msmarjoribanks
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Posts posted by msmarjoribanks
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I read this book when I was 12 or so, and it has been one of those books I've vaguely recalled and wanted to read again, but couldn't remember the title or author. I would occasionally google the plot, but had no luck. As soon as I heard about this show I thought "I bet it's based on the book" and ordered it. I got it on Kindle since I wanted to start it immediately, although I am trying to read roughly what each episode seems to cover before watching each episode, rather than allowing myself to read straight through.
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Chicago rerun -- I couldn't help but watch it thinking about Covid. I knew they wouldn't get the Old Town place, but they are lucky they did not. I was rooting for Old Irving Park (I like that neighborhood, historic houses, and think the larger lots are great, although I also like North Center), but figured they'd stay in the neighborhood they preferred. The Queen Anne would have been better for both of them working from home and trying to have the kids do school from home, and the renovation would have been easier, but looking at both on Redfin, it seems like they did do lots of renovations on the North Center place (which I bet cost much more than $150K), and it's probably workable now (vs the terrible office situation before even with just him there). I hope they finished the basement.
Neither of the houses seems to have had a garage.
I'm mainly posting because I didn't notice when I watched it before, but it's hilarious when she says "it looks like a Doll House. Nora will love it." I know she was talking about her daughter, but of course my mind went to Ibsen.
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9 hours ago, cameron said:
Just looked up the sold comps for the Ravenswood area of Chicago. Good luck with the number she has the home listed for. High for the area. Never want to be the most expensive place in the neighborhood, unless it's a really exceptionable place and Ravenswood doesn't qualify for the honor.
Ravenswood in general is overlapping but different (covers a more diverse area, including parts of the better parts of Uptown, and definitely mostly areas to the north of this place) than North Center, and new construction in NC proper (which is where this is) has a higher price. It's a gentrified area (was mostly white, is now mostly white, but the income level has definitely changed, and it has some of the best elementary school districts in the city and is very family-oriented). There are 35 houses (per redfin) that have sold for $1.5m+ in North Center in the past year, so she might be able to come close if it seems like new construction, given the size. (I find the fact that turf instead of grass is not a turnoff odd, among other things, but who knows.)
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7 hours ago, WI GIRL56 said:
I grew up in Chicago and spent my 1st 33 years living there. It was driving me crazy how she said the street name Berenice. Never heard it called that. My DH grew up a few blocks off of Berenice and also never heard it called that. The project manager called it bur-niece which is what we always called it. She was saying Bare-a-niece. Maybe that is the French way.
Her designs are awful. Just sad how it turns out. Pull all the old woodwork out. Ugh! Ari's new digs are lovely and his girls are adorbs.
Yup, although the pronunciation of Goethe St has been shifting lately too (closer to the German pronunciation), so who knows. (Random facts: I used to live quite near this place and strongly considered buying a place a block and a half from this one, which needed a lot of rehab and was too close to the L, so I said no.)
Agree re Ari, whom I like, and her designs.
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So interesting, I did finally watch the beginning, and wish I'd seen it before. I didn't realize it was a 2-flat, and it seemed much bigger than they suggested.
Also, the first bit did indict Donovan as a jerk. "I don't want to be selling $800K houses, that's beneath me." I still think Allison must have had more knowledge than she pretends, but ugh.
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15 hours ago, CruiseDiva said:
The Bridgeport house... others have already pointed out the painted antiques and depressing black brick facade, which were ridiculous. Why spend the money on that expensive pier mirror when it didn't really add anything to the actual value of the house? At least the fireplace was a selling feature.
Okay, I lived in the Chicago suburbs for about ten years and every place we lived had a coat closet. Even apartments. The weather in northern Illinois sucks and people wear coats at least half the year. Instead of that hipster "coffee bar" under the stairs. a coat closet would have been a practical use of that space. I wouldn't want my coffee maker so far away from a source of water. Duh.
So true. I was actually quite interested in this episode since I live in a "Chicago workers' cottage" style house (on the north side) that was rehabbed to get more space/baths/beds, and has a layout somewhat similar to this one (some major differences, such as kitchen location), as well as an addition on the back -- all done before I bought. I actually wish it had more of the feel of the period in which it was built, and have a plan (delayed due to coronavirus) to redo the fireplace to bring back some of the vintage feel (my place is a bit newer than the house in question -- 1910). For me it would be important to bring in details that aren't out of place given the vintage and style of my house. For example, I love Victorians, but a 1910 workers cottage never had the same kinds of details as a Victorian,and such details would also not fit with the relatively modern, open, simple style of my place. Allison doesn't seem to care where/when something is from so long as it is old, which is fine if that's her aesthetic,* but it doesn't seem like bringing back the house to what it was, or whatever she says.
