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3402 22nd St. NE
List price: $629,000
Previous sale price: $295,000 (February 2005)
Square footage: 1,498
In this remodeled three-bedroom colonial in Woodbridge, there will be nothing colonial about your lifestyle: Unlike our revolutionary forebears, you’ll never have to repair water damage; the original wooden exterior, common to other homes in the area, has been replaced by wood-textured beige vinyl siding. And though there’s plenty of room in the front yard to grow a garden, you can leave it as is—overrun with weeds—and buy your food at the local supermarket. (Not that local, though: You may want to keep the horse-and-buggy for the 2.5-mile round trip to the nearest Giant.) Other features of the house, though, may require some old-time handyman skills: Stickers on the upstairs toilets warn of a “risk of external leakage,” and the downstairs toilet is rusted into a shade just shy of orange, making it seem permanently urine-filled. —Brian Beutler
Art accompanying story in the printed newspaper is not available in this archive: Photograph by Charles Steck.