The “vulgar rich” isn’t just a pejorative. It’s an accurate description.
2 Likes
Both my mother and my brother each have one of those monstrosities. My sister-in-law ‘just can’t find good help these days’ and never seems to have the same cleaning service for more than a few months, and my mom is too cheap to pay for housekeeping. Yes, the utility bills are astronomical, and neither of them have any kind of…is there a word for ‘temperature toughness’ ? They suffer in the winter; they suffer in the summer.The acoustics are weird and the 16-foot ceilings are like being in a racquetball court.
Whenever I visit (rarely), my brain starts churning out Million Dollar Ideas: Why not a riding vacuum cleaner like a riding lawn mower? Why not a bed-sized tent to keep your body heat from escaping to the rest of the humongous room? Why not a pool ladder to get in and out of the whirlpool tub? Why not…
12 Likes
#clarification 
5 Likes
I’ve always pictured the people that buy these types of houses as people who never want to be outside so they only care what the inside looks like (it’s probably terrible as well).
1 Like
This, I can get on board with for large spaces. They make machines I like to call floor Zambonis, but they’re walk-behind contraptions. I mean really, if the cat gets to ride the Roomba, why can’t the cat’s human ride a mechanical mop?
Ah, these already exist. They’re called down comforters.
4 Likes
My parents own one (they live near Houston), the issue is the houses don’t use the interior space appropriately. Large open spaces with big windows that are difficult to heat/cool, substandard insulation for the size of the home (including the quality of the windows).
The poor materials used for insulation can be fixed but would be extremely expensive. I’d love to help my parents pay to properly weatherize the house but it won’t be any time soon ]:
I must also add that unless someone builds their own home or buys something from like the 60’s most of the homes they’re going to find are going to be either McMansions or these modernist ugly box-like homes they’re now building (that are also made with crappy materials).
3 Likes
I’ll be honest, we thought our bathroom didn’t really matter until we moved into a place that has a really tiny shower stall. Showering together is totally out of the question and we miss it.
8 Likes
A lot of the homes I did for developers in the past ~5 years were of decent enough quality.
They are also significantly more energy efficient than anything built in the 60s.
1 Like
My 110 year old house has an opinion on this: “what’s insulation?”
4 Likes
House i grew up in was from the 50-60’s and it dealt with the hot weather really well, obviously not all homes from that period were built the same.
1 Like
Go to Kate’s store at McMansion Hell and buy one of her cool tshirts. I did a long time ago.
Lighten up, ya’ll. I’m sure they’re running a homeless shelter outta the extra 8000 sq ft on the back.
1 Like
You could stack cinder blocks into a giant cube with a few cut outs for windows and doors and still have a nicer looking house than these chthonic monsters.
3 Likes
While my house is cinder block construction, it’s painted a lovely light yellow color, and has a more traditional roof on it. (It also has vermiculite insulation filling the blocks, plaster over drywall interior walls, and a list of other ‘quirks’ longer than my… well, it’s pretty long. 
)
I’m all for buying older houses, but be warned that you may be buying a money sink, especially if the previous owners didn’t keep up on a bunch of stuff, or decided to be as cheap as humanly possible with maintaining things. (the window frames in the house are the original single pane, aluminum frame and leak energy and air like a sieve.)
3 Likes
I mentioned it above but the home i grew up in was a concrete block house and i loved that house. Great insulation against heat and sound, but definitely does require good maintenance and upkeep.
2 Likes
Sure, and I won’t argue that having a decent size shower or a bathroom with enough space for two people to stand in at the same time is objectively a Good Thing™. My real objection is to the palatial bathrooms people on these home shows insist on having that are probably bigger than my entire bedroom.
Maybe it’s just having lived my life in places that have modest and functional bathrooms that I simply don’t see the appeal of having such a large space or understand the (as if on cue) insistence that their bathroom simply must be an “oasis”.
2 Likes
many years ago I worked in the reno homes for rich people biz; one homeowner wanted twin toilets, i.e. side by side, for the master bath. nice. They also had three kids, so they had the kids bathroom set up with three tiered sinks, one at the height of each child. They’re not gonna stay that way forever, you know…
3 Likes
Edward Lyttons once did this fantastic interpretation of a medieval castle for a twentieth century client, and for aesthetic reasons, the roof doesn’t slope, and therefore doesn’t drain the water properly, The water gets in, seeps into the stone, and starts rusting the iron structural frame.
Oops!
Castle Drogo’s medieval-style flat roof has been its Achilles heel. Lutyens had attempted to seal the roof using asphalt, a relatively new and untested material for the time, but it was prone to cracks caused as the temperature rose and fell. Before the building was even finished, it had begun to leak.
The flat roof is roughly equivalent to two international football pitches. A high-tech roof system, designed by Bauder is being installed. This two layer membrane is designed to cope with the extremes of temperature experienced on Dartmoor.
In order to lay the new waterproof system, 2,355 granite blocks weighing 680 tonnes have to be removed and then reinstated. This will involve moving and reassembling entire battlements and large sections of the castle walls.
We have also had to redesign the roof gullies to accommodate the heavy Dartmoor rainfall.
4 Likes
Saturday Night Live fake ad skit:
The Love Toilet
4 Likes