Anyway--back to your point--since my floor plan has some similarities and since I nevertheless couldn't imagine where or how that pier mirror would fit in my place, I looked to see what I did have in the place she put it, and of course right where her pier mirror went is my coat closet.
The episode I watched missed the beginning of the show, so I might try to find and watch the first bit to see what the house looked like before she bought it, as that is one of the things I like about house rehab shows.
*I'm also not a fan of painted brick, especially that black, or hoods intended to make an artistic statement and likely (among other things) to feel dated before all that long.
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On 9/22/2020 at 7:26 PM, CrazyInAlabama said:
They're getting sneaky. They showed last week's episode, and apparently changed something, and it was listed as "New" on my cable guide.
On the clip show that's running now, Donovan is no where to be seen, except on the house hunting part. Isn't the one they left as a 4 apartment building unit the one that didn't sell, but they claimed it did?
Argh, I actually was interested in the one in Bridgeport, and had this set to tape, but first Xfinity screwed up and gave me the awful clip show under that name -- and I watched it thinking eventually it would be about the Bridgeport place somehow -- and then they got the real one but cut off the beginning. Anyway, funny she made only $15,000, which likely doesn't cover costs, but I'm shocked that place sold for $790K in Bridgeport (and based on Zillow apparently it really did).
On 9/22/2020 at 8:35 PM, jkitty said:Lol, ok, Bridgeport is NOT the Brooklyn of Chicago. Like at all.
Also if they are going to do a house in Bridgeport maybe show some shots of Bridgeport. Every shot is of Lincoln Park, the Loop, and Wicker Park or Bucktown.
Yeah, I had the exact same thought.
23 hours ago, LittleIggy said:OMG! That bitch painted that beautiful pier mirror black! And she painted this house crematorium black, too! 😱 What does she have against natural wood tones and brick?
Yup, agreed.
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19 hours ago, javajeanelaine said:
I love Asheville. I'm looking forward to when I'll feel comfortable flying again and I want to go back for fall colors. (Floridian)
I love Asheville too. I did the Asheville Marathon a couple of years ago (at the Biltmore), and just enjoyed the whole area.
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7 hours ago, amarante said:
The Charlottesville homes were exceptionally ugly.
The woman's delight in hideous features being quirky was ridiculous. A hulking stone fireplace in the middle of the room is a design flaw. A hole caught in a staircase to the basement is a design flaw as all it does is prevent one from utilizing a wall as one might like.
I lived in Charlottesville for awhile and I don't remember the homes being quite so bad. I lived in the overseer's house on the grounds of an old plantation for a year. That place actually did have a fireplace with the brick chimney running up to the second floor but it was a nice design element. It was a two sided fireplace with one side on the living room and the other side on kitchen. But it didn't bisect the rooms or the home bizarrely and was a really nice authentic design element as it would have provided the heat source prior to central heating and might also have been used for cooking on the kitchen portion back in the day. And it didn't just hulk on the second floor the way it did in the HH home - the chimney ran through my bedroom and again was just a nice discrete element like one might have an exposed brick wall in a hipster pad. Probably helped that it was brick and so was tidy instead of bulbous.
Heh, I wished I understood more the location of the places. They got the only one I thought was reasonable, so I was happy.
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2 hours ago, topanga said:
I didn’t mind the celebrity excess—I wasn’t surprised, anyway. But what I didn’t like was that the “Editing” step was never broached with celebrities . I wouldn’t think Reese would part with any of her movie memorabilia, but they never asked Zoe “could you see yourself donating any of your 50 black purses or thousand pairs of shoes? Do you still want the bags you haven’t used once in the years since we were last here?” Nope. The excess will simply go to to her house in the Hamptons. This show should be called “Organizing Celebrity Hoarders.”
Organizing books by color is a Thing now. I don’t get it. I don’t think I want to get it, either. To me, the beauty of books comes from the words inside, not the colors on their spines.
They tried to broach the editing step with Rachel, and she instantly shut them down. Her bags and shoes are her daughters, apparently. They managed to get her to rehome (as in put in storage or perhaps some other closet, who knows) some of the stuff she doesn't use and doesn't love.
