Baby Boomers didn’t buy their first homes in the 80s. They bought their first homes in the late 60s-early 70s.
3 Likes
It’s not an accident that American houses last as long as standard American mortgages.
2 Likes
Creating defensible space is essential to improve your home’s chance of surviving a wildfire. It’s the buffer you create between a building on your property and the grass, trees, shrubs, or any wildland area that surround it. This space is needed to slow or stop the spread of wildfire and it protects your home from catching fire—either from direct flame contact or radiant heat. Defensible space is also important for the protection of the firefighters defending your home.
4 Likes
McMansions have ALWAYS gone for below the asking price. That’s the point.
They’re poorly built, planned for individual tastes by tasteless people, and worth far less than originally paid. Not that it matters - you’re buying it with your second wife and it’s a whirlwind romance and you don’t have Facebook to brag about it so you need to express your narcissistic love through other means. So you design a love nest #nesting. Then inevitably the relationship breaks down because let’s face it, neither of you were in the right place for something serious when it started. So you divorce and sell it off in a fire sale to someone else who likes the area and is willing to put up with some ugly architecture to be in the right school district. It’s the damn POINT.
6 Likes
People hate it when other people use their neighborhood as a cut-through. This is the root of all subdivision winding road evil.
7 Likes
About twelve of their songs are my favourite song by them.
2 Likes
9 Likes
Right. Got it. I was being a touch snarky. Live and learn.
I was thinking of my mum, who lives in the wildland-- urban interface. But then I remembered that it’s literally a gated community.
With a total R-value of 10.56… which is less than 3.5" worth of batt insulation.
in this case and in the case of Golf, paper napkins and several other terrible things that are dyeing a slow death, I think of it as credit and not blame.
4 Likes
I can’t disagree with you on this!
2 Likes
Ah, but you have to consider the thermal mass as well.
True. But with a tight enough envelope it doesn’t really matter.
Not saying that McMansions are built with any actual sense of efficient/effective thermal envelopes.
Fair. I ain’t saying we can’t use modern materials to make buildings even better. I happen to like old ways of construction for aesthetic and sentimental reasons, but that’s neither here nor there. Modern engineering can beat all of that. But, as we agree, the McMansion doesn’t really put that engineering to any good use whatsoever.
4 Likes
There’s about 300 years between the end of the gothic era (1300~1590) and the victorian era.
They built a mcmansion style house in the city near me on a skinny lot facing Le Lake of the Isles. I had dreamed of the beautiful modern house that could live there and create both a private sanctuary and take and vantage of the beautiful views. Instead what occupies the lot is what I call a “birthday cake house” each tier is a different style of arch or porch with clashing styles of ornamentation .
5 Likes
Or trees that can’t even grow in the climate zone.
7 Likes
All my trees and shrubs violate the local guidelines, but they only apply to landscaping provided with a new-built house.
1 Like
There’s so much effort to make these things into generational fashion trends as opposed to just admitting that a large proportion of boomers and some xers have ended up buying poorly made, super expensive to maintain, houses with a lot of dead space, inefficient, and naive looking design, and inflated tax value in poorly designed suburban sprawl that is no joy to traverse. They don’t age well and people don’t want to sink that kind of money into maintaining a house just for “show” especially when the “show” is trying to keep a poorly constructed 3000 sq ft chimera of a house from bankrupting you.
7 Likes
