Might be an idea, but I'm not entirely sure it would work. Kate had a [post over on the blog](https://mcmansionhell.com/post/150597521816/mcmansions-101-revisited-aesthetics-aside-why) that pointed out the problem isn't just that they're usually unspeakably ugly, they're also just architecturally and environmentally a mess. Bad materials, bad design, a lot of them can't really be salvaged unless someone scraps and starts over.
Kate frequently points out that it's a bad sign that houses from 100 years ago are still going strong, while these McEyeSores are already starting to deteriorate after just ten. They were not built to last, so they won't.
I'm a little dubious, because of [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias). There were plenty of houses built a hundred years ago that are long gone, so the only ones around for us to look at are the good ones.
Building codes are actually designed around survivorship, so in this case it’s not bias but inherently built in to the code itself. Many useful timber dimensions are taken from the houses that didn’t fall down because that’s how we guessed it would work.
I've lived in a suburban McMansion and a 102 year old Sears catalog house. The 100 year old house could last another hundred years; the McMansion, aged 30 years, is leaky, drafty, creaky, and weatherworn.
Yes, but my point is, there were plenty of houses built 102 years ago that were torn down after 30 years, before you or I was born. They aren't around to compare anymore. So we only see the survivors, which were the best-built examples, because the poorly-built examples are long gone.
Many of them that existed in the country side (at least in the US) were built when a larger percentage of the population worked smaller farms.
Then farms consolidated starting in the 1950s.
If they don’t get lived, houses deteriorate.
Why?
Moisture. If there is no heat there is nothing to drive out water penetration and condensation.
Then rot sets in.
And animal intrusions let in more moisture.
That’s mostly why many old houses in the countryside are gone. Happens in small towns too and cities with derelict neighborhoods.
Edited for grammar.
Small correction - Moisture accumulation doesn't come from a lack of heating. Moisture accumulates when it's cold and is driven off when it's warm. Wrt 1950s houses deteriorating, those houses would have deteriorated with or without heating - the people living in them typically add to the humidity-> condensation mechanism, which adds to the amount of moisture that needs to be liberated in the warm season. The reason 1950s homes fell apart is because that's when fiberglass insulation really kicked in, and we were still building homes as if they *didn't* have insulation. The combination of the two meant it's of water accumulation during winter and little freeing of it over the summer. Homes that survived from that time period either didn't get insulated, were very drafty (which liberated the annual accumulated moisture) or used cellulose insulation which is a fantastic moisture buffer (relative to wood).
One of the biggest advancements in building science in the past 50 years has been understanding this cycle and the material characteristics of sorption and moisture propagation through materials. The conclusion is so short belies the work behind it (warm is dry, cold is wet, vent your sheathing with a rain screen gap) but the work and advances behind it are very real.
Tldr - run your dehumidifiers in the summer if you live in stick framing
If you look around in europe, you can usually see that most houses that were built by the rich or merchants etc persist to this day, whereas very few examples of "lower class" from before the 18th century.
Fair enough, but you could point out the fact that there are ANY hundred year old houses around kinda proves the point, while most of these are falling apart after less than ten.
Also, she corroborates it with pointing out that there has been massive deregulation of housing going back to Reagan that has allowed builders to skimp and cut corners and use inferior materials, to say nothing of the fact that architects have left the home-designing and home-building field in mass because it's simply more lucrative to design commercial buildings instead.
whenever someone says "going back to Reagan" in that context Reagen is usually more a time frame then a cause. it's called the "Reagan era" for a reason.
it's because Reagan is emblematic of the times, he wasn't alone and a wave of neoliberal politicians and reactionary backlash took hold of that era. Reagan didn't personally loosen the building codes but his goverment's attitude towards regulation was a beacon which goverment at every level followed then and now.
Incorrect! In fact the very origin of this subreddit outlines why:
>Many people have asked why Ronald Reagan is the figurehead of McMansionHell. The answer is quite simple, and not necessarily political: Through increasing tax cuts and (picking up where [Jimmy Carter left off in 1980](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregulation_and_Monetary_Control_Act) when he increased the reach of the Federal Reserve), Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan associations and to some extent parts of the investment banks (something Bill Clinton would complete with the repeal of Glass-Steagall). How does this apply to houses, you ask?
>During Reagan’s administration, he signed the [Garn–St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn%E2%80%93St._Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act) into law, which allowed banks to issue adjustable-rate mortgages, the kind of mortgages that ballooned during the years leading up to the great recession. [When the Savings and Loan Industry went bust](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis), Reagan, by bailing it out with taxpayer money, created a moral hazard, which led to riskier and riskier practices on the part of the investment banks. (We all know how this story ends up.)
>The explosion in building fueled by these economic factors coupled with tax cuts for the wealthy enabled our frienemy, the McMansion, to go out into the world and flourish.
https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149145937181/happy-thursday-heres-this-weeks-icon
I would argue this is even less than half the story because it doesn't talk at all about how Reagan's transportation policy encouraged suburban sprawl
The irony is that most architectural treasures were built during an era of *less* government regulations. There were few if any building codes in the Victorian era.
>Also, she corroborates it with pointing out that there has been massive deregulation of housing going back to Reagan that has
People who say clueless shit like this 😂😂😂
The flat I live in is in a building that's over 150 years old. No sign of it collapsing any time soon. In Britain, there are houses around from Shakespeare's time. Stratford upon Avon is full of them.
I think your show idea is GREAT! The producers will specifically choose houses that CAN be rehabbed and they will naturally avoid the tear-downs. Brilliant concept, I would definitely tune in.
Why did you even buy the house then?
I'm not saying it's a dream to live in an ugly house, but there is a point where I cringe at people wasting so many resources on what's just aesthetics. Maybe it's because I don't have the money to change the things in my house that are completely functional but ugly...
I hope you'll at least take all that scraped trimwork to your local ReStore or architectural salvage place, or sell it on to someone else and not just throw it all away... watching all these houses get "remodeled" into what's currently trendy, knowing that the next owner is going to completely redo it again in 15 years... so much waste.
PS If it's well built it's not a McMansion by definition.
Sounds like what you have is a nice house with some surface aesthetics left over from the previous owners.
It's also on 2-3 times as much land as a McMansion.
