Bad interior decorating

In My Humble Opinion
41

Come as I take you on a guided tour of my apartment’s wall coverings…

We begin in the entryway. As we ascend the stairs to the second level, we note the sepia stallion-print Western style wallpaper. We enter into a hallway opposite a kitchen with 1950’s style floral wallpaper. More floral wallpaper is taking residence in the main bedroom (which clashes with the modern red Evil-furnishings). The living room has standard white walls and custom-made curtains for the myriad oddly-shaped windows. Too bad they were made of a burnt-orange floral print circa 1965.

As we go back down the hall, we see two rooms, one with one wall in an oddly proportioned toile-like pattern and dark wood paneling on the other (one wall is all windows and the other all closet.) Direstly next to it is an entertainment room covered mostly in movie posters and tapestries. This is because there are large bald eagles all over the walls.

I swear, when I get my sewing machine back, those scary curtains are packed up! Not much we can do about the walls, though.

42

We moved to a brick house in Pitsburg when I was a kid. The main floor of the house was a little low because that is where that course of bricks wound up putting the ceilings. Unfortunatly the people who owned the house before us did not take this into consideration when they decorated the living room. They chose the 9"wide ceiling molding the 2"floor molding, and put the chair rail a little too high. Add to that that this was a very long narrow room and they put in an oversized mantle on the fireplace that wound up only about 2’ from the ceiling. To top off the glory that was this room add wainscoting that was sort of a pale green and wallpaper that featured the eagles that are on american money, only with a 3’ wing span.

Absoluty stunning

43

Before I finish reading this thread, I have to interject. I work at a landscaping company, and we used to have a florist shop as well. My boss’s daughter ran that. (She’s still there, though the shop is history.) Anyway, she used to bring in stuff from her house to sell in the gift shop. We were all encouraged to do so. We had a lot of nice stuff in there, too.

However…she had that **exact same lamp ** you mention in there, as well. The second day I was there, I noticed it, and grimaced to Andy, our florist. I said, “What is that?” He chuckled and said, “That’s Dee’s…purdy, ain’t it?” Got any idea how humorous it is to hear a transplanted Vermonter (ian?) affect a Southern, hick accent?

Ugh. That atrocity still hangs forlornly in our closed florist shop. Mocking me as I go past.

44

One wall of the dining room in the house I bought before this one was covered with some kind of a reed mat type of stuff. My SO dubbed it the Wall of Voodoo. The previous owners also smoked, so it was all sticky with tar and nicotine to boot.
We ripped the stuff out and threw it in the trash. Scary thing was, someone TOOK it all from our garbage can. Ewwwwww!

My Dad’s house is another matter. Again, an example of someone with money and no taste.

Most of the 5 bedroom house is tiled. The tiles were supposedly made in Italy, and very expensive. Too bad they are butt-ugly…white, red, blue, and yellow kind of floral pattern. I get dizzy just thinking about it. Dark paneling on the living room walls (how could we forget that? A house wouldn’t be a home without it!). Furniture a la 1975. The bathrooms each came with a bidet and stucco walls. One bathroom was baby blue and another marigold yellow, top to bottom.

He and his wife have re-done two rooms: the kitchen, and one bathroom. Unfortunately, his wife chose some sort of purplish faux stone laminate for the kitchen countertops (uh, thanks…I’ll eat out tonight).

The bathroom is much better. They spent 25k renovating it, in fact. One very beautiful room in one fugly house. It’s like stepping into another dimension.

He’s in the process of having a new home built. I am afraid to ask if they are getting professional decorating help, or not. I shudder to think what they are inflicting on some innocent new house. Of course, when it’s done he will want me to come visit and ooh and ahh over it. I think I better start stockpiling meds now.

45

Interior Design words to live by! :smiley:

I was visiting in the hometown of three very dear friends of mine. We were at their parents home when the parents suggested going to visit an aunt and uncle. I walked into the living room and almost lost it. There on the end tables, a pair of lamps, in green and white, Grecian ladies, arms held up as if holding up the lamp shades, their togas (or whatever they are) drooping down to reveal the left breast on each lamp. I cannot do these lamps justice with this description. My friends were no help at all. I’m sitting there and can’t keep my eyes off those lamps, yet knew there was no way in hell I could look at any one of them. Priceless I tell ya, priceless!

