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So our hunters of house today are Monique and Tim.
Monique is an interior designer and Tim is a contractor and they have two sons named Jean-Luc and Jacques. That's a shame.
Monique and Tim live in a faux chateau (fauxteau?) in Lafayette, Louisiana and they are looking for a second home in New Orleans because their interior designer/contracter business is expanding and they are sick of staying in hotels because the hotels can be pretty loud being that it's New Orleans.
Their realtor is Colleen and Tim and Monique tell Colleen that they want a home in the French Quarter - wait, so they didn't like how loud the hotels got, but they want a house in the French Quarter? - with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a nice kitchen. Tim says their budget is $300,000, but Monique, whose nickname should really be "Ladies, amirite?", isn't opposed to a higher budget.
Before we get to the houses,
can we talk about how ridiculous this doorman's hat is? It's like the safari hat of a World War I German soldier.
House #1 is a 2 bed 2 bath 900 square foot home in the French Quarter for $349,000. It was originally a single family home but has since been converted into four units.
The front door opens directly into the living room and Colleen explains that the house is shotgun style, in that you could fire a shotgun in the living room and it would go through all the rooms in the rest of the house.
So that's the first bedroom off the living room and you have to walk through it to get to the kitchen.
The kitchen is pretty small and awkwardly shaped and Monique lays out her plans for gutting the kitchen and I don't care enough about it to write it down.
The master bedroom is in the back off the kitchen. It includes an en suite bathroom.
Monique doesn't like that the washer and dryer are in the bathroom and says, "The washer and dryer is not working, it's not happening." Ok.
There's a private courtyard in the back and
they can buy this shed/former carriage house for an additional $60,000.
House #2 is 2 bed 2 bath 2000 square foot loft in the Central Business District, which is more family friendly - i.e. not disgusting and teaming with sexually transmitted diseases. Colleen says that, at $499,000, the loft is more within Monique's budget and Tim asks how Monique's budget is different than his budget.
Monique explains that she and Colleen were talking and they think they should raise the budget from the mid-300's to the mid-400's. Ladies, amirite?
Monique likes the openness and says, "it feels open and airy like you can breath in here." The air is notoriously thin in small apartments. That's just a fact.
But, "the kitchen is gonna have to be gutted." They use the term gut/gutted more than Charlie from True Life: I'm Getting Married. And seriously, how happy was I to hear that Charlie and Sabrina are still together.
That sink looks like those sinks you spit into at the dentist's office. Monique says the bathroom will be "nice when it's gutted." Tim is getting concerned about the cost since they're already at half a million and Monique wants to completely redo the kitchen and bathroom, but Monique isn't concerned with the budget. Ladies, amirite?
The master bedroom is really big, but it also has a bathroom that has to be gutted, possibly like the piece of shit it is.
Monique explains via more hand gestures that she really wanted a old home with southern charm and crown moldings and what not and that this loft is a "bit of a diversion from that."
House #3 is a 3 bed 3 bath 2800 square foot single family home in the Uptown neighborhood for $455,000.
There's a really big dining room that Tim likes.
And everything in the house, including the electrical work and heating and cooling, was updated within the past few years, which Tim also likes because as a contracter he knows that all that shit can get expensive.
This kitchen is the largest that they've seen. But...
Monique gets crazy eyes and says that she's "not crazy about the cabinets." Colleen asks, "You can't just put some new hardware on them?" No, she can't Colleen, God!
Crazy eyes!
Crazy eyes!
Monique does not like the window layout in the master bedroom and says that "this congestion is concerning [her]."
She then describes how they would have to board up those two windows and then build a padded head board into the wall to cover the boarded up windows. Colleen counters that "most people would just buy a new bed."
Crazy eyes!
God, Colleen! They're not most people!
God, Colleen! They're not most people!
Colleen points out that the master bathroom was recently remodeled and Monique says, "Let me stop you.
I'm feeling a little 80's in here,
so as far as I'm concerned,
all of this has to go."
Colleen says that "most people would find this a really nice space." MONIQUE AND TIM ARE NOT THE AVERAGE CLIENT, COLLEEN!
Monique and Tim discuss their three choices. House #1 was the cheapest but also the smallest. House #2 was large and open but the most expensive and they would still have to pay for renovations. House #3 was the largest, but it also had a lot of renovations to consider.
They pick house #2.
Monique says, "I just really did what I wanted. I have to tell you [ed note: she says "I have to tell you" as if she's about to tell you something noble or heroic she did], I did not let budget control this project and my vision really came through." Ladies, amirite?
So what is the vision of someone who would choose to wear that blouse?
Tacky and over-priced.
SPOT ON! I never feel quite so eagerly homicidal (or prone to exaggeration?) as when I watch HGTV and no matter what kind of people are on there, like trained little dogs, they all say things like "I'm so over granite. " "This is so dated" and "This would have to go". You just KNOW these people have some crappy house violating all these rules they so piously spit out for the camera when theyre looking at other people's places to buy. "Granite? My family only uses diamond and platinum in our kitchen decor..."
ReplyDeleteAnyway, not sure how I stumbled upon this, and it's 2 years old, but AWESOME. If I think I like humanity, all I have to do is turn on HGTV and listen to couples like you mocked (theyre ALL like that pretty much), and I find myself thinking how super awful and totally ridiculous they are. They want "character", but they don't want "dated". And apparently anything that is already there is by definition dated, from like totally yesterday at least, which like, is so old *valley girl accent*. And everyone in the world is apparently a designer by nature, except for the people selling homes, b/c the homes THEY have suck for every single reason they can find in their bag of bitching cliches.
Not nearly enough venting, but I got a kick out of your entry. :)
Moving into the French Quarter while previously complaining about noise? That reminds me of this video I saw on gentrification in New Orleans. After Katrina, some areas were renovated and rich people were moving in because New Orleans is cool. But then they started to complain about all that darn jazz music. The jazz musicians thought it was ridiculous that these people would move to NOLA for "the culture" but then complain about the culture. (especially since the neighborhood in question was well known for the music) The new people tried to petition for a rule saying music couldn't be played past a certain time, but I don't think it passed.
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