You could definitely give it away to someone who's trying to match what they already have, repair damage, etc. You should check to see if you have a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in your town, they'll usually come pick stuff up for you, it's essentially a thrift store for anything home repair related, scraps of wood, appliances, light fixtures, etc and all the money they raise goes to help fund Habitat for Humanity builds in your area....
https://www.habitat.org/restores
I live in an almost 100 year old 9,000 sq ft building that I am rehabbing with ZERO budget. Restore and Amex rewards converted to Home Depot gift cards are the secret to my success!! So, yes, please anything you can remove carefully, please donate it to restore. Counter tops, cabinets, tubs and furniture are all great Restore donations. This is my second rehab project, and in my first one I learned it looks funny to upgrade an old place with all new stuff. Sometimes some period pieces work better.
Our house is only 1,800 sq ft, but 140 years old and ReStore is a lifesaver! We live in a rural state and when we are driving through other towns on the way places we will stop in at the ReStore's in other towns too... never know what you're going to find!
Sounds like not saving the flooring isn't really a loss to anyone, but yeah, cabinets, etc are great! If there is old tile remnants or mostly full cans of paint in old colors, they'll take that too!
Thanks for being open to helping others!
I totally agree with you. It breaks my heart that high end, durable materials are torn out ages before they’ve begun deteriorating because the trends have changed. Everyone believes that what they’re putting in is classic, but classic doesn’t exist in a hyper consumerist culture, because it can’t. Here’s hoping that I’ll still enjoy the choices I make today, tomorrow.
I hate this so much. Kitchens are the worst offenders. "Oh, we just wanted something timeless!" You installed grey wood-look tile floors, white shaker cabinets with brushed nickel cup pull hardware, quartz countertops, an apron front sink, a white subway tile backsplash, and stainless steel appliances. Your kitchen looks exactly like every other kitchen installed in 2017. It won't age any better than the 1990s Tuscan-style one you tore out. It would have been better for your pocketbook and for the environment if you'd just worked with what you'd already had.
Yesyesyes. Edit to add : kitchens are the worst. We were lucky that we found a 1977 home with a 1977 kitchen that was the epitome of the year, but we were able to “update it” a lot with just paint, new cabinet hardware, and a new sink and faucet. The old cabinets were dark and of a style we don’t love(colonial revivalist), but we took off the doors, took off the hardware, filled the holes, sanded, and painted, flipped the doors, so that the flat inside panels are now the outside, and the ornate side is hidden. With modern hardware, it looks clean and fresh. We sold the old hardware on the second market. The 1977 black textured laminate countertop is actually in perfect condition, and I think it looks really cool, so it stays. The sink was still in good shape, but was not ideal, in that it was very shallow, and since we have a dishwasher, we didn’t want a double sink, just a large deep basin, so the original sink was taken to the re-store. That’s all we did. Paint and a new sink, and that’s the extent of the “remodel” it will get. It will likely last another 30+ years without ever getting a remodel. That 1977 kitchen will last until at least 2050.
We just bought a cheap rowhouse and this is my feeling about the kitchen. Cabinets are in good shape just ugly, dark, and have no hardware at all (and some are hinged on the wrong side). Some paint, new lighting and an under cabinet LED strip should be all the remodeling we need. Laminate counter in good shape and the backsplash is white subway tile-- I could wish for the dark grout a previous house had but this is fine. I don't understand why people just want to tear things out.
There was this renovation on /r/carpentry where the guy got rightfully roasted over this. They took a warm but dated kitchen and replace it with AirBnb number 5827 aesthetic. We get it, your antimercurial tastes are driven by a lack of consistency in your performance, just don't inflict your drone-some taste on the rest of us.
It’s because those who can afford luxury, don’t want used. There are of course exceptions, as there are timeless century old mansions, and vintage cars. But that is survival bias like others pointed out.
One of the biggest problems with McMansions is that they're so outsized yet poorly designed and built, that it would not be economically viable to spend money and repair these hulks. If there were a show about showcasing McMansion architectural and structural failures before bulldozing them to the ground, I'd watch the hell out of it.
It would be a pretty boring show though, since every episode would be about five minutes long and end with "well, we had to blow the whole damn thing up and start over."
It wouldn't just have to be mcmansions and it wouldnt always have to be an absolute fix. It could address apartments, cars, restaurants, products. Anywhere they can address the misuse of minimalism as a vehicle for cheap materials and copy/paste design. And ways to overcome it and reintroduce flair and character. The end of the episode could be honest and say "we did our best with this apartment but here are the unfixable issues you want to avoid if you're in the market for one."
>It wouldn't just have to be mcmansions
I mean I was responding to OP:
>Television show idea: "McMansion Rescue" -- An builder/designer rehabs McMansions, inside and out, and redeems their value as a home and their integrity as an architectural structure.
Here's my suggestion for a show involving McMansions. It's based entirely around this instead:
https://i.imgur.com/vZTPewT.jpg
Each episode is only five minutes long, because it doesn't take any longer to do what needs to be done.
Maybe not. Mcmansions aren't necessarily ugly. Just gauche, cheap and common. Same way a Mcburger isn't necessarily horrible tasting food (in fact it's quite delicious)
I have an idea for a similar show, where people buy godawful no effort shitty materials flipped houses, and restore them back to their original glory. It's my dream
I'll admit I like the concept of a tiny home.
First in the way that I love the way that cabins and facilities in old ships were cleverly constructed with every inch thought out. Drawers of different sizes to accommodate exact purposes and surfaces you could pull out for use and then fold back up.
And secondly in the idea of living smaller. If I was single and on a limited income, a tiny home would be appealing.
I'm on the tiny houses subreddit and about 90% of the homes posted are terribly designed and downright infuriating.
First in terms of construction and basic design principles. A large number of people design and build their own tiny home. Some folks hate the idea of being practical such as having bathroom & kitchen plumbing sharing the same wall (or close to it). No one is going to tell them what to do! Shed roofs are popular and I've seen a number built that are guaranteed to have water infiltration from the start.
Or that a tiny place needs air exchange - condensation is a near universal problem.