Oh and my aunt with the porcelin doll collection in her living room. On shelves, on tables, on the piano, arranged ever so artfully beneath the coffee table. And the topper, a picture of my cousin (her son) who died in 1962 in his coffin sitting on the coffee table. :eek:

46

Well, as I can see after reading the thread, I’m not the only one that has been graced by The Naked Lady. (I think Dee’s runs with water in it, too…don’t know as I never have seen it turned on.)

Actually, to refer back to the OP, The Naked Lady isn’t so bad as the pure, unadulterated crap my mother-in-law has all over her house. She has this little hobby with plastic and yarn…makes stuff out of it. Sort of like cross stitching, but not really. They’re not particularly ugly…they’re just the epitome of TACKY. Just squares of plastic…and Walmart yarn. She makes little hanging lamps, and wall hangings…and coasters. They are just so trailer fabulous.

I especially adore the Jesus Protecting Truckers poster-thing she has…it’s a real wall adornment.

The only things she’s made that are “cute” are little door hangers that have Loony Toons characters saying, “Keep Out” or whatever. The kids like those.

But lordy…the coasters have got to go. And the little lanterns…and Dale Earnhardt mouse pads…and Roll Tide mailboxes. Damn. You just wouldn’t believe the height of tackiness I’m talking about here.

[sub]If MrSylkyn reads this I am sooooo gonna catch hell, but too bad![/sub]

47

My sister-in-law has so much Christianity in her that it spews out and lands on the walls. Angels, doves, scriptures… In the bathroom, if you’re sitting on the toilet, you can read “The Ten Comandments” at eye level, or if you’re standing at the toilet, you can read “Footprints In The Sand”.

48

I remember once our family had ripped out a disgusting old stove and put it out front of the house to take to the dump later. When we came back from picking up the new stove, someone had already taken it!

I see this a lot on shows like “This Old House.” It’s really expensive - so it must be good!

I was soooo hoping we weren’t going to “go there” with the plastic canvas needlepoint. That was such the rage for a while but in some places it never quite went away. I have been stunned sometimes by what I’ve seen done with plastic canvas. (A lampshade? Is that REALLY a good idea? Why not a firescreen? DUH!)

49

A dining room with the vinyl foil wallpaper silver/mirror background, brown marbling mid ground with avacado and harvest gold and tangerine chainlink hexagon pattern for the foreground. The links of the chain were about an inch by an inch and a half making hexagons about a foot wide–oh, and the seams were curling slightly. Since it was vinyl, you could not just steam it off. Coordinating linolem for the floor with an offwhite back ground.

50

A collection of original oil paintings done in the Pornographic Nordic Goth/Heavy Metal style (eg., Conan-the-Barbarian-type loinclothed warrior posed triumphantly over the body of the dragon, leopard, or whatever he’s just slain on the top of a rocky promontory, companioned by a steel-bra-and-bikini-bottom clad woman crouched at his feet and gazing upwards in a worshipful mien), all done by a resident of said house. Technically brilliant work, but tasteless beyond belief. I was speechless.

51

The house we moved into has such hideous decor.

–The master bedroom has up-and-down striped wallpaper, with a great big stripe that has pink flowers in it. I can’t stand pink, floral patterns, or wallpaper in general, really. Worse than that… it’s applied crookedly.

–One of the other bedrooms has wallpaper on one wall that feels like grocery sacks, with some kind of drab small floral/herb thing printed on it.

–The absolute worst wallpaper is in the dining room, with a hideous busy paisley pattern in turquoise and mauve. I really, really hate mauve. And they got paint to match the mauve of the wallpaper, and painted under the chair-rail in the dingin room and the living room with it.

–Someone went nuts sponge painting the hall bathroom with several fairly bright shades of blue, overlaid with a drab gold. We’ve named the effect “Smurf Barf”.

–The stencils, oh my god, the stencils… Every freaking wall in the kitchen is covered with stencils of morning glories and ivy. The family room has a crackle paint effect AND ivy stencils. The upstairs stairwell has bows, the upstairs hallway has fleur-de-lis, and the downstairs hallway has the same fleur-de-lis, but with the colors reversed.

