What cracks me up about both HH and “Selling NYC” is all the talk about the “million dollar” views. I’ve seen some truly glorious views in my travels, and none of them had a speck of concrete in them.
Does it seem to anyone else that the single most important consideration when choosing a house is that it have a place for the owners to sit and drink coffee in the morning and look at A View?
Yeah, who has time in the morning to sit? It’s realistic for retirees, but everybody else is scrambling to get kids to school and to get ready for work.
The other major function everyone wants is space for “entertaining”. I’ve never in my life referred to throwing a party or having people over as “entertaining”.
Hehe. Sometime I’d like to see a couple (or a single) on there who says, “All of this space is JUST FOR ME. I never have anyone over and that includes my family at holiday time. I don’t speak to my parents, siblings, or children and I have no friends. I don’t plan to ever have another human being cross the threshold of this house/apartment, because I hate people.”
How about that couple the other day from Kentucky? They live 20 minutes from downtown Louisville, and they wanted to spend ~$250K on a condo in the downtown area… a condo of over 1,100 square feet! That’s not a pied a terre, that’s a freakin’ HOUSE. A weekend place in town should be ~500 square feet with a tiny kitchen (because presumably you’ll be eating out in all those trendy places they don’t have 20 MINUTES AWAY in the 'burbs). They didn’t like one place 'cause the master bathroom was too small. 
And didn’t like another because the fitness center was a FOUR BLOCK WALK away. :smack:
I just don’t see how people afford to live this way.
By professionals in biohazard moon suits, at least in California. Extremely messy and VERY expensive.
My wife loves these shows in spite of the clueless Entitled Ones (because she has loved houses all her life), and I sometimes get exposed on my way through the room. What cracks me up:
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“It seems a little small” (said with vocal and facial expression suggesting a small turd is being held under the nose).
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Everybody says something about “entertaining.” Outside of these shows, does anyone actually say “entertaining”?
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The vocabulary deficient dips who say “Oh, WOW” upon entering every single room.
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The buyers who walk into a room, find their marks and stand stiffly, shoulder to shoulder, arms at sides, palms down on fronts of thighs, looking about as casual and normal as Friday and Gannon.
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Sunday night- New Jersey search:
“Oh this bathroom floor is so DATED! I’d have to replace that!”
For myself, if I go to someone’s house and their bathroom floor is not on the cutting edge of design, I usually just pee and then end the friendship immediately. If I CAN pee, that is. Nothing inhibits the bladder like an outdated bathroom floor. Geez.
What I wanna know is who decides when finishes and features are dated? I still see vinyl flooring and shag carpet on display – somebody’s buying it.
These shows would have us believe that people change their decor and remodel whenever the new issue of House Beautiful arrives.
And have you seen the furniture that some of these people put in their up-to-date houses? Poseurs, all of them.
Wow, you’re nicer than me. Outdated floor? I’m peeing directly on it, just to make a point. Then I end the friendship. 
That would probably happen if the shows weren’t sponsored by the makers of shiny stainless appliances and shiny non-vinyl flooring and yes, paint companies, but paint is still in the “obligatory” rather than the “you deserve it” category and so it’s a different thing.
I LIKE the way you think!! 
At least replacing a bathroom floor is better than rejecting the house outright because you don’t like the bathroom floor. “Oh! I could never live here with that horrid bathroom floor!” :eek: I could see myself saying something like “This place is pretty good; we’d need a new bathroom floor and a new closet door in the bedroom.” But I wouldn’t say it on television, because I’m not a whiny entitled bitch.
I would probably mention it in passing, along the order of - Nice, I like the arrangement of the bathroom but we would need to replace the floor eventually with different tile. Give us something to do next summer. And while we are at it, we could change out the closet door with a louvered door for better ventillation instead of those mirrored doors.
With kitchens, I might mention something about changing out a new electric stove for my preferred type, a gas range with convection oven, or the fridge to one with the ice and water in the door, or a style better for use with a wheelchair - but I would never bother to change an appliance out that was new just because I didn’t like the finish.
I would actually love to see a couple where one of them was in a chair house hunting sometime.
Although mrAru and I would specifically refuse to be shown stuff outside our price range. We would probably [and very deliberately] understate our budget by at least one quarter to one third.
Though I would probably have something snide to say about all the damned double sinks they are pushing - I do NOT get ready at the same time as mrAru, and never have. We always shared the bathroom based on working around breakfasts and getting dressed. 2 toilet rooms on the other hand would be great - he has the male habit of grabbing something to read and settling in for about an hour, so I have to bother him to hurry so I can go pee …
Why would you say something so stupid? We remodel only when a new issue of Architectural Digest arrives.
HGTV should have you all beaten with an avocado formica countertop. You change styles when the new Home And Garden mag comes out.
I have a vacation home (don’t get excited, it’s a ratty little place prolly worth about $30,000) and it has ORIGINAL boomerang formica countertops! Everything old is new again. Maybe I can rip them out and sell them to someone who wants to do a “Mid-Century Modern” (what a euphemism!) Makeover.
Heh, along those lines my family has a cabin in northern Quebec that had, until about a decade ago, a wood-burning kitchen stove made in the late 1940s to look like an electric stove … if it was in good condition (it wasn’t), it would probably be snatched up by designers.
Speaking of that sort of thing - when we bought our house here in Toronto, it came with a dishwasher that was out of the dark ages of dishwashers - it had a wheel like attachment at the front like on the door of a submarine, to seal it. Must have dated from the 1960s. Sadly, it was non-functional.
That’s because my husband and I have never been on the show.
The “dated” comment makes me chuckle, too - if those seven year old fixtures are dated, what are my 40 year old fixtures? Antiques?
On a more serious note, assuming that people are influenced by shows like this, think of all the usable stuff that’s being dumped.
Or is it? When people remodel, are their old countertops, flooring material, cabinets, etc. recycled? Around here, people might use old cabinets in their garage, or if they have a cabin, or maybe in a rental property, but I expect a lot of it ends up in a landfill.
I rolled at my eyes awhile back when HH did a week of “green” shows. One couple went through a house – a new house – and decided that some of the material wasn’t green enough and would have to be replaced. Well, where was it going to go? To me it was wasteful, but they didn’t see it that way.
I saw that one too - it is much greener to use something until the end of it’s service life then to recycle what you can, and replace it with something green except for appliances where energy star/water conservation makes a big difference. We reuse glass jars, bottles and plastic deli type containers all the time, we are salvaging a country bumpkin rustic look door because it is made of the same wainscotting as our walls, so we don’t have to go out and buy new for a project, and we are reusing wainscotting from an island that is being removed as well.
I could see replacing windows with newer more efficient ones, and salvaging the glass to make small greenhouse or cold frames for the garden. That would make a lot of sense.
Nah, they’re ‘retro.’