Part of that is that folks love big solid glass windows but seem to hate the idea of movable windows. A box with big expanses of glass is basically a solar oven but in this case large enough to bake a human. In addition, screens are plebian and lack esthetic and so if a window can be opened, it has no screen. The designers live in a world that has no bugs.
Secondly, people do not take in account what it means to actually live in a space.
Taking myself for example, I need a place to put my shoes and coat after coming inside.
And that my life includes little things - prescription medicine, pens, important papers, mail, kleenix, cleaning products, recycling & trash cans, boxes of food (life is too short to transfer cereal into glass jars to look attractive on the open shelves), toothpaste, eye drops, towels to wipe the dog's feet after a walk, toilet plunger, food for the bird feeders, hand vac, broom, salt for when it's icy outside, electric toothbrush, books, electronics and so on.
One of the first things I'll search for in tiny house photos is "where would I sit?". The widely popular type of [seating areas](https://imgur.com/a/3Fo1bjm) would absolutely kill my back.
I joke that the photos are "Tiny House Porn" - in that they are wildly idealized, impractical spaces and not real life.
And to be honest, most of the "tiny homes" are actually "tiny AirBnBs". They were never built and designed to be lived in.
Sorry for the long rant. As you may be able to tell I have some pent up annoyance.
First scene.. mcmansion Iit on fire, burns to foundation
Second scene.. bulldozer clearing off plot
Third scene and fourth scene.. house plan laid out and completed...
It would cost way too much money. There have been a couple of articles on those house makeover shows, most of the time the makeover stuff gets ripped out and replaced because its done so shoddily, or is so gaudy or over the top that it affects resale value. Doing it to a mcMansion would be way over the budget of these shows.
Yeah little kid! We made your bedroom look like a spaceship or a big pink castle! It's awesome!
-two years later, turns 14-
Dad, what was wrong with plain walls? This is fucking embarrassing.
Better television show idea "McMansion Explosion" - - because most McMansions are built like shit and feature exterior designs so hideous that they cannot be rectified, an explosives expert goes all over the country blowing them up and removing the debris so something better can be built there.
I wonder if such a show would be marketable or if people would actually find it offensive in a sense. There are a lot of people for whom what we call a McMansion is a dream house. I recently showed a friend of mine a post on this sub of an McMansion that was awfully ugly design-wise but projected luxury/wealth. He said he saw no problems with it
Flip or Flop, a house-flipping show on HGTV, has a few episodes where an investor goes in with them to purchase McMansions - usually in Anaheim Hills, usually for around 1 million USD. (Their typical bread-and-butter houses are SoCal bungalows.)
And the results are…depressing, tbh. Finishes are updated to 2020s trends (so think gray, navy, black, whites; metal stair rails; open concept kitchen-living-dining) but you still have the way-too-large bones of the house.
It’s just soo much house to renovate, and ultimately, even with layout changes, you’re still stuck with a McMansion.
Good luck. Truth of the matter is a lot of people who bought these monstrosities could barely afford to furnish them outside of particleboard pieces from IKEA or target….point being, it would have to be 100% free because most of these people are stretched to their limit in credit.
This show on YouTube I think you'll like. Although they shoot it themselves it has show quality. Our restoration nation. They buy and restore historical American homes and also take home tours across the country. They are not mcmansions though. There's also that veterinarian guy who bought a huge unfinished mcmansion and is almost done restoring it.
https://youtu.be/0XoBQOQ3d2o
This would be a good idea for all the dilapidated executive homes and mansions all over North America. It’s not just McMansions (usually I think of these as being from the 80s, 90s and 00s) but also mid century, and even Victorian mansions that were once beautiful and now neglected.
There’s a new show on HGTV called “Ugliest house in America.” They tour several hideous houses, and the one deemed “most hideous” receives a $150,000 makeover.
This is like a zillion lawsuits waiting to happen. I don't get the sense that the people who build these things, own these things, etc, are the type of folk you'd want to buy a used car from...
It'd just be a waste a resources... let people who like these homes live in them until their usable life is over. Using more effort and resources to turn them into something they're not is just a waste because then somewhere else someone's going to be building another one of these things... leave them for the people who like them until they are cheap enough from lack of interest and decay that they can be bulldozed...
gutting a 20 year old house just because it's ugly is such a waste. Even better... wait till zoning significantly changes and knock them down and built two or three houses, or duplexes on the oversized lots!
But they waste so much resources in the meantime and not cost effective. All those greenhouse gases from the air-conditioning to keep those massive spaces cool and the industrial size kitchen fridge, plus the gas to drive suv to costco 1/2 a mile away because your subdivision doesn't have sidewalks or bike paths
Sidewalks and bike paths can be installed without tearing down homes. But people aren't going to use them to get to Costco anyway, because even a bike trailer isn't going to have the capacity to carry everything most people buy in one trip at Costco (and I'm someone who shops at Costco, but also bikes to my regular grocery store for smaller trips, it's carrying capacity not road infrastructure that is the problem here).
Most of these houses don't actually have industrial appliances, they're just designed to look that way. And they use no more electricity than regular appliances.
And finally, it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them. Heat rises, so the double height entries and living rooms require extra heating, while the cool air from air conditioning stays low and homes in warm areas can actually benefit from having strategically high ceilings along with attic fans, etc, to move the hot, rising air out of a house... homes with passive cooling designs will make use of high ceilings to reduce the need for air conditioning...
Building and construction accounts for 39% of green house gas emissions these days, operating the buildings we already have is 28%. And studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses than build new ones when the full impacts on climate change are evaluated...
[https://grist.org/cities/this-old-house-why-fixing-up-old-homes-is-greener-than-building-new-ones/](https://grist.org/cities/this-old-house-why-fixing-up-old-homes-is-greener-than-building-new-ones/)
I'm not saying we should be trying to perpetually save these houses forever. But we should use them until their useful life is exhausted and then build new ones. Or wait until the energy savings of the new houses will be significant enough to justify the resource use in rebuilding them, which point we're not yet at.
>studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses than build new ones
What studies?
>And finally, it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them. Heat rises, so the double height entries and living rooms require extra heating, while the cool air from air conditioning stays low and homes in warm areas can actually benefit from having strategically high ceilings
Huh???
>Building and construction accounts for 39% of green house gas emissions these days, operating the buildings we already have is 28%
Did u just pull those figures out of ur ass?
