Some books you can read by their covers.
Some you can’t, like these nearby homes on the market right now.
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27 Park Pl, East Haven
3 bd | 2 ba | 2,138 sq ft | 0.30 ac | $425,000
From outside, this Yale-blue East Haven home is every bit the “18th-century gambrel colonial overlooking the town green” its listing says it is—a distinguished example, though, with a kind of half-illusory gate tower formed by a second-floor jetty over a stately front portico. Inside, it’s a fascinating study in the de-aging effect of painting things white. An Anthropologie catalog couldn’t have more perfectly imperfectly whitewashed the rustic squared exposed beams or more cleanly inserted contemporary white drywall between them. White-painted brick and stucco (or maybe plaster) frame one downstairs fireplace, lightening its heft without erasing its texture. An upstairs fireplace is even more strikingly white, its asymmetrical, ancient-ruin stone feeling as if it’s floating out of the also-white walls. The updated kitchen deviates, featuring a neat, sprawling, translucent mint green backsplash and hardwood floors stained to an almost glowing orangey copper, with their original nails and knots.
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77 Meadowbrook Rd, Fairfield
3 bd | 1.5 ba | 999 sq ft | 0.14 ac | $599,000
The size and stripped-down Tudor Revival face of this small Fairfield home declare its origins in the early 20th century. Inside, however, its close quarters are modernized well into the 21st. The built-in spiral staircase is a beaut, its stylish form emphasized by ebony treads and white risers. The kitchen counters are butcher’s block, the cabinets an overcast Atlantic blue with smartly offbeat hardware. Exposed brick appears: a cutout in the dining room and a wall in a bathroom. Meanwhile, a covered back patio and fenced-in yard, improved with what may be a pizza oven, offer space to stretch out.
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10 Canterbury Way, North Haven
4 bd | 4 ba (2 full) | 4,189 sq ft | 0.98 ac | $749,900
From the street, you might suspect this North Haven contemporary was built somewhere between the late ’70s and the early ’90s. From the primary suite, you’ll know it was the ’80s, with the step-up sleeping platform, the glossy black built-in with mirror shelves, the monumental stone accent wall, the salmon bedroom carpet extending right into the bathroom, that same carpet climbing the steps to the puce whirlpool, the glossy black walls paired with feathered Miami Vice wallpaper, the block glass rising behind the tub like a ziggurat, the extra block glass curling around the otherwise (you guessed it) glossy black shower. If you’ve ever wanted to enter the penthouse of Biff Tannen’s Pleasure Paradise, I suggest scheduling a tour. Just don’t expect the whole house to feel like a time capsule; the living room has more of that ’80s carpet, which also climbs a spiral staircase there, but the kitchen, for one thing, is totally renovated.
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23 Crest Dr, Cromwell
4 bd | 4 ba | 4,165 sq ft | 0.58 ac | $795,000
Sometimes you look at a house and think, “A developer built this—for themselves.” And that’s the vibe I’m getting from 23 Crest Drive in Cromwell, where someone was paying wholesale or sneeringly sick of building the kinds of homes we normies want or both. (Or, okay, they might have just really loved what they loved.) The facade wears a look I’ll call institutional Italian villa, but it can’t really prepare you for what’s inside. The double front door is overwhelmingly ornate and expensive-looking, yet humorously framed in puny-looking molding. Almost every floor is tiled, almost every wall papered. Even furnished, it’s impossible to say where the kitchen ends and the den begins. The colors and feelings and themes change too little or too much, seemingly at random. I too don’t know where I’m going with this.
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124 Woodpond Rd, Farmington
2 bd | 3.5 ba | 2,192 sq ft | 0.63 ac | $974,900
On the Farmington-West Hartford border, this lakefront home’s passive taupe expression hides lively secrets within. A magical room overlooking the water (pictured at the top) is covered wall-to-ceiling-to-wall in a seamless floral motif, its colors anchored below with wall-to-wall ribbon-candy carpeting. That carpeting also appears in a sunny room whose ceiling is covered in flush and angled mirrors like the inside of a baguette-cut gemstone. A wood-wrapped study (or whiskey room) is the masculine contrast to the home’s many dollhouse-like spaces, with a smooth coppery ceiling providing a kind of mirror of its own—a blurred one, thankfully, for those of us who prefer not to see a pair of eyes staring back every time we glance up.
Written by Dan Mims. Image 1 features a view of 124 Woodpond Rd, Farmington. Images sourced from the relevant linked real estate listings.