Someone gave me a good name for this style of decorating: “Late Period Televangelist”. The worst part is that even though our landlord has given us permission to paint and/or wallpaper as we wish (within reason), my husband actually likes some of the stuff and wants to keep it. :smack:

52

Where to begin…

  1. When I was wee, mum had a Catholic friend who was OTT; she had a tabernacle thingie in the master bedroom that contained God knows what, consecrated hosts for all I know – and I do know people who have got consecrated hosts, relics, all that. What set this thing part is that it was the ultimate bog roll cosy: young Jesus (with blond Prince valiant hair) from the waist up as sort of a plaster doll, and the ‘skirt’ to his robe came down and covered this enormous container…and depending on the colour of the liturgical day, she could change the skirt to Lenten purple, martyr red, or Ordinary time green…

  2. I’ve mentioned this before, but from ages 7-12 I took piano lessons from a lady whose guest bathroom was all over in red and pink, every available surface, from the shag carpeting (this was in the early 70s) to the fixtures – the first time I walked in, I thought my eyeballs had burst, cos I was seeing everything through a red mist, which I presumed was blood. This bathroom was set off cos the rest of the house being painted in a shade of rich aubergine.

  3. My parents moved into a house where the lady made ceramic thingies, and they hung them all over the walls, all levels. My dad guesses they took hundreds of nails out of the walls, and he and mum and my brother would go from room to room, slowly running their hands on the walls – since the nails were painted white – feeling for them to pull them out. This same house had red with 20" in diameter white daisies wall paper and matching curtains in the master bedroom.

  4. Not really decor, but I remember the house we moved to when I was 6 – the kids’ bedrooms all had bolt locks on the doors – on the outside, about 3 inches from the top of the doorjamb. None of the kids were over 10 years old…

  5. This one is still a fresh, raw wound, so forgive any incoherence. In September, I’m going back for a post doc degree. I need a place to live just for autumn and spring. It’s a 6 hour drive to the uni, so mum asked around, does anyone have a room I can let just for the duration, so I’m not stuck in a year long lease. A guy at her church says, his cousin just inherited a 5,000 square foot house from an auntie, and it’s got a huge mother-in-law apt.

I was there just last week, and after some confusion, made arrangements to see the place (the confusion was mostly on the part of the cousin, who could NOT understand why I had to see the place before I let it…yes, you can think ‘Uh oh’ right now…)

The house is one of those huge ‘mansions’ you see going up everywhere on former farmland – gigantic, but sitting in the middle of barren ground and there are other, equally large houses sitting within spitting distance of each one. At this house, everywhere you looked, country kitsch cute, as has been adequately described by other people in this thread; it’s too painful for me to repeat it – but cos this is a 5,000 square foot house, and it’s PACKED with this stuff, well, it’s overwhelming. Pigs, chickens, ruffles, lace, gingham. Hold me.

The cousin isn’t there, but her roommate is. (Of course, the roommate can’t answer any of my questions, but that’s another rant.) She let me in to this house, and mum and I are gaping at each other – the house is just floor to ceiling with this kitschy stuff. We chat with roomie for a minute, trying not to gasp for air – dunno if it was the forest green shag carpeting fumes, or that the dogs had been using the floor of the living room as a latrine all morning (she’d actually thrown clumping kitty litter on top of the wet spots.) Mum asked the girl, Could we see the mother in law apt.

Turns out we were in it, and it was filled (I can’t say this enough, sorry) with all this stuff, personal belongings, etc. I can’t tell you what colour the walls were, as they were covered all over in family photos in huge frames you usually don’t see outside of baronial castles.

Ah, we said, so she will be moving all of her own things out? (Thinking, in relief, what a nice set of rooms this will be when the last of the stuff is out, and my quiet tasteful things are in.)

No, said the roommate, puzzled. Why, was I planning to move things in?

The concept that I might actually be bringing more than a spare pair of knickers to suffice for two terms at university was just too much for this girl to process.

Then she showed me the nice garage where I could keep my things so this girl wouldn’t have to move any of her stuff out of the apartment I was renting…

I think we left scorch marks on all the kute wooden pigs flanking the driveway, peeling out of there to escape…

53

ooooh I’ve been looking for one of those. They are hard to find these days… no antique shop has them, and I don’t think they make them new anymore.

54

A 25 thousand dollar bathroom!??!?!?

55

Holy crap!

The things described in this thread are disturbing. I’m very glad I’ve never heard of or seen the naked-lady-with-drippong-oil statue.