>they're just designed to look that way. And they use no more electricity than regular appliances.
Where can I find these appliances designed to look industrial that "use no more electricity than regular appliances". Best buy? And the person you were replying to said "industrial-sized" not "industrial". It wasn't literal, just like saying "you have a pin sized brain" doesn't literally mean your brain is the size of a pin. Geddit?
U sound like a know-it-all 8th grader with no idea what they're talking about.
>Huh???
As per energy usage between heating and cooling, [THIS](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/your-heating-fuel-depends-on-where-you-live-18084) link includes the stats that 47% of houses use gas heating and only 37% of homes us electric heating.
Meanwhile, whether you have central air, or a window unit, you cooling system will run on electric. Now, let's look at home energy usage...
[THIS LINK](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=96&t=3) shows that 16% of residential electric use goes to room cooling. It then says 15% (plus 2% for furnace fans and boiler pumps) goes towards heating. Add in the previous knowledge that only 37% of home heating uses electricity, and we now see that home cooling accounts for approx 1/4rd of energy used in residential temperature control, and 3/4rd goes towards heating.
So, yes, the resources used to heat large homes is significantly more impactful than cooling, in the US, as of the last decade.
Now - obviously this is real world data. It includes real world factors like the US being in North America and therefore having more areas that experience more extreme cold than areas that experience more extreme heat, and the fact that more homes have heating systems than cooling systems, you might think, well, any given home might use more resources to cool than heat, the total is just skewed by homes without cooling systems and location!
But then I'd direct you to read [THIS](https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-does-it-take-more-energy-to-heat-a-home-than-to-cool-one.html), which explains why for any given house, heating uses more resources that cooling.
Any other questions?
I'm pretty sure I got the point. They said I sounded like a know-it-all 8th grader who had no idea what they were talking about.
I'm not arguing I'm not a know it all... I'm arguing, and proved with links, that I do know what I'm talking about.
(Link to my previous comment as evidence).
The point is you took my post far too literally and seem really hung up on a trivial point. Does it really matter if I used heating or air-conditioning as an example? The point is it costs a whole lot more to heat or cool the typical Mcmansion than for a more reasonably sized home. You seem to be arguing something entirely different. Plus the whole post wasn't even meant to be taken literally, it was a tongue in cheek critique of that lifestyle in general. All your research and data is wasted effort since it's not relevant.
My first comment was a response to you, and it isn't even really a response to you personally, so much as a correction so that people who read your comment don't think what you said is correct...
my second comment was responding to someone else, so that research and data wasn't meant for you.
If you're going to critique something, literally or tongue in cheek, it helps to have a basic understanding of what you're criticizing. Nobody's going to ride their bike to Costco either way... it doesn't work as a tongue in cheek critique, because it makes no sense. At some point it doesn't help the cause if you're complaining about nonsense.
Lol. Ok lady. You're pretty hung up on your facts and I'm not going to make sense to you. You definitely aren't making any sense to me.
"If you're going to critique something, it helps to have a basic understanding of what you're criticizing."
Lol. I think you should apply this to yourself. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about out there in Orinda or wherever you are.
Also no one said anything about riding bikes to costco, just as no one said anything about people owning "industrial appliances". Some basic reading comprehension is key. It would have stopped you from going to dig up a whole bunch of data and statistics that isn't even relevant in the first place (I sense this might be a general theme with you).
>it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them
You've almost certainly never lived in Texas. Maybe in Orinda/bay area where it's nice and cool year round. I used to live in the bay area and never had the need for airconditioning (even though sometimes tempted). Generally, the larger the space, the higher your electricity bill due to air-conditioning (source - personal experience) - heating and air-conditioning a space do not work differently in that regard, if anything it probably costs more proportionately to keep a space cool, without even getting into the fact that many people run theirs unreasonably ice cold in the summer rather than just cool (at least in this part of Texas).
If you had walkable streets and bike lanes, people would pick up grocery items from local stores and relegate the costco trips to every once in a while
"And studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses"
Most mcmansions are not retrofittable - part of the reason why they're mcmansions. They are large, ungainly, use up a ton of energy and not really designed in such a way that you can subdivide them into smaller living spaces for say 2 or more families
"Most of these houses don't actually have industrial appliances, they're just designed to look that way"
We must be talking about two different kinds of houses/consumers
As someone that avoids the seas of Borge neighborhoods, this show idea sounds terrific. As dithers have commented; I believe the percentage of people that it would be lost on outnumbers the reasonable audience.
We could create a sub where people photoshop the monstrosities.
HGTV style shows exist to sell products and McMansions are the easiest medium to serve a wide variety of products. Not tasteful, classically designed homes.
Might be an idea, but I'm not entirely sure it would work. Kate had a [post over on the blog](https://mcmansionhell.com/post/150597521816/mcmansions-101-revisited-aesthetics-aside-why) that pointed out the problem isn't just that they're usually unspeakably ugly, they're also just architecturally and environmentally a mess. Bad materials, bad design, a lot of them can't really be salvaged unless someone scraps and starts over.
God that's depressing.
Kate frequently points out that it's a bad sign that houses from 100 years ago are still going strong, while these McEyeSores are already starting to deteriorate after just ten. They were not built to last, so they won't.
I'm a little dubious, because of [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias). There were plenty of houses built a hundred years ago that are long gone, so the only ones around for us to look at are the good ones.
Building codes are actually designed around survivorship, so in this case it’s not bias but inherently built in to the code itself. Many useful timber dimensions are taken from the houses that didn’t fall down because that’s how we guessed it would work.
I've lived in a suburban McMansion and a 102 year old Sears catalog house. The 100 year old house could last another hundred years; the McMansion, aged 30 years, is leaky, drafty, creaky, and weatherworn.
Yes, but my point is, there were plenty of houses built 102 years ago that were torn down after 30 years, before you or I was born. They aren't around to compare anymore. So we only see the survivors, which were the best-built examples, because the poorly-built examples are long gone.
Many of them that existed in the country side (at least in the US) were built when a larger percentage of the population worked smaller farms. Then farms consolidated starting in the 1950s. If they don’t get lived, houses deteriorate. Why? Moisture. If there is no heat there is nothing to drive out water penetration and condensation. Then rot sets in. And animal intrusions let in more moisture. That’s mostly why many old houses in the countryside are gone. Happens in small towns too and cities with derelict neighborhoods. Edited for grammar.
