Someone Please Buy This Bonkers House

I love it so much

There are three main reasons I spend time on Zillow looking at houses. The main one is to daydream about owning a beautiful historic home and taking good care of its woodwork. The second is to extrapolate things about people’s lives based on their decor. The third is to gawp at strange or outdated design and/or staging choices.

This house scratches all three of those itches, and even though the realtor is saying the buyer would need to put about $1 million into renovations in addition to the $1.6 million asking price, I still think one of you should buy it and fix it up and then invite me over.

This is the house:

… but if you live in Chicago you might recognize it better as THIS house:

The original owner started doing up the yard for Christmas in 1984 and his family continued the tradition after his death in 2019, so if you do buy this house you might be, like… obligated to do this?

He sounds like an absolutely lovely man, and he would answer the letters to Santa that kids would drop off at his house. I want to emphasize here that the tone of this post is not derision, but bemusement (plus genuine real estate envy).

What, you might ask, would the interior of a house like this hold?

Let’s go on a very confusing tour.

So first of all, we have this kind of opulent, golder-is-better vibe. I’d probably get rid of the golden cherubs on that arch, and paint the columns some other color. And I’m not really a multi-marble-bust kind of gal… but look at the bones of this room! I love that window alcove.

But then we round the corner, and I have a whole lot of questions.

Foremost among them: Where does one sit to watch these multiple TVs?

Of course that’s not really your problem if you buy this house. You can arrange your statuary however you like, and you can also tell me what lies beyond that mysteriously narrow door.

The thing I want to know about this office is not why the chandelier is so tiny, or why the photographer left multiple half-full water bottles in view, but whether that’s another gold column on the far left sign of the photo. Because the gold pillars are adding up really fast.

In the living room, for instance, we have more gold pillars and a caryatid, plus a baffling seating arrangement:

So you can sit at this desk and gaze at the stunning stained glass windows while you work, and meanwhile the friends you’ve invited over can flank the room and stare at YOU.

We also have these rugs, and lets see where they lead. Why, it’s…

… straight to another statue. So you can give her a big hug!

We also have red carpet on the stairs, which you might know is a personal fixation. I made a Twitter thread once of cursed red carpeting.

The kitchen is pretty normal. When you buy this house you’ll need to redo the floor and the cabinets, but please keep the stained glass.

Less normal: red carpeting in EVERY UPSTAIRS ROOM.

And also this door that starts a foot off the ground:

I’m all about the fireplace in the bathroom, though.

And finally we reach my favorite room, which I assume is the basement:

This room has got EVERYTHING. A festive bar, a knight in armor, the world’s first elliptical machine, a wooden synthesizer, and, over on the left, two plates of food just sitting there on the floor. Potentially cat food, I guess, but I’m not convinced.

Anyway, please put in your bid and get your Clark Griswold on and invite me over for basement drinks.

Here’s the listing, if you want to see even more red carpeting.

After the paywall, as a (dubious) thank-you to the paid subscribers, I will show you the absolute creepiest room I have ever found on Zillow. It’s from a different house, but don’t worry, there’s a red carpet involved.