The books by color thing is just odd, but I have a crazy number of books and they are the only thing in my house (although I've been working on the rest actively) that are super organized. I obsessed about how to categorize them and came up with a system that allows me to find books pretty easily.
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8 hours ago, absnow54 said:
The neighborhoods Good Bones builds in aren’t on a flood plain, so I imagine it has more to do with grandfathering original foundations so that they can avoid newer codes and other cost cutting measures. The Northern Virginia market is a much different beast, and you can generally tell if a tear down house is on a floodplain based on how many days it’s been on the market without a developer snatching it up. When you’re spending $500k+ on the land alone, and the land is less than a quarter acre, you need the basement to up the square footage and justify the million dollar price tag. Windy City Rehab is a more comparable market (issues with Alison Victoria’s work aside...) and they almost always dig out a basement.
I find it odd just because Chicago (which otherwise seems to have pretty similar lots and houses) nearly always has houses with basements. Sometimes they aren't deep enough for useable space without being dug out, and normally they weren't originally finished, but almost always when rehabbed the basements are finished if they don't need to be dug out. Here's something I found interesting: http://moss-design.com/basement/
When I was looking for houses, I saw one place with a basement that needed to be dug out (the owner used it for storage and a wine cellar, but they included quotes on the cost of digging it out), several that needed to be finished, but already included the washer/dryer and often a weight/fitness area, as well as storage, but none with no basement at all. It makes me wonder if they just aren't that common comparatively in Indy, although I don't know why they wouldn't be, as here converting any small house on a small lot to current norms will nearly always include finishing a basement and building out the attic (if big enough, depends on the style of house) with dormers. (The cost of reno'd Chicago places (in gentrified or transitioning areas) is much higher, though, beginning with just the lot cost and then, of course, the cost of a redone house, so that might be part of it, although finishing a basement always seemed to me relatively low cost for the added space. Digging one out not so much.)
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3 hours ago, Aim123 said:
I could have done a way better job on Reese's closet! Can't believe Rachel Zoe's closet just looked so normal. Thought it would be full of chandeliers and wood. Eva Longoria's son's closet? Meh. I hated the ladies at first but they really did grow on me and I started liking them by the fourth or fifth episode.
I like the organizers okay, and I love organizing shows (I adored Marie Kondo and like Hot Mess House pretty well), but I was excited about this when I heard about it, and then the celebrity aspect was a disappointment. The first was okay because I do like Reese Witherspoon, even if her portion of the show wasn't what I was watching for (I'm currently "editing" and organizing, and need inspiration), and the system aspect of the closet was okay, but not specifically relevant. Rachel Zoe bugged me already (pre show), although I get the difficulty parting with things even as one acquires new things, and think it's necessary to have rules in place personally so as not to become disorganized again quickly, and that's up to Rachel. Haven't see the garage bit yet, but it's only my interest in that that has me watching the Rachel Zoe segment.
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10 hours ago, 3 is enough said:
Mina is due pretty soon. Still, I don't see the point of showing the reveal and not actually seeing the reveal.
She showed some parts of the nursery on Instagram. Based on what I saw it looks more feminine, so I am guessing Charlie is a girl.
The house was fine, but I am also not a fan of the main living spaces being upstairs. But if they wanted a garage and the lot is narrow I guess their options were limited. I did really like those appliances.
I also am guessing Charlie is a girl (and thought the timing of the gender reveal party was unfortunate).
I'm guessing the reason for the main living upstairs is more windows, in addition to more views. I'm fine with it. I lived in a 4th floor walk up condo for years, so don't think one flight of stairs is an issue, and have lived in Chicago (with the unattached garage on the back alley) long enough that the front garage seems weird in a similar house. I grew up in a front garage split level but the floorplan of the house was quite different.
Other comments: I thought they were saying the place was quite large, not small, and still don't get why their places don't have basements. The living space/dry bar area would be common here (Chicago) on a smaller lot (standard is 125x25), but in the basement (my basement has an entertainment center/additional living area, since I hate TVs in the formal living room, plus storage room, plus exercise area, plus washer and dryer and sink). I looked it up and I guess an issue is flooding, but that's an issue here too and people just have sump pumps (I guess I now live in one of the few areas of Chicago where basement flooding is not an issue). One big upgrade in houses in my area (originally tiny workers cottages) is finishing the basement, as well as creating a real second floor.
Re Mina being due pretty soon, I guess they've managed to keep filming throughout coronavirus.