My father has a rather bland black-painted naked-lady statue, but it’s not well detailed… nothing remarkable or special. However, he also has several large but tacky decorative owl-sculptures that stare broodingly and disturbingly out the windows of his house.

My stepfather has an original cast-bronze naked-lady statue done by a sculptor friend of my mom’s who has superb artistic talent… and the mould was broken after it was made, so it’s unique. It is breathtakingly-beautiful, very heavy, and is the only piece of decoration in that whole house I’ve ever wanted.

Back in the seventies, we moved into a large old house where the kitchen floor was tiled in alternating grey and green, surrounded by a black-and green border. Most of the rest of the house was of a nondescript colour, but there was one half-ruined room in the basement that was an intense shade of purple. We used it for storage, and later I built a model railway there.

56

Trading Spaces. Episodes 0 - infinity

(Myabe…just maybe there is one Vern room that is an exception.)

57

My grandmother has pretty much every nasty thing mentioned.
Oil-lady-lamp; check
Bizarre macrame plant holders and craft items; check
Walls painted eye-melting colours; check
Beautiful hardwood covered up by horrible carpet; check

Hmmm - what else?

-fake flowers floating in a glass bulb filled with water
-matching chicken and rooster cushions (she once spent five minutes trying to haul one out from under my grandfather’s ass - apparently they were too good for him to sit on)
-a stunning collection of shells-glued-together-to-look-like-stuff. A jazz band composed of frogs was my favorite
-nasty, nasty patterned furniture covered up by even nastier slipcovers. (Last time we were there we decided the decomposing foam posed a biohazard)
-a collection of plastic drink-mixing-sticks (literally hundreds of them)
-many quilts in awful fabrics and patterns (my grandmother is colour blind and still thinks polyester is a wonderful idea)
-creepy poodle-things that hide toilet paper
-some kind of brass art depicting a dead cow (gave me nightmares as a child)
-three or four “string art” boats

I love my grandma. I’m just really glad I didn’t inherit her taste in “stuff” :smiley:

58

We saw some horrible houses while house hunting. The first looked lik esomeone went crazy with the sponge painted borders. The house was a cute white Cape Cod, nice, big yard, big detached garage, nice neighborhood. It looked perfect. We walked inside and it was pretty trashed and the previous owners had left a ton of stuff. Then we went into the kitchen and saw a crooked ivy border around the top. The bathroom was painted DARK PURPLE with white random sponge shapes all over. The hallway was DARK RED with random sponge shapes.
We didn’t buy that one.

One of the others was nice on the outside, but we walked in to find a late 80’s, rent-to-own nightmare. Lots of brass and beveled glass and funky pastels. There was a room that was painted magenta and a purple hallway. It was bad. The kitchen looked normal, though.

The house we bought has the ugliest fireplace I’ve ever seen. It also had the ugliest kitchen, but that’s been painted and the ugly linoleum is going soon too. The worst thing, though, is the bathroom. The shower is done in bright, aquamarine tile and trimmed in black tile. This is not so bad, in and of itself. What is bad is the fact that this is the the wallpaper that was on the wall before. Psychedelic seafoam green swans. How do I know this was on the wall once? Because previous owners decided that they were going to redo the bathroom, in a COUNTRY theme. Aqua tiled shower, with crappy white paneling, country cutesy wallpaper and wooden fixtures everywhere. Apparently, they didn’t feel like bothering to put the country wallpaper or white paneling in that little corner between the doorframe and corner, though, so the old swan wallpaper still shows. It is so ugly.
The previous owners also left some of their cutesy country crap in the house when they moved out. It was trashed, quickly. (Once we decided they weren’t coming back for it.)

59

I watched the first episode of Donald Trump’s programme last week (for the life of me I can’t remember what it is called). His apartment has to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

It looked like someone went loony with a can of gold spray paint, you would have to be wearing sunglasses to cut down the glare. The hideous fountain was a lovely touch too.

Yes Donald we know you have shitloads of money but couldn’t you have hired someone with taste to pretty up your digs?

The way it is now is about as subtle as hanging up a banner with your net worth painted on it.
Naked lady lamps must have been all the rage once upon a time. My nana had a naked African lady paddling a canoe with a lamp on her head (bright orange lampshade too). It always looked so splendid on top of the tv :stuck_out_tongue: