We all have to make our own decision about that but here’s what Kate herself has to say on what makes something a McMansion for her purposes:
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How do the property taxes work in Alabama?
From Zillow, the tax assessment is in the $200K to $250K the last 10 years. Yet, it looks like the house has an appraisal around $2.4M. Is there some divide by 10 on the tax assessment?
It also looks like it’s been on and off the market since 2015 with pricing between $4.6M and $5.2M.
I’m more familiar with the north east. From this data if it was in the north east, I would guess it’s at least $1M over priced. Plus the taxes on this would be astronomically more than they are in AL.
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Well, we can’t have a woman have an opinion (and one for humorous purposes, at that) on the internet go unchallenged! We’d be falling down on the job if we let that happen!!! /s
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No matter what I THOUGHT the rest of the photos were going to look like after scrolling past the first one, this particular photo was NOT expected.
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Right!?! Did you see the one from inside, with the castle like winding stair way… for NO reason!! Just… unhinged.
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This looks like the architectural version of one of those “Exquisite Corpse” games.
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I don’t know how anything will be able to top this monstrosity…
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Yeah, it’s an ostentatious display of wealth and thematically incoherent, but dammit at least it is interesting.
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I say: Paint it up in the Memphis style, and build a runway for me to launch my bespoke scooter.
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I agree…the McMansion moniker implies a bland sort of corporate sameness that is clearly not present in the home.
To me a McM uses generic “style” but makes up for substance with scale and repetition.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a wtaf home, and like the author notes it IS a Dantesque trip to architectural and design hell. But McMansions are more of a limbo kind of thing
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Purgatory indeed.
This one is closer to Insane Folly.
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I live just down the road from Bletchley Park (where all the WW2 codebreaking was done). That pile went up in the late 19th Century and it’s - odd. Apparently, Herbert Leon who put it up travelled a lot and was inspired by various buildings all over Europe - so bits of it are Gothic, then there’s some Tudor pastiche and even a bit of Dutch and Scandinavian styles.
In a country filled with horrifically ugly Victorian buildings that the Luftwaffe somehow missed - this is a horrifically ugly building (and the interior is even worse) - but Bletchley Park is an architectural gem by comparison to this house which is like a Walt Disney castle has been unwillingly mated with a greenhouse.
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That one is so weird and awful…I kinda love it!
ETA: I’d say gut the interior and start over but the exterior has such a Cotswolds meets Renaissance Italy meets Minas Tirith strangeness that makes it so weird it’s cool.
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I like how the front of the house looks like 
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It’s already there!
For me the essence of a McMansion is it looks like it was built in one go, rather than being added to over the years by a completely disparate set of people like a normal mansion.
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At least it’s more creative than a lot of McMansions I’ve seen 
looks silly, but unique, bit hard to fault them for that IMO
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But at the time, many stately piles were exactly that-- starting from a medieval basis, successive lords would add various wings (usually with the stated intent to “complete the facade”. They would die, their good for nothing son would piss away half the fortune at cards before dying of liver failure, and when fortune came agaiin, the new wing would be old fashioned. Cycle repeats, and the rents climb ever higher.
This was an attempt to be eclectic from the get go.
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