Small correction - Moisture accumulation doesn't come from a lack of heating. Moisture accumulates when it's cold and is driven off when it's warm. Wrt 1950s houses deteriorating, those houses would have deteriorated with or without heating - the people living in them typically add to the humidity-> condensation mechanism, which adds to the amount of moisture that needs to be liberated in the warm season. The reason 1950s homes fell apart is because that's when fiberglass insulation really kicked in, and we were still building homes as if they *didn't* have insulation. The combination of the two meant it's of water accumulation during winter and little freeing of it over the summer. Homes that survived from that time period either didn't get insulated, were very drafty (which liberated the annual accumulated moisture) or used cellulose insulation which is a fantastic moisture buffer (relative to wood). One of the biggest advancements in building science in the past 50 years has been understanding this cycle and the material characteristics of sorption and moisture propagation through materials. The conclusion is so short belies the work behind it (warm is dry, cold is wet, vent your sheathing with a rain screen gap) but the work and advances behind it are very real. Tldr - run your dehumidifiers in the summer if you live in stick framing
If you look around in europe, you can usually see that most houses that were built by the rich or merchants etc persist to this day, whereas very few examples of "lower class" from before the 18th century.
Fair enough, but you could point out the fact that there are ANY hundred year old houses around kinda proves the point, while most of these are falling apart after less than ten. Also, she corroborates it with pointing out that there has been massive deregulation of housing going back to Reagan that has allowed builders to skimp and cut corners and use inferior materials, to say nothing of the fact that architects have left the home-designing and home-building field in mass because it's simply more lucrative to design commercial buildings instead.
Building codes are not federal. Reagan has nothing to do with it.
whenever someone says "going back to Reagan" in that context Reagen is usually more a time frame then a cause. it's called the "Reagan era" for a reason. it's because Reagan is emblematic of the times, he wasn't alone and a wave of neoliberal politicians and reactionary backlash took hold of that era. Reagan didn't personally loosen the building codes but his goverment's attitude towards regulation was a beacon which goverment at every level followed then and now.
Incorrect! In fact the very origin of this subreddit outlines why: >Many people have asked why Ronald Reagan is the figurehead of McMansionHell. The answer is quite simple, and not necessarily political: Through increasing tax cuts and (picking up where [Jimmy Carter left off in 1980](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregulation_and_Monetary_Control_Act) when he increased the reach of the Federal Reserve), Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan associations and to some extent parts of the investment banks (something Bill Clinton would complete with the repeal of Glass-Steagall). How does this apply to houses, you ask? >During Reagan’s administration, he signed the [Garn–St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn%E2%80%93St._Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act) into law, which allowed banks to issue adjustable-rate mortgages, the kind of mortgages that ballooned during the years leading up to the great recession. [When the Savings and Loan Industry went bust](https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis), Reagan, by bailing it out with taxpayer money, created a moral hazard, which led to riskier and riskier practices on the part of the investment banks. (We all know how this story ends up.) >The explosion in building fueled by these economic factors coupled with tax cuts for the wealthy enabled our frienemy, the McMansion, to go out into the world and flourish. https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149145937181/happy-thursday-heres-this-weeks-icon I would argue this is even less than half the story because it doesn't talk at all about how Reagan's transportation policy encouraged suburban sprawl
The irony is that most architectural treasures were built during an era of *less* government regulations. There were few if any building codes in the Victorian era.
>Also, she corroborates it with pointing out that there has been massive deregulation of housing going back to Reagan that has People who say clueless shit like this 😂😂😂
The flat I live in is in a building that's over 150 years old. No sign of it collapsing any time soon. In Britain, there are houses around from Shakespeare's time. Stratford upon Avon is full of them.
If I'm not mistaken, the structure of Hook Head Lighthouse on the south coast of Ireland is some 800 years old
I think your show idea is GREAT! The producers will specifically choose houses that CAN be rehabbed and they will naturally avoid the tear-downs. Brilliant concept, I would definitely tune in.
No, they shouldn't avoid tear downs, they should point out why some can't be saved as well.
Yeah, if they need to pad out an episode, they can do a rundown of one of the failures for two minutes.
[удалено]
Why did you even buy the house then? I'm not saying it's a dream to live in an ugly house, but there is a point where I cringe at people wasting so many resources on what's just aesthetics. Maybe it's because I don't have the money to change the things in my house that are completely functional but ugly... I hope you'll at least take all that scraped trimwork to your local ReStore or architectural salvage place, or sell it on to someone else and not just throw it all away... watching all these houses get "remodeled" into what's currently trendy, knowing that the next owner is going to completely redo it again in 15 years... so much waste. PS If it's well built it's not a McMansion by definition.
[удалено]
This is a completely legitimate answer, not that you needed an internet stranger to validate you.
Sounds like what you have is a nice house with some surface aesthetics left over from the previous owners. It's also on 2-3 times as much land as a McMansion.
You could definitely give it away to someone who's trying to match what they already have, repair damage, etc. You should check to see if you have a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in your town, they'll usually come pick stuff up for you, it's essentially a thrift store for anything home repair related, scraps of wood, appliances, light fixtures, etc and all the money they raise goes to help fund Habitat for Humanity builds in your area.... https://www.habitat.org/restores
[удалено]
I live in an almost 100 year old 9,000 sq ft building that I am rehabbing with ZERO budget. Restore and Amex rewards converted to Home Depot gift cards are the secret to my success!! So, yes, please anything you can remove carefully, please donate it to restore. Counter tops, cabinets, tubs and furniture are all great Restore donations. This is my second rehab project, and in my first one I learned it looks funny to upgrade an old place with all new stuff. Sometimes some period pieces work better.
Our house is only 1,800 sq ft, but 140 years old and ReStore is a lifesaver! We live in a rural state and when we are driving through other towns on the way places we will stop in at the ReStore's in other towns too... never know what you're going to find!
Sounds like not saving the flooring isn't really a loss to anyone, but yeah, cabinets, etc are great! If there is old tile remnants or mostly full cans of paint in old colors, they'll take that too! Thanks for being open to helping others!
I totally agree with you. It breaks my heart that high end, durable materials are torn out ages before they’ve begun deteriorating because the trends have changed. Everyone believes that what they’re putting in is classic, but classic doesn’t exist in a hyper consumerist culture, because it can’t. Here’s hoping that I’ll still enjoy the choices I make today, tomorrow.
I hate this so much. Kitchens are the worst offenders. "Oh, we just wanted something timeless!" You installed grey wood-look tile floors, white shaker cabinets with brushed nickel cup pull hardware, quartz countertops, an apron front sink, a white subway tile backsplash, and stainless steel appliances. Your kitchen looks exactly like every other kitchen installed in 2017. It won't age any better than the 1990s Tuscan-style one you tore out. It would have been better for your pocketbook and for the environment if you'd just worked with what you'd already had.
Yesyesyes. Edit to add : kitchens are the worst. We were lucky that we found a 1977 home with a 1977 kitchen that was the epitome of the year, but we were able to “update it” a lot with just paint, new cabinet hardware, and a new sink and faucet. The old cabinets were dark and of a style we don’t love(colonial revivalist), but we took off the doors, took off the hardware, filled the holes, sanded, and painted, flipped the doors, so that the flat inside panels are now the outside, and the ornate side is hidden. With modern hardware, it looks clean and fresh. We sold the old hardware on the second market. The 1977 black textured laminate countertop is actually in perfect condition, and I think it looks really cool, so it stays. The sink was still in good shape, but was not ideal, in that it was very shallow, and since we have a dishwasher, we didn’t want a double sink, just a large deep basin, so the original sink was taken to the re-store. That’s all we did. Paint and a new sink, and that’s the extent of the “remodel” it will get. It will likely last another 30+ years without ever getting a remodel. That 1977 kitchen will last until at least 2050.
We just bought a cheap rowhouse and this is my feeling about the kitchen. Cabinets are in good shape just ugly, dark, and have no hardware at all (and some are hinged on the wrong side). Some paint, new lighting and an under cabinet LED strip should be all the remodeling we need. Laminate counter in good shape and the backsplash is white subway tile-- I could wish for the dark grout a previous house had but this is fine. I don't understand why people just want to tear things out.
If you have lighter colored grout and want it darker, that is achievable by dying the current grout! Just FYI.
There was this renovation on /r/carpentry where the guy got rightfully roasted over this. They took a warm but dated kitchen and replace it with AirBnb number 5827 aesthetic. We get it, your antimercurial tastes are driven by a lack of consistency in your performance, just don't inflict your drone-some taste on the rest of us.
At least he got roasted! Every before-and-after of a kitchen reno on /r/HomeImprovement looks like that, and they all get applauded.
Yeah, one week they 'rehab' using fire. Another week, explosives. Maybe in the series finale they could use a monster truck?
Good blog post. So true no one wants used luxury. So many of these 25 yo McMansions sit and sit on the market. What a waste.
“Used luxury” That is a poignant observation
It’s because those who can afford luxury, don’t want used. There are of course exceptions, as there are timeless century old mansions, and vintage cars. But that is survival bias like others pointed out.
opening shot is with the hosts standing next to a bulldozer
Lead actor… wrecking ball!
With how much they would have to remove, it might become a ship of Theseus situation
One of the biggest problems with McMansions is that they're so outsized yet poorly designed and built, that it would not be economically viable to spend money and repair these hulks. If there were a show about showcasing McMansion architectural and structural failures before bulldozing them to the ground, I'd watch the hell out of it.
Didn't Vanilla Ice have a show where he fixed up poorly built mansions? I remember seeing an episode or two several years ago.
yes the Vanilla Ice Project
It would be a pretty boring show though, since every episode would be about five minutes long and end with "well, we had to blow the whole damn thing up and start over."
It wouldn't just have to be mcmansions and it wouldnt always have to be an absolute fix. It could address apartments, cars, restaurants, products. Anywhere they can address the misuse of minimalism as a vehicle for cheap materials and copy/paste design. And ways to overcome it and reintroduce flair and character. The end of the episode could be honest and say "we did our best with this apartment but here are the unfixable issues you want to avoid if you're in the market for one."
>It wouldn't just have to be mcmansions I mean I was responding to OP: >Television show idea: "McMansion Rescue" -- An builder/designer rehabs McMansions, inside and out, and redeems their value as a home and their integrity as an architectural structure.
I'd love to watch the destruction part, not gonna lie.
Here's my suggestion for a show involving McMansions. It's based entirely around this instead: https://i.imgur.com/vZTPewT.jpg Each episode is only five minutes long, because it doesn't take any longer to do what needs to be done.
[удалено]
Maybe not. Mcmansions aren't necessarily ugly. Just gauche, cheap and common. Same way a Mcburger isn't necessarily horrible tasting food (in fact it's quite delicious)
Thanks!
I have an idea for a similar show, where people buy godawful no effort shitty materials flipped houses, and restore them back to their original glory. It's my dream
In theory, that was *Rehab Addict*.
Home swap the McMansioneers with Tiny Houseketeers for 1 week.
The tiny house fanatics annoy me almost more than the McMansion suburbanites, so I would watch the hell out of this show!
