to see it on caravan day (brokers' open house). Made an offer the next day based on comps (it was over priced). There was an open house just about every Sunday after that offer was rejected. It sold a year later for $6,000 less than my offer. I assume that the house was a convenient place for the broker to set up shop in on the weekends--or maybe altogether. I can't figure out why else they'd have it open all the time. I think the owners had moved out, so prepping it wouldn't have been an issue, but they still had to have someone sitting there every Sunday. He must have been gleaning new clients or something to make it worth his time.

Some sellers seem to be able to manipulate or badger their agent into doing practically anything.

There was a house on the block up the street from me that was for sale for almost two years. The price would be reduced by $100, by $10, by ONE DOLLAR, sometimes weekly, sometimes more than once a week. This way it would always pop up to the top of the reductions list. Then it would disappear for a week and be listed as a New Listing, putting it back up on top of the list again. The seller's disclosure form was also rather vague about certain existing conditions.

I found the whole thing a bit unethical, but I can't completely blame the Realtor, I looked at the house with my Realtor and the homeowner, who made some excuse to stay made the impression of being a real PITA in a very short period of time.

"I dyslexically read the title as "Animal House" and then opened the post wondering what the real Delta House kitchen looked like."

lwo: I did the same thing. Did they ever show the Delta House kitchen? I do remember the cafeteria scene. :D