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On 8/7/2020 at 4:51 PM, Grrarrggh said:
I loved the third house the DC couple saw. I'm guessing it was in Prince George's. I wonder if they were at UDC or Catholic U?
Yeah, I liked this episode, liked the househunters, but usually for me thought the suburban option was the best. But oh well, hopefully they like their choice.
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On 8/6/2020 at 2:12 PM, KLovestoShop said:
My Aunt used to teach in the Royal Oak schools and liked it there. It's a small town of about 60,000 and was ranked the 27th safest city in Michigan, whatever that means
I went to law school at U of M, and knew a number of people from the Detroit area who settled in Royal Oak after school (not mostly lawyers). Royal Oak was the hot place for younger people then ('90s, I'm old), as well as for those who wanted to be urbanites as Detroit was problematic.
I enjoyed this episode and thought all the houses were good, although I thought/predicted #1 for them (which is what they picked). Personally I would have gone with #3, and I had friends in school from West Bloomington, which was not as cool as Royal Oak but a nice area, but that barn and yard were great, and I know it's a nice area.
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Re Chicago episode: I used to live in a 4th floor walkup and had no issue with it, so have no sympathy for those whining about stairs.
100% would have chosen the Ravenswood house (I'm in a similar slightly less expensive area and am so happy currently).
My second choice would have been the Wicker Park walk up, as WP is a great area and as noted before I used to be in a 4th fl walk up and I never thought it was a thing and was in better shape as a result.
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On 4/23/2020 at 9:29 PM, NYGirl said:
Chicago pretentious people carrying around Starbucks and snacks to each house and the reveal.
That first place..yikes...it reminded me of a bomb shelter.
I LOVED the second townhouse with the reading nook! OMG move me in immediately!
Not a fan of the third... purchaser called it cookie cutter. I'm with him. I can't believe they picked it... no doorman!!
Well as long as he got a place to hang all of his art he'll be ok.
Yeah, the second one was clearly the best, but I knew they wouldn't take it because he was Mr Precious West Loop. (I'm old, so thinking West Loop is all that, let alone over Old Town, which IMO is a much better place to live and the lake does in fact matter, annoys me. But West Loop is hot with the Mills.)
Of course, I really do live out in the 'burbs (Lincoln Square), but it's cheaper out here.
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2 hours ago, DonnaMae said:
What is considered 'downtown' in Chicago? Certainly not the 'Loop', which I would think is downtown. I lived in the city many years ago as a young secretary. No one lived in that area back then.
They seemed to mean close to the Loop -- they were referring to River North as "downtown" (the place they bought was in River North) and Logan Square as "not in the City" (which is a bizarre thing to say) but maybe close enough. I'd guess they meant something like River North, West Loop, South Loop, maybe Streeterville and Gold Coast (although the first two are much more popular with Millennials than the latter two). More people do live in the Loop itself now, but I still wouldn't want to vs living in a more home-y feeling neighborhood.
I wish they'd say what suburb they look in when they look in a 'burb more consistently than they do. The suburban area looked like a neighborhood near me that I run in all the time, although this is in the City (just farther from downtown). But of course there are lots of suburban areas not too far from the City that look similar.
I'm sure I commented on this episode when it was on before, but I didn't remember it. My suspicion was that in reality there was no actual conflict about where they wanted to live, but that was added for the show.
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On 3/25/2020 at 4:42 PM, LucindaWalsh said:
Caught a 7:30 pm new episode in I think Nashville? The couple got engaged at the end. Was that a repeat disguised as a new one? It had a very infomercial feel to it as if the real estate couple had bought a whole episode of ad time from House Hunters and the hunters were actors. They bought a very yucky house. I hated the layout. I hate having a square room with the living room, a breakfast corner and kitchen all in that square with the kitchen island being on an angle in one corner facing out. She ruined those cabinets by painting them white. The whole place looked builder cheap. The other house with the blue door was equally unappealing to me. Both had horrible layouts.
What I fell in love with was that last house! It was a solid built updated older colonial brick house with a great yard in an established neighborhood. The floor plan had no wasted space like most of the new sparkly homes have.
The couple was annoying as heck and I would be very irritated if someone asked me to marry them on an infomercial. Her ring was ugly.
Agree. I actually liked both the second and third and hated the first. I wondered if there was some location factor not discussed.
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51 minutes ago, cameron said:
Actually thought that Vernon Hills would be an ideal place for young family. Never heard of Sauganash and I lived in Barrington for ten years. Bronzeville definitely off the table.