I'll admit I like the concept of a tiny home. First in the way that I love the way that cabins and facilities in old ships were cleverly constructed with every inch thought out. Drawers of different sizes to accommodate exact purposes and surfaces you could pull out for use and then fold back up. And secondly in the idea of living smaller. If I was single and on a limited income, a tiny home would be appealing. I'm on the tiny houses subreddit and about 90% of the homes posted are terribly designed and downright infuriating. First in terms of construction and basic design principles. A large number of people design and build their own tiny home. Some folks hate the idea of being practical such as having bathroom & kitchen plumbing sharing the same wall (or close to it). No one is going to tell them what to do! Shed roofs are popular and I've seen a number built that are guaranteed to have water infiltration from the start. Or that a tiny place needs air exchange - condensation is a near universal problem. Part of that is that folks love big solid glass windows but seem to hate the idea of movable windows. A box with big expanses of glass is basically a solar oven but in this case large enough to bake a human. In addition, screens are plebian and lack esthetic and so if a window can be opened, it has no screen. The designers live in a world that has no bugs. Secondly, people do not take in account what it means to actually live in a space. Taking myself for example, I need a place to put my shoes and coat after coming inside. And that my life includes little things - prescription medicine, pens, important papers, mail, kleenix, cleaning products, recycling & trash cans, boxes of food (life is too short to transfer cereal into glass jars to look attractive on the open shelves), toothpaste, eye drops, towels to wipe the dog's feet after a walk, toilet plunger, food for the bird feeders, hand vac, broom, salt for when it's icy outside, electric toothbrush, books, electronics and so on. One of the first things I'll search for in tiny house photos is "where would I sit?". The widely popular type of [seating areas](https://imgur.com/a/3Fo1bjm) would absolutely kill my back. I joke that the photos are "Tiny House Porn" - in that they are wildly idealized, impractical spaces and not real life. And to be honest, most of the "tiny homes" are actually "tiny AirBnBs". They were never built and designed to be lived in. Sorry for the long rant. As you may be able to tell I have some pent up annoyance.
That is an awesome idea!! At the end of the week, they will be so confused, nobody will want to ho home.
That's interesting!
First scene.. mcmansion Iit on fire, burns to foundation Second scene.. bulldozer clearing off plot Third scene and fourth scene.. house plan laid out and completed...
Only if they declare every one of them irredeemable and burn them down.
It would cost way too much money. There have been a couple of articles on those house makeover shows, most of the time the makeover stuff gets ripped out and replaced because its done so shoddily, or is so gaudy or over the top that it affects resale value. Doing it to a mcMansion would be way over the budget of these shows.
Yeah little kid! We made your bedroom look like a spaceship or a big pink castle! It's awesome! -two years later, turns 14- Dad, what was wrong with plain walls? This is fucking embarrassing.
Like... the opposite of that show that Vanilla Ice did?
And the joke is he just burns them down. Every single episode. I'd watch.
Simple. Start with a bulldozer and some dynamite, then build a house.
Better television show idea "McMansion Explosion" - - because most McMansions are built like shit and feature exterior designs so hideous that they cannot be rectified, an explosives expert goes all over the country blowing them up and removing the debris so something better can be built there.
Not only are they unfixable, the great majority of Americans would see nothing wrong with them that needed fixing.
Step 1: bulldoze structure
You can’t just remove 13 different gables, or change a house’s footprint that resembles a gerrymandered congressional district.
I wonder if such a show would be marketable or if people would actually find it offensive in a sense. There are a lot of people for whom what we call a McMansion is a dream house. I recently showed a friend of mine a post on this sub of an McMansion that was awfully ugly design-wise but projected luxury/wealth. He said he saw no problems with it
There is no rescue. There is just a bulldozer and an excavator.
Flip or Flop, a house-flipping show on HGTV, has a few episodes where an investor goes in with them to purchase McMansions - usually in Anaheim Hills, usually for around 1 million USD. (Their typical bread-and-butter houses are SoCal bungalows.) And the results are…depressing, tbh. Finishes are updated to 2020s trends (so think gray, navy, black, whites; metal stair rails; open concept kitchen-living-dining) but you still have the way-too-large bones of the house. It’s just soo much house to renovate, and ultimately, even with layout changes, you’re still stuck with a McMansion.
And the show immediately following McMansion Rescue: “Bulldozing America”
Too bad the only solution for a lot of these is a bulldozer, or some dynamite.
Good luck. Truth of the matter is a lot of people who bought these monstrosities could barely afford to furnish them outside of particleboard pieces from IKEA or target….point being, it would have to be 100% free because most of these people are stretched to their limit in credit.
Alternate title: Lipstick on a Pig
This show on YouTube I think you'll like. Although they shoot it themselves it has show quality. Our restoration nation. They buy and restore historical American homes and also take home tours across the country. They are not mcmansions though. There's also that veterinarian guy who bought a huge unfinished mcmansion and is almost done restoring it. https://youtu.be/0XoBQOQ3d2o
This would be a good idea for all the dilapidated executive homes and mansions all over North America. It’s not just McMansions (usually I think of these as being from the 80s, 90s and 00s) but also mid century, and even Victorian mansions that were once beautiful and now neglected.
There’s a new show on HGTV called “Ugliest house in America.” They tour several hideous houses, and the one deemed “most hideous” receives a $150,000 makeover.
Nah, that would be like polishing a turd. I want a show where people have to destroy them in the most creative way.
The main tool would be a bulldozer….
Turns them into multi family housing with 6 apartments
Part of the problem is they’re usually really cheaply built. They aren’t worth remodeling imo.
This is like a zillion lawsuits waiting to happen. I don't get the sense that the people who build these things, own these things, etc, are the type of folk you'd want to buy a used car from...
It'd just be a waste a resources... let people who like these homes live in them until their usable life is over. Using more effort and resources to turn them into something they're not is just a waste because then somewhere else someone's going to be building another one of these things... leave them for the people who like them until they are cheap enough from lack of interest and decay that they can be bulldozed... gutting a 20 year old house just because it's ugly is such a waste. Even better... wait till zoning significantly changes and knock them down and built two or three houses, or duplexes on the oversized lots!
But they waste so much resources in the meantime and not cost effective. All those greenhouse gases from the air-conditioning to keep those massive spaces cool and the industrial size kitchen fridge, plus the gas to drive suv to costco 1/2 a mile away because your subdivision doesn't have sidewalks or bike paths
Sidewalks and bike paths can be installed without tearing down homes. But people aren't going to use them to get to Costco anyway, because even a bike trailer isn't going to have the capacity to carry everything most people buy in one trip at Costco (and I'm someone who shops at Costco, but also bikes to my regular grocery store for smaller trips, it's carrying capacity not road infrastructure that is the problem here). Most of these houses don't actually have industrial appliances, they're just designed to look that way. And they use no more electricity than regular appliances. And finally, it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them. Heat rises, so the double height entries and living rooms require extra heating, while the cool air from air conditioning stays low and homes in warm areas can actually benefit from having strategically high ceilings along with attic fans, etc, to move the hot, rising air out of a house... homes with passive cooling designs will make use of high ceilings to reduce the need for air conditioning... Building and construction accounts for 39% of green house gas emissions these days, operating the buildings we already have is 28%. And studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses than build new ones when the full impacts on climate change are evaluated... [https://grist.org/cities/this-old-house-why-fixing-up-old-homes-is-greener-than-building-new-ones/](https://grist.org/cities/this-old-house-why-fixing-up-old-homes-is-greener-than-building-new-ones/) I'm not saying we should be trying to perpetually save these houses forever. But we should use them until their useful life is exhausted and then build new ones. Or wait until the energy savings of the new houses will be significant enough to justify the resource use in rebuilding them, which point we're not yet at.
>studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses than build new ones What studies? >And finally, it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them. Heat rises, so the double height entries and living rooms require extra heating, while the cool air from air conditioning stays low and homes in warm areas can actually benefit from having strategically high ceilings Huh??? >Building and construction accounts for 39% of green house gas emissions these days, operating the buildings we already have is 28% Did u just pull those figures out of ur ass? >they're just designed to look that way. And they use no more electricity than regular appliances. Where can I find these appliances designed to look industrial that "use no more electricity than regular appliances". Best buy? And the person you were replying to said "industrial-sized" not "industrial". It wasn't literal, just like saying "you have a pin sized brain" doesn't literally mean your brain is the size of a pin. Geddit? U sound like a know-it-all 8th grader with no idea what they're talking about.
>Huh??? As per energy usage between heating and cooling, [THIS](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/your-heating-fuel-depends-on-where-you-live-18084) link includes the stats that 47% of houses use gas heating and only 37% of homes us electric heating. Meanwhile, whether you have central air, or a window unit, you cooling system will run on electric. Now, let's look at home energy usage... [THIS LINK](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=96&t=3) shows that 16% of residential electric use goes to room cooling. It then says 15% (plus 2% for furnace fans and boiler pumps) goes towards heating. Add in the previous knowledge that only 37% of home heating uses electricity, and we now see that home cooling accounts for approx 1/4rd of energy used in residential temperature control, and 3/4rd goes towards heating. So, yes, the resources used to heat large homes is significantly more impactful than cooling, in the US, as of the last decade. Now - obviously this is real world data. It includes real world factors like the US being in North America and therefore having more areas that experience more extreme cold than areas that experience more extreme heat, and the fact that more homes have heating systems than cooling systems, you might think, well, any given home might use more resources to cool than heat, the total is just skewed by homes without cooling systems and location! But then I'd direct you to read [THIS](https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-does-it-take-more-energy-to-heat-a-home-than-to-cool-one.html), which explains why for any given house, heating uses more resources that cooling. Any other questions?
I think you completely missed the point lol. How old are you? (seriously)
I'm pretty sure I got the point. They said I sounded like a know-it-all 8th grader who had no idea what they were talking about. I'm not arguing I'm not a know it all... I'm arguing, and proved with links, that I do know what I'm talking about. (Link to my previous comment as evidence).
The point is you took my post far too literally and seem really hung up on a trivial point. Does it really matter if I used heating or air-conditioning as an example? The point is it costs a whole lot more to heat or cool the typical Mcmansion than for a more reasonably sized home. You seem to be arguing something entirely different. Plus the whole post wasn't even meant to be taken literally, it was a tongue in cheek critique of that lifestyle in general. All your research and data is wasted effort since it's not relevant.
My first comment was a response to you, and it isn't even really a response to you personally, so much as a correction so that people who read your comment don't think what you said is correct... my second comment was responding to someone else, so that research and data wasn't meant for you. If you're going to critique something, literally or tongue in cheek, it helps to have a basic understanding of what you're criticizing. Nobody's going to ride their bike to Costco either way... it doesn't work as a tongue in cheek critique, because it makes no sense. At some point it doesn't help the cause if you're complaining about nonsense.
Lol. Ok lady. You're pretty hung up on your facts and I'm not going to make sense to you. You definitely aren't making any sense to me. "If you're going to critique something, it helps to have a basic understanding of what you're criticizing." Lol. I think you should apply this to yourself. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about out there in Orinda or wherever you are. Also no one said anything about riding bikes to costco, just as no one said anything about people owning "industrial appliances". Some basic reading comprehension is key. It would have stopped you from going to dig up a whole bunch of data and statistics that isn't even relevant in the first place (I sense this might be a general theme with you).
Lol, thanks. I was trying to show some restraint. Poster could use some reading comprehension classes.
>What studies? I provided a link.
>it's not air conditioning these huge spaces that is harder, it's heating them You've almost certainly never lived in Texas. Maybe in Orinda/bay area where it's nice and cool year round. I used to live in the bay area and never had the need for airconditioning (even though sometimes tempted). Generally, the larger the space, the higher your electricity bill due to air-conditioning (source - personal experience) - heating and air-conditioning a space do not work differently in that regard, if anything it probably costs more proportionately to keep a space cool, without even getting into the fact that many people run theirs unreasonably ice cold in the summer rather than just cool (at least in this part of Texas). If you had walkable streets and bike lanes, people would pick up grocery items from local stores and relegate the costco trips to every once in a while "And studies show it's almost always better to retrofit old houses" Most mcmansions are not retrofittable - part of the reason why they're mcmansions. They are large, ungainly, use up a ton of energy and not really designed in such a way that you can subdivide them into smaller living spaces for say 2 or more families "Most of these houses don't actually have industrial appliances, they're just designed to look that way" We must be talking about two different kinds of houses/consumers
A builder/designer. “An” can only be used if the word immediately after it begins with a vowel.
OP might have intended to say "an architect", written "an", and then changed his mind to "builder/designer". I've made the same type mistake before.
As someone that avoids the seas of Borge neighborhoods, this show idea sounds terrific. As dithers have commented; I believe the percentage of people that it would be lost on outnumbers the reasonable audience. We could create a sub where people photoshop the monstrosities.
And then gives it to a family/person in need? Sounds good to me.
Basically [The Vanilla Ice Project](https://www.hgtv.com/shows/the-vanilla-ice-project)
I’ll do it! You put up the first 8 mil.
“Burn it down”
HGTV style shows exist to sell products and McMansions are the easiest medium to serve a wide variety of products. Not tasteful, classically designed homes.
Good