Dictator Chic: worth reading just for the epithet ‘Louis the Hotel’.
I can’t wait to use that straight-faced at work!
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Here! Use a Sterling silver fish spatula to pull the Pop-Tarts out of the box!
Edit: OOPS! I just realized what would happen if you dine on Pop-Tarts formally, and try to use them to retrieve the hot tart from the toaster. This would only be good for casual snacking, at room temperature.
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Maybe we could start our own New gang: tepid kids.
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Does your work involve repro antique furniture?
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I haven’t been a faithful or avid reader of her blog, but I have read many entries, and it seems to me that this is something she successfully and specifically avoids, something she navigates around with more skill than I could. She talks about the designs and the houses, not the people in them.
Maybe you’ve got some specific episode in mind that I’m not aware of.
I’d think if anyone’s feelings would be hurt it would be the designers, anyway.
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The only time I remember using our living room as a kid growing up was at Christmas. My folks used it if folks came over, but I doubt I spent more than 5 minutes a week in the place.
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Blenheim Palace? Carlton House? Chiswick? Chatsworth?
What good is a house is you can’t impress the p;easants with your wealth?
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The space-wasting gargantuan-ness of the McMansion (which seems a more objectionable factor than mere taste variations) may have less to do with wholesale crappy taste than with builders trying to make more of a crapton of money by building the largest houses possible.
In some of the wealthier communities south of Boston, there are some small tracts of huge houses. I drove by two recently built houses the other day, a large, deep tract of land, with two houses on it that the average family of three or four couldn’t fill with all the kids and adults’ toys.
I don’t know anyone who could afford that size house in that town, and I don’t know what could possibly be done with all that space, but I do think it’s interesting that in my town many of the big old houses built for the town’s wealthy in the 1800s are now two-family.
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Yes, but those are objectively beautiful buildings.
McMansions objectively are not.
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I live about one mile from a row of mcmansions that nestle shoulder to shoulder along a golf course. Having been here for over ten years, I used to try to imagine owning a house over 7000 square feet, with a property tax bill that would cover the cost of a nice new car every year. Where the golf course requires a $25K down payment and around $7000 a year for membership. The one thing that stands out over the years we’ve lived here is that those houses flip constantly, or they’re just sitting on the market month after month. They have been around a while, between 15 and 20 years. As Kate Wagner says the construction values are often poor so perhaps rapid aging has something to do with it.
For those who say they’re feeling sorry for the owners, note that she makes a substantial effort to avoid homes that have not been specifically (and often, comically) staged for sale. If you’re still bugged, come on, seriously? Do you realize how ridiculously wealthy you’d have to be to buy one of these energy slurping architectural catastrophes? If you gave me those millions instead, I’d buy a house that I can manage without a small army and look for something far more productive do with the rest. I’d bet that most of us were raised with more sense than that.
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My grandparents lived in a 2BR with a living room and EIK for 4 in the Bronx, and at least during my lifetime no one ever set foot in the holy Living Room with it’s vinyl sofa covers. I don’t actually know what they did when my dad and his sister shared the 2nd bedroom til he was drafted, later it became a den where all family activity took place, even seders for 13.
I’ve raised my 2 kids in a 1200 ft apt with 4 bedrooms ranging from 11x13 to 7x12, an EIK, 11x10 dining room and 11x15 LR. It was not child abuse. What I’ve seen in my friends suburban homes, as has been pointed out, is redundancy. Living room, den, family room, playroom, of which only one ever gets used. Even in our modest home the 4th bedroom is only a guest room and my wife’s study.
The 1st time I saw that it blew my mind. When people have so much wealth they have no actual idea what to do with it we need to tax them, but we’re doing the opposite.
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Mine too, though they also had a BIK (bathtub in kitchen). And 4 kids.
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This was one of my pet peeves when house shopping. I think such a huge financial decision should be about as emotional as an algebra equation, but I’m clearly the minority opinion. Some people actually take it personally when you offer what their dingy needs-$50k-of-work-to-just-be-liveable house is worth rather than what they think it’s worth.
Eh, I don’t think most people are pretending that they usually live that way; it’s more that you want guests (including family you don’t see often) to feel special that you are using the special room with the special dishes.
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They make great places to smoke weed though.
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File under:
Why do Americans drive big SUVs and Trucks that they don’t need.
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They still have guardrails even without the balcony.
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The underused guest room has been around for thousands of years. Vitruvius, who did architectural work back when Julius Caesar was around, wrote about it. Basically, every house had men’s public quarters and women’s private quarters. Other than the man who owned the place’s den, people lived in the private area and used the women’s entrance. When guests came, they opened the front doors and used the formal space. For the 19th century version, reread Great Expectations.
P.S. We have a huge silver service. We use it whenever we have people over. Why not? The pieces match, and we have lots of them. Not everything gets served on a stick.
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Here in Toronto, the houses of Portuguese (immigrants, they’re Canadian now) are famous for having immaculate kitchens for show, with the actual cooking being done in a basement kitchen.
(In my experience, the basement kitchens are pretty immaculate too – but they’re the ones that are used)
Everything old is new again?
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