Sauganash is in the far NW of the city, it's nice. A friend of mine (with a young child) recently moved there, and I considered looking there (and searched options there on Redfin), but we wanted to be in a slightly less suburban-feeling part of the city.
I still don't get why they didn't even mention the metra or explain the commute thing better.
I think Vernon Hills is a fine choice for them (especially since it clearly is where the girls were in school, where their family was, it was obvious they would pick it) but would have preferred the decoys be actual contenders showing what else was available at their price point in the area, rather than pretending they were considering moving to totally disparate areas of Chicago and showing 2 other houses they obviously were never going to pick.
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2 hours ago, CrazyInAlabama said:
The Chicago new episode with the woman with two young daughters was awful. The woman got everything she wanted, the boyfriend didn't get anything, except a place to build his own office. Why do I suspect the boyfriend was putting down everything on the house too? She should have bought the one in the burbs, and he should have bought the city place he liked.
The 24 year old insurance agent in Tampa, who's taking mom along on the house hunt is hysterical. He should have left mom at home, and bought what he wanted. The first house that was a cheap redo by flippers would be a big mistake to buy.
That episode was, among other things, annoying because it was so transparently fake. No one looks for houses in Vernon Hills, Bronzeville, and Sauganash. No one with 2 girls of those ages would not be talking about schools as a main consideration (and if they were in private that in reality would have been mentioned).
So I took it as obvious that they were going to the 'burbs, and wished the (awful, IMO, but new-build, totally open, all white kitchen are all things I actively dislike) 'burbs house had been compared with other houses that are options in the 'burbs. Plus, the commute thing was dumb as Vernon Hills has the Metra. Unless he works somewhere Metra inaccessible, which was not explained.
Sauganash is cool (although too far for me, and I don't have a short commute), and the place was obviously impractical for them. Also MCM is not really a common Chicago style. If they'd been serious about trying to find a city/'burb compromise they could have found a great place in that area for $750K or under, but of course they were not. Also the husband (whatever) wanting a white kitchen in that house was ridiculous. The wood there fit, white would not have.
Bronzeville was obviously a non serious option. They weren't a family who was going to move there. The whining about the kitchen by the husband (or whatever) was pathetic (yuck, so Y2K), though, and the wife won points with me for liking it (despite her poor judgment (IMO) in wanting new construction, a jetted tub, and open open open). I do wonder why the roof deck in that place wasn't larger, seems like it would have been easy to make it so.
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This show was successful in getting me to check out the two shows I hadn't seen (I was already a fan of Good Bones, and I watched Alison's show since I'm in Chicago and know the areas and markets she works in, although she usually drives me crazy). I haven't seen that much of Jasmine's yet (I enjoyed the supplemental episode), but was surprised that I've been really enjoying Leanne's show. I don't like her obsession with white or share her precise design sense, but the houses she works on are really interesting, and that's something that appeals to me.
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On 11/19/2019 at 11:17 PM, magemaud said:
I just couldn't deal with that forlorn looking woman in Virginia tonight whose main concern was finding a house that was grand enough to post on social media to prove to everyone that she had overcome her modest upbringing.
I think she hit some of my buttons, because I really could not stand her. She made me angry. They didn't even look at one that would have fit the husband's stated criteria, but at least they did not get the 3200+ sq ft place with a pool. Her whole thing just seemed ridiculously entitled and unrealistic and, frankly, tacky (she had to be whiny about closet size in addition to everything else). Pure conspicuous consumption, the kind of thing that leads people with bad priorities (social media! pretending to being rich at age 25 being more important than actually saving and investing and being financially careful) to spend way above their means. Luckily the husband (who was making the money) seemed to have much more sense and better priorities. I hope he does fix up the place they got and add lots of future value.
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On 10/20/2019 at 10:39 AM, Popples said:
Charles Edwards is playing Martin Charteris, the Queen's Permanent Lord in Waiting and former Private Secretary, which is pretty funny casting since he played Michael Gregson, the father of Edith's baby on Downton Abbey and the younger Martin was played by Harry Hadden-Paton, whom Edith would end up marrying.
Harry Hadden-Paton also recently appeared as George VI in The King's Speech, when it was at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. I couldn't help but think of The Crown when I saw it.
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House Hunters - General Discussion
in House Hunters
Yeah,for that price there has to be something wrong with it not disclosed to the viewers. I liked the 3rd place and think Wicker Park is a great location. It's not that far from River North and more of a real neighborhood -- I would prefer it (but I live way up in Lincoln Square, so clearly have different priorities).