As some of you may know, I have been going to language school for the last few months in order to learn the world’s most widely spoken and useful language: Slovenian. At this point, my Slovenian is about as coherent as, well, a McMansion. In order to feel better about myself, I have sought out a McMansion that is worse than my cases and word-order. This house (in Naperville, IL, of course) does, in fact, make me feel better, but will probably make you feel worse:
This Cheescake Factory house, built in 2005, boasts 5 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms and can be yours for the entirely reasonable sum of $3.5 million dollars. Also for some reason all the photos look like they are retouched with 2012-era Instagram filters.
First of all, trying to visualize the floor plan of this house is like trying to rotate seven cubes individually in my mind’s eye. Second, if you stand right beneath the hole in the ceiling you can get the approximate sensation of being a cartoon character who has just instantaneously fallen in love.
Even if this was a relatively mundane McMansion it still would have made it into the rotation because of the creepy life-sized butler and maid. Would not want to run into them in the middle of the night.
The mural is giving 1986 Laura Ashley or perhaps maybe the background they use for Cabbage Patch Kids packaging but the floor? The floor is giving Runescape texture.
Have you ever seen so many real plants in your life? A veritable Eden.
The overwhelming desire to push one of the chairs into the haunted jacuzzi…but in reality they probably put those chairs there to keep from accidentally falling into the tub at night.
(elevator music starts playing)
This is one of the all time [adjective] rooms of McMansion Hell. I personally am in love with it, though I don’t think I understand it. Perhaps it is not meant to be understood…..,
Continuing with the baseball theme, the guy in the painting looks how I feel after it’s been raining in Ljubljana for two straight weeks. (Not ideal!!)
And finally:
We love a house that has four unused balconies and also a sporting grounds that is large enough to build a whole second McMansion on top of. Everyone should so value their health.
Thank you for tuning into another edition of McMansion Hell. Be sure to check out the Patreon for the two bonus posts (a McMansion and the Good House) which both also go out today!
Hello Friends! It’s really late at night. Do you know why it’s late at night? Because in addition to being your lovely trash tour guide and historian, I am also a graduate student. In graduate student land, it’s that mythical time known as midterms. This worked alright last semester because there were no tests, only projects. Now there are tests. Difficult tests.
Either way, here comes what I like to call a very stereotypical McMansion, except worse. It’s so stereotypical that you’ve probably seen one rather like it yourself.
Except this one has surprises. This lovely house was built in 2005, and features 6 bedrooms, each with their own bathroom! It can be yours for around $800,000 smackaroons. Let’s begin.
Lawyer Foyer
Because the Pringles Can of Shame covers the staircase, the Lawyer Foyer is truncated by a huge footbridge which renders the window useless from the first level. Oh well.
SIT ZONE
Acoustics Rating: full of garbage echoes. Yeah, garbage echoes can be your band if you want it to be. Also, I’m sorry but this room really tickled my angry bone. This is just the most egregiously wasteful enclosed volume I’ve seen since last week’s edition.
SECOND SIT ZONE
Jesus, that’s like radioactive tangerine. Also HGTV Magazine needs less pop of color and more, like normal tones. Also, Mom, if you’re reading this you know EXACTLY WHICH ISSUE I’M TALKING ABOUT. Like, seriously, it’s the worse one. You don’t need stupid paint colors to be unique. Just say no.
Dining Nook
long form jokes, people, long form jokes.
KITCHEN
Man, this totally looks like my old Girl Scout troop leader’s kitchen. She was a bitterly divorced psychiatrist who got the big house but lost half the furniture. All of my jokes come from real experiences. I have stories.
Culinary Consumption Zone
Okay, are any of you guys from the south? Do you about CookOut? STRIP TRAY Y’ALL. It’s probably the one thing I miss from the south, except for the wildflowers of North Carolina which are particularly unique.
Master Bedroom
Maybe I can be a little dark, okay?
Master Bathroom
That’s not a tub. That’s a hot tub. Put a cover on it and stop wasting water. I swear, Dune has made looking at garden tubs so infuriating now. Like, do you know how many Fremen that amount of water could have sustained???
Whatever, Bedroom
I actually did give up ballet in the 3rd Grade but my mom was okay with it because, realistically, I was terrible. Ok I think it’s time to move on to the next room -
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
In addition to innumerable likely code violations, I’m also angry at the fact that these people bulldozed so many friggin lovely, good, happy trees, just to be able to stare longingly at an expanse of ugly. patchy turf grass. Get out. Just get out. You literal wastes of space.
The Rec Room
Mondrian isn’t even spinning in his grave, he’s just projectile vomiting preemptively.
Finally, we reach the most incredible part of this masterpiece:
NO RAILINGS. Do these people never imbibe alcohol? Gosh, golly, if this weren’t a private residence (and architects are probably howling at this) the first in a line of many inspectors would shut this down. Hell, the fire inspector would probably just torch it himself.
Well, that’s it for Delaware, a state so small I literally only had to type “Delaware” into the real estate aggregate to get results. Join us Sunday for a tad bit more of Britain and next Wednesday for FLORIDAAAAAAAA.
Also a bit about scheduling for the next few posts:
Sunday, March 12th: Scotland McMansions Wednesday, March 15th: I will attempt to write a post this day. Around the time I started this blog, I began saving up for a trip to Europe. Well, on the 15th, I’m going on that trip. (Iceland/Amsterdam/Paris) and will return to a normal schedule Sunday, March 26th. In order to keep up with the 50 States, I am going to attempt to post on Friday the 23rd. Thanks for your understanding!
Hello Friends! This week’s Certified Dank™ McMansion comes to us from Benton County, Arkansas - aka the home of Wal-Mart. Today’s house is, to make the easy joke, pretty much the Wal-Mart of houses.
This 4-bedroom, 5-bath behemoth was built in 2005 - smack dab in the middle of peak McMansion construction - and can be all yours for just under $900,000 USD.
The…Personal Accountant Foyer
This is such a sad and lackluster foyer with such a puny window that it just doesn’t quite reach Lawyer status, and is more reminiscent of the dark hallows of the personal accountants’ office that was three blocks away from the main strip, adjacent to either a laundromat or a liquor store.
The Dining Room
My mom is into wine, but not like, creepy dollar store canvas print-level into wine.
You know, I’m really into Lord Byron’s epics regarding granite countertops.
“I Love JESUS and my FAMILY” custom felt WINE CHARMS ($29.99 for set of three)
Den? Living Space? 1
It’s super saggy, so I’m going to guess very cheap leather. Also is it just me or does that mantle have a slight downward slope??
Living Area 2
“DID YOU KNOW SHARON that LITTLE JENNY is 35th IN HER ENTIRE CLASS? I think she’s Harvard material personally, but she might settle for Yale.”
Why would you have two huge living rooms, and BOTH OF THEM have fireplaces and TVs? Standard McMansion Protocol calls for one room to have the TV and the other to have the stuffy furniture and unused fireplace.
For all you young’ns out there that don’t get the Windows Media Center joke, feast ur eyes here.
Master Bedroom
When someone has red silk bedsheets like that, you know they own every Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray book and can recite them by memory.
Master Bath
(Normandy is a place in France. It was the base of the Normans, who built dank architecture throughout their empire, which spanned a great deal of Western Europe during the Middle Ages.)
My parents use their garden tub to water their indoor plants.
Sad Child Room
It doesn’t even feel like a bedroom - just a lackluster place where a child could or could not possibly sleep.
Living Room 3
COULD THAT FURNITURE GET ANY MORE BEIGE??
Rec Room
NEVER MIND THIS IS THE WEIRDEST SHAPED ROOM IN THE HOUSE
I can’t even comprehend how such a room takes shape. This is deconstructivist level weird.
And, at last we come to the end of our tour with the backyard.
Rear Elevation
None of the windows are aligned EVEN TO EACH OTHER. I’m having a hard time with this, it’s just that sloppy.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this week’s McMansion! Stay tuned for Sunday’s (New Years Day) McMansionHell 2016 Retrospective!
Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs in this post are from real estate aggregate Zillow.com and are used in this post for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107.
P.S. Can anyone help me edit my tumblr theme (it’s called Cliq) so that my images display at their actual sizes instead of the 500px sizes? It was that way originally, but it seems that the theme has been updated and now the pics are tiny again. Thanks!
