Okay, so this isn’t even remotely related to anything on the blog, but I just had to share it. See, Chris and I are doing some intensive pre-house-hunting work, which involves going to realtor’s websites and looking at all manner of houses online. One thing that you learn from looking at other people’s houses is that there is no accounting for taste.
In the course of browsing online real estate listings, we have seen:
- the kitchen with the bright-yellow painted cabinets
- the dining room with the mural wallpaper
- the 100% Marie Antoinette House, with frills and frippery and intricately carved wood furniture and a tiara-mosquito-net thing hanging above the bed in the master bedroom and ivy plants draped over everything (sadly, the listing did not specify a guillotine in the back yard)
- the “retro kitchen” with all aqua-blue cabinetry
- the kitchen with the breakfast nook done to resemble a vinyl diner booth
- quite a number of basement “rec rooms” with – I’m not making this up – what could only be green-blue shag carpeting
- quite a number of houses with TVs in every room, including the dining room…
(Keep in mind, these are all from photos of rooms that the sellers want you to see. We haven’t seen any of these houses in person, so we have no idea what horrors are lurking that they didn’t photograph and put up on the web.)
…and then there was this bedroom:
I don’t even know where to start with this: no single element in this room coordinates in even the remotest way with any other element. It’s astounding. I’m not sure I could have managed it if I tried; and I’m quite sure that there’s no way I could sleep in this room. Chris and I mused briefly about how it could be rescued, and the only thing we could come up with was “strip it and start over.” I present it here mostly for your amusement, but also as a bit of a Crackpot Challenge: What would you do with this room? What (if anything) would you keep? Can you find a way to coordinate any two elements?
