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...as you can see in this picture demonstrating very clearly that no fireplace, with its flue to the roof, is centered between the windows. Photo: Judith Capen

Q. We’re leaving the Hill after MANY years and will be selling our house. The realtor advised us to get rid of the “’70s look,” including narrow ranch molding, the old kitchen, the hollow core doors. The appliances still work and the kitchen served us well for years. Why should I put in fancy countertops now? And the carpenter advised us just to replace the old narrow molding with new stuff of the same size but with a sort of decorative profile. But even that, which he says is the most economical way to do it, is really expensive.

What should I do? Will I get the money back? – Outahere

A. Alas, superficial and senseless fix-ups, including reflexive granite countertops and stainless steel-fronted appliances, seem to sell. As, I believe, H.L.Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” He may also have said “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

Imagine the Saturday Night Live skit. Tina Fey and Steve Carell read Craigslist for apartment rentals and discuss them in their normal deadpan way (never mind Fey bought a $3.4 million New York apartment in April).

Fey says, “Here’s one. And great: it has a gourmet kitchen.”

“Sounds good. How many bedrooms?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Hmmmm. Here’s one. It has granite countertops.”

“Bedrooms?”

“Don’t know.”

“Oooooh! This one is LUXURY. I like that.”

“What do you get with luxury? A bedroom?”

“Stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.”

“Do we cook?”

“Noooo…”

The relentless presentation of housing as “luxury” on the basis of reductivist stainless steel-face appliances and granite counters is funny, right up there with Valley Girl effusions: Omigod. Like, really, like soooo yesterday.

Apparently, even NYC sophisticates resort to the luxury thing. The adverts for the building where my daughter rented an apartment after landing her job, a building that transitioned seamlessly from NYU student housing to luxury with the installation of granite counters, touted it as Sophisticated. Edgy. Art Deco Modern. Like no one would notice the proliferation of oxymorons.

What I don’t get is why isn’t everyone laughing? It’s like when no one laughs at your hilarious joke. Or when you’re the only one laughing at a movie…

Like: “The kitchen of your dreams at a price you can afford.” Right. Ha ha.

I suppose your realtor doesn’t want to have to write a sales brochure describing your house as an outdated dump with appliances redolent of decades of cooking…

I believe if a property is not identified as luxury, we are expected to know it is a dump. It seems to me a collusion of dunces. Realtors pull three adjectives out of their bag of adjectives (luxury, gourmet kitchen, gorgeous, stainless steel, brand-new, traditional, light-filled). Consumers discount all three knowing they translate to “luxury means I’m pushing the rent”; the absence of kitchen encomiums means “nasty old”; and emphasis on appliances (microwave, CAC, dishwasher, washer/dryer) means the unit has nothing else to recommend it.

What to do? You may be asking the wrong person. Me, I never found a project I didn’t think couldn’t be done right, taking a long time and costing a lot of money. So, you are faced with totally personal choices reflecting your core values.

Do you want to play the real estate game to the hilt, getting absolutely the most money from the sale you can?

Do you loathe working with contractors, suppliers, etc. for remodeling so are willing to trade the biggest buck for your quality of life?

Do you want to give the next owner of your house the opportunity to do what they want to do for a kitchen etc. knowing the market seems to have more people in it who want a house they can move into, probably with granite countertops, than people who welcome a project with opportunities to express themselves?

Are you kind of attracted to the opportunity to undo some of the dumb things done to your house by the previous owner and actually substantively improve the house?

Do you hate spending money and especially hate pissing money away, doing stuff that someone in the future will call crap and undo, redo?

The only thing I know pretty much for sure is that the realtor is right in advising you to rent off-site storage to thin the whole place down and to paint.
Good luck and we will miss you.

Q. We own a 1920s row house on a corner in the Hill East neighborhood. Our living room has two small windows, up high, on its long, side wall. I have been told they are "smoke" windows. Is that correct?
I first heard the term from neighbors whose houses are like mine and who have lived in the neighborhood for many, many years. When I heard it, I thought perhaps one smoked in the parlor and used those windows for ventilation. Other than from neighbors, I have never heard the term again nor been able to source it.

Thanks so much, love your column! – Smoky

A. I know the windows well. They are a common feature, generally in early 20th-century bungalows, on Hill porch-front houses, generally Craftsman style houses, but also on many other generic houses (my grandparents’ house in Iowa City had them...). The windows generally flank a fireplace and typically had bookcases/cabinets under them.

I asked the members at a Capitol Hill Restoration Society Historic District committee meeting, whose backgrounds range from architecture to landscape architecture to preservation planning, with probably 150 years of combined experience, if any of them had heard the name, and they hadn't. I also checked a book I have on American interiors, 1870-1940 and didn't find "smoke windows" although they illustrated your very windows, identifying them as “paired single windows.”