McMANSION Hell

Discussing ugly mansions

[MountainMan.]

60 Minutes did a piece on McMansions in Houston many years ago. They toured a McMansion with the wealthy homeowner's wife. They walked in the kitchen and it looked big enough to be a restaurant kitchen. She special ordered double Viking ranges along with tens of thousands of dollars of luxury equipment add-ons. The reporter increduously asked her, "Are you really going to use all of this? Do you really need double Viking ranges?" And all she said was, "Well, I love to bake." It's just excess for excess sake. Pure materialism.

[Butterflyandhearts]

For some reason, indoor pools (in houses anyway) give me the creeps. I think I saw a movie years ago of some creepy old mansion with indoor pool.

[citticat]

In the 80s this contractor bought the house next to me and spent years working on it. He thought nothing of using my property as his dumping ground for old windows and pipes. He went to the town and bought the open space surrounding his house increasing the square footage. He recently put his now outdated house on the market for 2.4mil and the house has not sold. You can bet most people can't afford the property taxes.

[mrgther]

they all look like the kind of "dream houses" I was drawing when I was 9 years old.

[csm]

Yes, the definition of a McMansion typically includes the size, or oversize, of the house in relation to the lot. But what you are missing is that a McMansion is also a architectural "mutt"--taking random bits and pieces, details and massing, from disparate and unrelated architectural traditions. So you see Greek columns mixed with Tuscan arches, art deco glass block, Tudor towers and Mansard roofs, combined with window and door openings that make no sense, and usually multiple and meaningless gable details. Smack on a couple of columns, clad the whole mess in stucco, and voila--you are ready for the next gated community in Dallas, Scottsdale, Orange County, or countless other locations where people have more dollars than "sense".

[larrybenton]

I once viewed a giant house with no windows for the master bedroom. Years later, I realize how great it must have been for sleeping.

[gregmoore]

My architect friend says, “it’s like putting 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.”

[illtrill]

You hate open floor and outdoor pools but love carpet? Ok.

[TheNystedt]

Many of the houses you showed, while ugly, are definitely not McMansions. A McMansion means they are generic and often reproduced in a cookie cutter fashion, usually in the same development. They are more often than not made with low quality materials, and they always steal design elements from other styles and cobble them together in a way that doesn't make sense, neither visually, nor practically. Fake columns and fake balconies, turrets, fake stone facades, window placement that doesn't really make sense, etc. You definitely got it by the end, making fun of the balconies to nowhere, huge unnecessary columns and weird window placement.

[BrisLS]

My neighborhood has some of the weird stuff, second floor doors that open to a 10 foot drop to the death, in-law suites and additions built on, that look nothing like the main house. One house is basically an exact copy of 2 of mine pasted together, and an in-law suite tacked on. Takes up a suburban block. That's the part that really gets me; why not just sell and move to a bigger house? Why spend the money creating a monstrosity that looks like nothing else? Then there is the massive massive roof with no windows cut into it. That really stirrs the imagination. Like what's in there? An indoor racquetball court?

[sa]

4:35 When I was a kid, I lived in a split level home once in Colorado back in the 70s. The breakfast room had a railing which overlooked the family room in the below grade level, which was about 3 feet below the main floor. On the end of the family room by the railing, a section of the floor had rocks on it like in that picture, except they were white. My mom kept some plants on it.

[jksmithiii]

That's the doctor's pool from the greatest movie of all time, "The Human Centipede."

[mikeazza]

Thank you so much for this video. The combo of images and commentary had us laughing out loud. 😂

[THUGSHAKERPRODUCTIONS]

McMansion bingo:

Columns that offer no structural support and are purely for design. Or they do offer structure, but for meaningless designs like in 2:03

way too many windows, especially high up where you'd need a ladder or extremely long and hard to manuever squeegee to clean

gray, beige, brown, white

circular driveway

weird additions like in 4:09 on the left side of the house or 8:03

looks like at least several other houses in the neighborhood, if not all of them

over-designed house but the landscaping looks like shit

pavement princess, gigantic, lifted Super Duty parked out front (bonus bingo space if there's a KIA Sorento, Toyota Rav4, Honda CRV, BMW X5, or similar parked next to it. only gets used to haul groceries and the kids, tires have never touched dirt)

tacky live laugh love wine mom furniture

building materials that are obviously the cheapest they could find from home depot and make the interior look like a mobile home

mancave with a 40" tv in the basement, a billiards or foosball table that's gathering dust, a leather sofa that you can feel your back sticking to through the screen, and a beer fridge. likely crammed in the corner with a laundry room across the hall

aluminum balcony and/or fencing

ceilings that are way too god damn high, like so high you could add another floor above it or a loft but no instead let's have a 18 ft tall ceiling in our living room. Good luck trying to dust off the ceiling fans.

overabundance of rooflines and gables

fireplaces. they haven't had wood or anything burning in them within the last 10 years. at least 3 of them in the house

"""exercise room""" that's carpeted, has a treadmill from 1995 thats never used, some kettlebells and dumbbells, maybe a smith machine if you're lucky

utility bill within the thousands

brick/stone facade on the outside, drywall on the inside

real estate listing that desperately trys to oversell the mcmansion. Look for keywords such as "forever home", "spacious", "lots of room for toys in the garage", "marble countertops" (the one building material they actually spent money on), "just needs a couple of your own finishing touches" (there's multiple rooms we didn't bother finishing, in fact they haven't been finished for 15 years), "owner loved this house and put a lot of time into it, but unfortunately they need to (excuse to get rid of the house) and are looking to close ASAP", "wake up in your master bedroom with amazing waterfront views" (there's a swamp down the hill from the property)

"""grand""" entrance with spiral staircases

despite all the garage space every car will be parked out front or in the driveway anyway. the garage is reserved for only the husbands project car that barely ever runs and only sees the light of day a few times a year

sad little fountain that never runs because their utility bill is already way too high

dead grass because again, the utility bill is too high to water multiple acres of grass

"last sold: sometime before 2007/2008"

roof looks like someone fucked up with the roofing tool in the sims

owners refer to it as "the compound", "the palace", "the chalet", "the (mc)mansion"

the most useless stair/door ledges of all time

complete absence of indoor plants



You should check out /r/SlumlordsCanada btw Ginger, would like to see your reactions to some of the rentals they got on that subreddit

[matthew]

DG I'm loving the McMansion material. "I'm lovin' it!"

[qreecpy]

More stuff means more problems. A big hole in the ground in which you throw money

[adanalyst]

DG should do more house videos! This was funny

[johnkeviljr]

You can't buy, or build, taste. Great video. You have found some real sh*t homes!!!

[kylasaundersmiller]

I agree that these houses are at the very least, weird. Here in Texas, almost EVERY house has grass lawns.

[TheCaffeinatedOrganist]

So… the Field Guide to American Houses has a new 2020 category called Millennial Mansion. That’s the official term for McMansion. The term “McMansion” actually came from the multiple open-ended gables and apex dormers on the front facade. The multiple front-facing gables combine to form “M’s” like the sign for McDonald’s.