Let's be a Victorian mansion over-restored by a pair of caftan-wearing queens!

I'm sham ormolu. Whatever the fuck that is.

I am a large weathervane originally intended for a barn or stables showing a running horse. I am now installed atop the highest of the three towers this thing has.

Every day I pray for a lightning strike.

I am a stained glass window attributed, incorrectly, to Louis Comfort Tiffany.

I’m the fact the building is grotesque and should’ve been torn down a century ago.

Everyone will know this but none dare speak it.

I'm the ghost. Boo.

I’m the tension between the two one who favors comfort and the one who favors historical accuracy.

I am the stern, wooden mid-19th century portraits collected at barn sales of grim patriarchs and joyless wives, none of whom would have consented to any of this fuckery while living.

I’m the period furniture and Bob Mackie couture window treatment.

I am antimacassars. I am draped over every chair like the world's ugliest spiderwebs. Conveniently, most of the chairs have so many legs they resemble the world's ugliest spiders, so score one for consistency.

I am the rainbow flag. I am superfluous in announcing the sexuality of the owners.

I am an enormous malevolent-seeming grandfather clock. When midnight rolls around, I sound like someone threw a hundred Chinese copper frying pans off a cliff.

I’m the window treatment in R8. I’m what happens when you buy me used at an estate sale and I’m just the tiniest too narrow, but no one will notice, right?

I'm the historically accurate single bathroom in a six bedroom home to qualify for the tax credit.

I'm the wallpaper that gives Charlotte Gilman Perkins nightmares. I resemble a Pre-Raphaelite absinthe up-chuck.

I am the overwhelming ugliness of Lily Bart's room at her Aunt Julia Peniston's.

I am the inspiration for 99% of the schlock you are looking at.

I’m tassels.

I'm the buyer, and I'm fucking rapt to have discovered this place in a sea of dreary mid century modern and hideous minimalist boxes, but I'm trying to conceal my love of the place so I can negotiate a good price

I'm the owners exquisite collection of girandoles

adorning every surface in every room

You may look but if you move too close - one or both owners will SHRIEK!

I wanted to be tassels!

[quote]I wanted to be tassels!

STFU!

You can be ormolu.

I’m the blackamoor.

[quote]I’m the blackamoor.

Surely you mean "blackamoors".

I'm the drug dealer two doors down.

You don't find lovely Victorian fix-er uppers like this one in good neighborhoods!

I'm the vile robber baron whose general foulness dredged up the cash to pay for this ornate palace in the first place.

Try not to think about how I exploited my workers, abused my wife and children and was overall a hideous human being.

I dare you.

I'm the snake plant and the fug pug in the pocket-doored parlor.

I'm the small shitty post-industrial city where this place is located. I was a center for coal or hat-blocking or horseshoes or some other ugly thing now completely useless. I never transitioned to new technologies and I am riddled with Trump voters with gun collections and sallow chain-smoking fat women with dirty, cum-splattered cunts.

The two queens think that the existence of a small coffee shop with free wifi means I am turning around.

I'm not.

I'm the COCKtales

R24 Fuck You

I'm the closet full of kimonos that the owners wear when descending the staircase to make their Norma Desmond grand entrance.

I am a half ton of chandelier out of some old movie palace. I am neither correct for the period nor for the place in the dining room, but I look so fabulous they installed me anyway. Watch my lowest pendant dip artfully into the gravy boat at dinner.

Im the obvious upscale hoarding. I am amusingly passed off as "Victorian clutter" by the owners. I overhead their friends saying some of me smells like cat pee, mixed Eau de Cologne du Coq.

I'm the 28 year old twunk working at the richer of the queen's company. I'm blowsy on most days, though there is a fading glimmer of my 20 yo fineness on a good day and also in the dim lighting of the Victorian. I will be the destruction of this couple and this house, which will be unsellable after the one queen shots the other queen who is fucking me. People will say, what a shame, about the blood splatter in the "Oscar Wilde Salon" but the clean up crew's manager has a bf who's an antiques dealer and he comes along and discovers almost everything is completely worthless junk.

[quote]I'm the obvious upscale hoarding. I am amusingly passed off as "Victorian clutter"

Hoarding that will eventually exceed the boundaries of even this huge Victoria house. You will find boxed collections of egg cups, crystal goblets, unused china and silver, etc...that will overflow the basement, the attic, storage buildings, and eventually spill into the "living areas".

When someone ever so gently suggests they sell an item (even an item the owners had completely forgotten they had), the owners' mood will turn dark, and they will proclaim melodramatically, "I'd rather die than part with my treasures."....

This proclamation is usually made as the owner throws a scarf (the owners wear more and more layers to hide the growing folds of flesh) over his shoulder and flounces out of the room in a deeply offended manner.

^ All of a Victorian Queen's possessions are either "rare and priceless" or they soon will be....

One such couple, I know, would invite guests over under the guise of hosting a dinner party

but the food and drinks would be meager

while the tours of the house would last literally for more than an hour

I'm the rare archaic sterling silver pieces owned by this couple that they use to demonstrate their knowledge of long outdated dinner service rituals and "their cultural superiority"....

i.e. "This is a sterling silver finger bowl and it's used like this," (no matter how many times they've given this lecture)

or "This is a coin sterling silver Asparagus Server; do you know we actually saw someone use "plastic tongs" to serve asparagus once..."

I am the dark, narrow, creaking, interior stairs. The owners know they’ll never be rid of me. It’s reached the point that every sentence that begins, “We really need to do something about ...” leads directly to excessive drinking because they are not now and never will be a match for me.

I'm the concrete block rental house next door built circa 1965 and now surrounded by wire fencing, because the owners have dangerous dogs. The Victorian queens go to great pains to obscure their view of it with shrubbery and to pretend that it's not there.

I don’t want to be ormolu. I hate ormolu!

I'm the provenance stories of their priceless antiques

they often include references to how often they've turned down offers to buy these antiques from Sotheby's or museums

"And why the fuck didn't you unload this big ugly piece of shit?"

I'm the ADP signs and stickers all over this big ugly Victorian pile

I'm the worn stack of HONCHO and BLUEBOY in the closet under the stairs.

I am the little room in the basement that the two queens use as a wine cellar. I was originally the room where the Irish maids were raped by the man of the house.

I'm their cat, and I refuse to go into one particular room. I see dead people.

I am the Datalounge Maiden Aunt Brigade

We hold our monthly meetings here

I'm Midge from the town historical society, dodging the tenth call from these Queens this week. They want their house officially recognized, but I know about the deep dark secret which prevents it. Say it, Oda Mae!

^ You in danger, Gurrrl!

I am Barnabas Collins looking for a threesome

I'm the freakishly designed period linoleum in the kitchen, dated in material and style to 1858, 38 years before the house was built. "Just like Lincoln's kitchen in Springfield!" they share.

Three of their seven tiny yippy unsocialized non-house-trained "babies" have to be barred from the kitchen because they have seizures at sight of the confused patterns of the flooring. But at least dogs cannot perceive the full horror of the electric-urinary-failure-gangrene green.

I’m the shrieking, near violent argument the owners had as to whether the butler’s pantry should be ripped out in order to make a resale ready eat in kitchen should they ever need to sell and get out of Waterloo, Iowa. The vigorous make up sex upstairs sends the chandelier crashing onto the dining room table.

I'm a wingback chair, that reclines!

I'm the awkward silences during the formal dinner parties...

every time someone flushes the toilet and the original Victorian plumbing gurgles, shakes, and vibrates the walls and flooring, including the queens elegant dinner settings

I am the garden ornaments. I am large and legion.

I'm the dark original paneling that makes every room gloomy even in the middle of the sunniest day.

And the Victorian queens have chosen authentic period wallpapers that make even the unpaneled rooms just as dark and gloomy.

R8, I knew those curtains looked familiar.

I'm the old-timey pull chain toilet that has so little water pressure you have to flush the fucking thing three times after you take a dump.

I’m the spindlework that casts phallic shadows across the porch in the afternoon

They may call me a "painted lady", but really I'm a painted up PROSTITUTION WHORE!

Come down to the basement and see the Judy Room.

I’m an unfortunate choice of mauve.

I am the decoratively braided hair of long dead people under glass. It absolutely freaks visitors and makes them lose their appetite.

I am the petroleum lamp rewired for electricity in the 1920s. I am even less save.

OMG r61 is that really a thing?

I am the white shit that oozes from the finch bird cage in the kitchen.

I'm the heavy draperies that further block the light in the dim and gloomy rooms of this Victorian masterpiece!

Yes it is R63. I have seen it in several places on SF. Think macrame made with human hair.

Ugh r66 that is just creepy.

I'm the bedbug infestation from the rough trade hustler one of the queens entertained for a long weekend when the other queen was visiting mother in Peoria.

I'm Book of the Dead photograph books placed around the house (yes, photographing dead relatives was totally a thing in the Victorian era)....

of which the Queens are very proud

I'm the doilies and the lace.

I’m the collection of black widow’s weeds caftans for when mother dies.

I'm the framed Victorian Dead person photographs hanging on the walls...

This one greets you in the Foyer

R50, Kaftan queens don’t have makeup sex.

I’m the bell pull that was used to strangle Geoffrey in the property’s most recent restoration-sparked murder-suicide.

When Theo was done with me he took a slow walk through the house and sighed at every incomprehensible detail he had agreed to in hopes of placating Geoffrey after almost two decades of this shit.

Theo considered hanging himself at the top of the staircase and giving his ungrateful niece the shock of her life when she showed up for dinner later in the week, but quickly changed his mind when he imagined Mother’s reaction to crime-scene photos with the stairwell’s exposed framing in the background. Oh, the indignity.

He was found, as if asleep, on the fainting couch with a tiny pearl-handled Lady Derringer by his head and a note reading: “Geoffrey knows what he did” pinned to his Sunday caftan. They say he was smiling.

I am the “Home Sweet Home” pillow was probably once used to smother unmarried and useless, yet thrifty, Aunt Violet.

I’m fretwork.

I’ve been placed everywhere, reducing the entire place to resembling a 1970s Olde Tyme Ice Cream Parlor.

I'm the humongous armoires in the bedrooms. There are no clothes closets in this house.

I'm the outlets. I can handle two-prong plugs.

I'm the downstairs bathroom that the guests use. This is also where we place the open litter box. We think that guests don't really mind the litter box, but in fact, they hate it and think it's disgusting.

I'm the rot, termites, and other insect infestation that are slowly and surely destroying the wood support beams and structural integrity of this Victorian monstrosity..,.

but these queens continue to focus and spend only on cosmetic issues

I'm also the creaking wood floors that indicate both the accelerating decay and the queens' increasing body weight

[quote]I don’t want to be ormolu. I hate ormolu!

You’ll be what you’re told!

Ormolu? Ormolu…

Didn’t she just buy the farm?

I am the tiny meth crystals glinting between the creaking floor boards.

I'm the mostly original windows and doors that rattle and shake in the slightest breeze - and causing the house to be alternately freezing or boiling, depending on the weather.

"We would not tarnish the integrity of our beautiful Victorian mansion with 'replacement windows and doors'."

Truth - they've spent so much money on decorating - they have no money for replacement windows and doors.

I'm Queen Victoria, and I'm even less amused than usual.

I'm the accordion bellows and other wood burning tools situated around the gas fireplace.

I'm the cheap WalMart box fans that stay hidden in the attic until the hottest days and nights

when the queens set them up to blow directly up their caftans to relieve the oppressive heat

(and give their private parts a little tingle...)

I am the blackened spots in the original mirrors . I make the owners look very old and sad.

I'm Gus Stickley getting rich selling great-great granny and grandpa the antidote to cloying curlicues and turrets.

[quote]I am the blackened spots in the original mirrors . I make the owners look very old and sad.

OTOH, they help the queens maintain the illusion they look 15-20 years younger than their actual ages

I'm the surge protectors everywhere, because the number of electrical outlets is totally inadequate for a modern household full of electronic toys!

And I'm the credit card debt. I am a cloud looming on the horizon.

But I look like a sweet fluffy little bit of cumulus compared to the impending hurricane that is Quenton's aging mother, who keeps hinting that her house is too big for one person and too much trouble to clean, and that her rust-colored Barcalounger would fit right next to the delicate pink marbles of the living room fireplace.

I am the knowledge that in 50 years I will be uninhabitable.

Maybe R88. They make them look like they live behind a veil. But that’s a faded look, albeit a bit dreamy.

[quote]and that her rust-colored Barcalounger would fit right next to the delicate pink marbles of the living room fireplace.

dear God...that is the sound of Victorian queens weeping from the depths of their superficial souls

Yeah, Victorian hair art was a thing, some of it could be quite elaborate. Some of it was indeed made from the hair of loved ones who'd passed away.

I'm the fainting couch in the parlor bearing a small placard stating "Miss Lindsey caught a case of the vapors here."

Victorian hair jewelry was also a thing. Some of it was just loops of hair under a glass cabochon, but some of it was as elaborate as this!

A mourning ring would have hair of the deceased wrapped around a ring with a concave surface.

I'm the word classy. The bottom used me at least fifteen times a day during the restoration, usually just prior to purchasing overpriced reproduction chintz on Etsy with his long-suffering top's credit card. He had to use the top's card for these purchases, partly because the his dreams of Victorian grandeur are more expensive than his retail job can support, but mostly because Etsy doesn't accept Discover cards or Diner's Club International.

I’m the bubbly young design student (NOT invited back) who pointed out it was Elsie de Wolfe who first brought dark old Victorian interiors into the 20th Century by painting old furniture white and - -

I'm the imagined media attention, the queens believe they will get by spending their lives and their life savings to restore this old pile...

"Unlike most people, we could see the potential in this one-of-a-kind magnificent Victorian mansion..."

"Yes, it has been incredibly hard...but it was ultimately a labor of love..."

I'm the treasure, shoplifted from the flea market, so my owners wouldn't have to deal with the nasty queen on the cash register.

I'm the ghost of Queen Victoria rolling her eyes and this time actually amused that neither of these uncouth, classless bitches saw the entirely appropriate suitability of hanging my portrait on the wall somewhere.

[quote]Victorian hair jewelry was also a thing. Some of it was just loops of hair under a glass cabochon, but some of it was as elaborate as this!

The Victorian culture was a culture that was obsessed with death.

I'm the catch-all bedroom, the junk drawer of the house. Please don't open the door.

I am the legion of tourists soon to be tromping all over everything, follow on the queens’ admission that either they make this thing pay for itself as a B&B or they’ll be forced to sell.

I'm Halloween. The kids enjoy me (a Victorian mansion) because I naturally look like a haunted house.

[quote]I am the legion of tourists soon to be tromping all over everything, follow on the queens’ admission that either they make this thing pay for itself as a B&B or they’ll be forced to sell.

I'm one of the Victorian queens practicing my response to these proposals in front of the mirror, in her best Julia Sugarbaker voice:

"But one thing we don't have to endure is a bunch of bored housewives turning historical homes into theme parks, not to mention ill-mannered tourists with their Big Gulps, Mistys, Slurpees, and Frosties, their dirty feet overflowing rubber thongs, and babies who sneeze Fudgesicle juice!"

"Out, out of my house! "

"As God is my witness, I will burn it down myself before I let you in again!"

I'm the TV tuned-in to Fox News, and Sean Hannity is hosting Lindsey Graham. These two caftan-wearing queens who are watching are Republicans. Ewww!

I'm soooooo many mouse skeletons in the old cellar. The boys once found a black rat snake down there and Melvin pissed his white linen plus fours while LeRoie screeched. They slept in a motel for three nights AFTER Melly's niece removed the laid-back, friendly snake.

R106 defames the boys and should be ashamed of herself. They are both registered Democrats, although one did do a presidential write-in vote for Chuck Percy in 1968 because he thought he was cute and was so sorry about his daughter's murder. Plus he wouldn't vote for Humphrey because he didn't wear a toupee.

I’m the elevator they’re going to have to install if they want to sell this pile.

I’m the overgrown potted fern in the front parlor

I'm the enormous circular tower, which distinguishes the American Queen Anne from the British version. I am a tip of the hat to French chateaux.

I have a little circular room at my top that serves no discernable function.

The queens use me for tantric massages.

I'm the unexpected, at first, appearance of four chaise longes in the drawing room.

Please, the word is "passementerie" : tassels are for strippers.

[quote]Please, the word is "passementerie" : tassels are for strippers.

Spoken like a true Victorian mansion-restoring queen...

[quote]I wanted to be tassels!

Fine, you can be the passementerie

I'm the yards and yards of bullion fringe...on everything

I'm the thermostat set at 55* to save money. Just bring a sweater, gaw!

I’m the aspidistra.

I'm the Laudanum. In this case, a genuine laudanum bottle from the time filled with crushed up Vicodin and spirits of alcohol.

The fucking bottle cost more than a two moth supply of the shitty Vicodin we get around here.

Luckily, we died of Fentanyl poisoning before too may funds were further spent.

We're the fake antique books covering every electronic device in the house. God help Stéphane when he takes one of us off because it's 102° in his third-floor office and his MacBook's fan sounds like a jet engine.

"You're not committed to the vision, Stéphane! You're not! You make me feel like you're just going through the motions to please me, and I HATE it!!"

r120 Mine was better.

Neyah.

R15 for the win.

I’m the uneven flooring caused by soft heart of pine flooring bulking up due to settling of the foundation. You’d be sinking too if you were bogged down by the weight of Harold’s 300 pounds as well as oppressive atmosphere.

I'm the atmosphere that inspired so many deathless horror ghost, and Gothic literature and films.

You may mock me here, but without me, there would have have been no Jane Eyre, no The Haunting, no Rebecca, no The Uninvited, no countless Sherlock Holmes stories . . .

I'm the servants' quarters at the top of the house. I'm shockingly small and bare, but secretly I make visitors long for the good old days of Gosford Park.

I am one of five bowls of potpourri.

One of our better ones, bitches. Keep feeding the beast!

I'm the family (and to a more tasteful distance, the servant's) graveyard. Our Man was always too lazy to dig 6 feet deep, so during bigger storms, there have been some...unfortunate surprises.

I'm the reason the Queens rarely leave the house on the weekends. Tea?

I am the period antimacassars on all of the chairs and sofas.

Unsurprisingly once you get a look at the owners and their friends, we serve a utilitarian purpose and are not just for show.

The two love to gossip about their friend from bingo who has this next door neighbor and frequent visitor named Joel. They'd love for Joel to visit them, and pay him generously for yard work.

I'm the Orientalism in the Smoking Room, in the Aesthetic Movement style but with some compound Moorish arches and some 19thC Iznik-inspired tiles. The little corner tower of a Smoking Room divided off by a cut velvet portiere that cost the owners way too much, promised it once hung in Morris' own Red House, but it didn't, and it's actually machine made a good decade at least after Morris' death. Oh, and don't dare get any ideas from the "Smoking Room" language and strike up a match, the owners, once chain-smokers, are now violently opposed to the evils of tobacco. The walls above the bit of tile wainscot are in Bradbury & Bradbury wallpapers. The owners watch for a knowing nod when they drop the brand name, when they find none, they tell you flat out that they spent $35,000 on the hand-printed papers. Too bad they cheaped out and replaced the damaged plaster with wallboard. You can tell straight away from the echoey quality of the room, not hushed by all that velvet, and by the fact that the paper seams in teh wallboard are now showing through their fancy wallpaper, with tiny rips and tears and folds following the seams of the wallboard.

It's all a little much for a railroad worker's cottage of 1220 square feet, but the owners do seem so pleased with themselves.

I'm the hallway Christmas tree, left since 2019 when Melvin's back went out. As I am fourteen-feet tall and once was what is called a "real tree," I am a fire hazard.

LeRoie is concerned about the black bugs he has noticed living in the needle-drifts.

I am the goth couple who are huge true crime fans, collect antique mortuary equipment and create disturbing avant garde art. We end up buying this house and everything in it for a low low price after the elderly couple who restored it go missing after hiring an escort who turns out to be a serial killer who is still at large.

R133, please stop killing gay people while mixing verb tenses. That is not "Chaos." It is merely nasty.

Thank you.

[quote] Kaftan queens don’t have makeup sex.

Yes, they do. It involves applying globs of foundation and concealer to each other like we were the last scene from DEATH BECOMES HER.

r134 went into the basement and was never seen again.

Ormolu is so formalu.

Don't look inside the victorian steam trunk with the dark 2-inch stain perceptibly circling the bottom

I'm the smell of douching that lingers around the bathroom.

I am Frank Furness.

None of this is my fault.

I am the fake antique pendulum clock in the hallway. I was made in China in 2002 and run in electricity so nobody has to wind me up. My Big Ben chime prevents Melvin from falling asleep again at 4 AM.

I am not Herter Brothers. Nothing in this house is Herter Brothers, I'm not even Pottier & Stymus, but oh how my owners will go on about how I *am* Herter Bros. and worth a small fortune.

I'm the uninsulated walls which, combined with the oil furnace installed in 1928, make my winter heating bills equal the monthly mortgage payment. Unfortunately, my new owners spent so much on cosmetic renovations they can't afford new insulation or a new furnace.

I’m the shearing in the foundation walls.

I'm the laundry shoot, and I think the dumb waiter is one stupid bitch!

It's a chute, R145, like the game Chutes and Ladders.

Thank you, R146! I'll remember it!

- R145

I'm the ornate, dark room one queen "particularly enjoys for late evening reading."

I'm also the home of his coke stash and am host to many nights of frenzied dancing to Cher's "Dark Lady" after the partner's Ambien kicks in.

I am the Ottoman duvet cover that has not been cleaned since 1903.

I am the smell of cat piss wafting across the “drawing room”.

I'm the human skeleton that was discovered in the wall during renovations.

I'm the house tours the caftan queens give to all guests to highlight their work and all the money they spent. The caftan-wearing queens get upset when guests are indifferent to me and just want a drink.

Jeffrey Mundt and Joey Banis, gay male couple renting a Victorian house. Meth-fueled 3-some, 3rd party is killed and then buried in the house. IIRC, Mundt pointed finger at Banis (during trial). Mundt had a deal with DA, IIRC. Banis found guilty.

I'm the Gen X/Millennial gay guys on the house tour who are all about modern, minimalist decor and think all this fussy, ugly shit should be hauled out to the backyard and torched. Is there a single surface in this dump that isn't cluttered with tchotckes? It's like an ancient old lady's house up in this bitch.

I’m the two Hispanic guys hired from the Home Depot parking lot to haul the ginormous siding room table off of the U-Haul trailer and into the dining room. One of us is hoping we will be offered mucho dinero to let these guys go down on his 9.5” uncut cock.

I’m the bars tucked INSIDE the basement windows so I don’t alert the new roommate of how dangerous this neighborhood.

I am the velvet ropes that appear at every house tour to keep prying eyes and hands from certain rooms.

I’m roll of the toilet paper you need to drag to the bathroom every morning- because between the other four gay men that live here there is NEVER any in the bathrooms.

I’m the passive aggressive owner that charges an ungodly amount for the tiniest, chilliest room.

I'm the Queen Anne next door, feeling like a hybrid bastard child.

[quote]I'm the Queen Anne next door, feeling like a hybrid bastard child.

You are a bastard child, only a pale-imitation of our gloriously-restored true Victorian mansion.

Just like the concrete rental house, the owners ignore you and pretend you don't even exist.

I am the musical Fun Home.

I'm the ruff trade purchased for a threesome. I ate the potpourri out of the bowls because I thought it was party mix, but everyone just averted their eyes cuz I'm packing 9 inches.

[quote]I'm the Queen Anne next door, feeling like a hybrid bastard child.

I am the dismissive, mean-spirited laugh of the Victorian queens given when anyone dares to mention the Queen Anne-style house nearby.

"No dear, our house was said to be designed by Frank Heyling Furness (complete untrue). That is a cheap track house with some very bad Queen Anne additions masquerading as a Victorian."

I'm the foundation. I laugh day and night at all the restoration while I crumble slowly.

I am the faint smell of decay stemming from the meth dealer buried in a Container Store plastic box only 3 feet under.

I'm the boxes of cake mix and cans of frosting in the pantry.

I’m the fastidiously painted, contoured and carefully lit staircase that’s meant to showcase my fine Gothic woodwork burnished and fitted to perfection yet to the unjaded eye winds up looking like an overdone Carol Burnett stage set

I am Anne Rice and I am NOT HAPPY. What have you done??

R153 Meth.... not even once

[quote]That is a cheap track house

Meaning it’s on the wrong side of the track?

This thread is a fucking MASTERPIECE

Do NOT go in the basement.

I am the mummified rat behind the Butler's pantry.

I am the Historic District. I contain a charming early Gothic Revival house dating to the 1840s; a sophisticated Colonial Revival house by Stanford White; a great stick/eastlake mishmash attributed in part to Frank Furness; and an amazing Japanese-inspired fantasy garden with an inventive shingle-style cottage designed by its owner, a lesbian suffragette. I am interspersed with Arts & Crafts, Tudor Revival and Neo-Classical houses and their attendant lawns and gardens; there is a minor work by Frank Lloyd Wright or a major one by one of his followers and a strikingly stark 1943 modernist house built as the home of the city's first African-American architect. Senators and scientists, novelists and neurosurgeons, theosophists and thespians have made me their address for 170 years.

I do not include the house of the two caftan-wearing queens, because it is a piece of ugly shit.

I’m 400 gallons of heating oil in the basement at $3.27 a gallon. I will barley last 2 weeks in February

I'm Mary, the ghost of the Irish servant girl who was impregnated and then murdered by the ne'er-do-well son of the original owner. Sometime after the WWII his former bedroom was remade into a modern bathroom so I am condemned for all eternity to frighten people who are on the toilet.,

I'm Lorna, here to see the Judy Room.

In case you didn't hear, I was molested.

That Lorna shit is so stupid and unfunny, just like the Susan Dey shit and the M/G shit. AIDS really did kill off the witty gays of that generation.

I'm the Victorian costume party. Everyone is shloshed on "Mint" Juleps, and I say "Mint" because leRoi fucked up and bought Cilantro instead of Mint earlier that afternoon. Melvin is still livid.

[quote]That Lorna shit is so stupid and unfunny, just like the Susan Dey shit and the M/G shit. AIDS really did kill off the witty gays of that generation.

Bad man hate blue.

I’m the silk ivy garland that climbs over and around everything in the kitchen. I actually saw this on a Christmas house tour.

"That Lorna shit is so stupid and unfunny, just like the Susan Dey shit and the M/G shit. AIDS really did kill off the witty gays of that generation. "

How witty!

Not trying to be witty, just making a statement. Shit is unfunny and beyond tired.

I’m the fancy wooden pedestal all you plants are sitting on

[quote]Not trying to be witty, just making a statement. Shit is unfunny and beyond tired.

Thanks for that funny and un-tired post. LOL.

The elder queens here love their tired memes. Too bad AIDS killed off all the good ones from that generation.

I am the tastefully restored Victorian mansion in the Historic District owned by two attractive gay men, one a surgeon, the other a screenwriter.

I have had my best attributes exquisitely highlighted and my unfortunate details tastefully modified or sensitively replaced.

I am full of books and musical instruments (the screenwriter also composes) and intriguing works of art.

My stained glass window really is by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

My garden is a thing a beauty and repose.

i am in tip-top condition from spire to cellar.

I am occasionally on the house tour, when it serves as a fundraiser for the local hospital's children's ward (my owners couldn't care less, otherwise, and always leave the house for the day after preparing a few notes on its history for the volunteer docents).

The caftan-wearing queens walk through and HISS.

And HISS.

And HISS.

I’m the coffered ceiling.

I'm the door knocker.

^ They must be made of brass

I am a concrete gargoyle. I am positioned at the entrance to the fussy yet already overgrown "gardens".

I am twinned to the cement birdbath shaped like a sunflower.

I'm the roof tiles and pots that keep falling off onto people just as they walk up to talk about a New Testament of Jesus Christ, the Watchtower, or Girl Scout Cookies.

That crawl space is getting mighty crowded.

I’m the Madam Alexander collection in an out of the way spot within the house.

The owners don’t want any stolen, and the case doesn’t have a lock.

Oh sure—I can be ormolu. As if those cheap bastards wouldn’t just use gold spray paint.

Thanks for nothing.

I'm the must and mold. The queens didn't bother to repair the foundation and every spring water seeps in which goes unnoticed by the queens because they covered the concrete blocks with drywall which will eventually rot.

Ah yes R193....another reason plaster is far superior to drywall. It is alkaline and does not support mold growth. Unfortunately it is hard to find competent plaster guys these days. Almost nobody knows what they're doing anymore because it's become a lost art.

DO they still build new houses with plaster walls?

I'm the five yappy little untrained dogs! Our coats are meticulously brushed out, but we aren't housetrained, and all the Turkish rugs have large brownish stains. But at least now that Nellie Melba has lost all her teeth, there are no new bite marks on the authentic reproduction chairs.

I don't think so R195. Unfortunately. I had a condo in an old 1920s building with original plaster walls and the way that place was constructed was so far superior to anything built in "modern" years it's laughable. If there was a plumbing leak from somewhere the concrete and brick interior of the walls would hold onto water for a while but the plaster over metal lathe did not get moldy or disintegrate. The outer coating might "delaminate" a bit and paint would bubble, but easy fix. You just had to open up a dry hole and let it dry out for a month then patch the plaster back up and paint. Drywall would have been toxic mold within days. The key in old buildings is to upgrade the plumbing and electrical. But the structures themselves are so much better IMHO.

Stay on topic.

The mansion is known for a famous guest. Former President Rutherford B. Hayes once spent a night there.

Pssst. That wasn’t his wife.

You're not the boss of the thread R198. Mind your business.

I'm the gardener who comes in a couple of times a week to mow, weed, and trim things. I'm talking to my lawyer about a sexual harassment suit.

That was on topic R198. It was discussion about old construction techniques such as you would see in an old house. So chill.

I’m the wallpaper that was originally in the bathroom when the owners bought the place. I almost gave them a heart attack.

[quote]Too bad AIDS killed off all the good ones from that generation.

And left you.

I am the vintage clothes found in the attic that one of the caftan queens will wear. You'll claim it's just to be "Karen Black" for Halloween, but you'll keep wearing my for months after...

R197 r201 r203 killed this thread.

But I will never die!!!!

I'm the MG with the fucked shift stick in the dilapidated garage. I was going to be Michael's retirement project but George wanted the chimneys repointed.

George gets what George wants.

No R207 you did that yourself. Bye.

I'm the basement. Brian wanted to turn me into a screening room, but Quenton's Christmas decorations were crowded out of the attic by the Halloween decorations and the Thanksgiving decorations, and now Q wants to find room for the Easter decorations in the sewing room.

The fight over whether to just rent a fucking storage space would have the last straw for them, if either had been willing to leave the house to the other.

I'm the secret toom discovered when the renovation knocks a wall down to eliminate a dressing room to enlarge the master bedroom. I am filled with first editions of Victorian pornography and some very fine examples of early Grecian erotic pottery the original owner picked up on his honeymoon "abroad".

The collection turns out to be worth a good bit of money, especially the pottery. It ended up paying for the entire renovation.

I did miss those stolen evenings with the master of the 'ouse.

Now, those poufs have turned me into an alcove with a fucking divan.

I am the river nearby the can bear so much rainfall. When I flood the basement, Quenton's Christmas decorations, the Halloween decorations and the Thanksgiving decorations, will be entangled with the sling, the chains, and the whips in the in "Play Room" to an inextricable mess.

I'm the location scout who will offer you insufficient money for the honor of having your house appear in a remake of The Munsters.

I am the tremendous damage that the film company will inflict during the shoot, as they invariably hire meth-soaked ex-rodeo clowns to break down the sets.

Kiss your flawlessly restored paneling goodbye.

I’m the pet Capuchin monkey. I’m the smartest primate in this house.

I'm the gin

and the regret

I am the armoire containing pristinely folded linen with a sprig of lavender tucked away between each one. I am opened and admired each time guests are entertained at my owner’s soirees.

I'm window weights. The Queens hear me bumping the window frames each time they raise and shut the windows, but they just can't figure me out. They've never heard of me.

[quote]I'm the gin...

I'm the bromide.

[quote]I'm window weights. The Queens hear me bumping the window frames each time they raise and shut the windows, but they just can't figure me out. They've never heard of me.

In an overly-restored house, they would've heard the tern "window weights" more than once. The chances of every rope being in perfect original condition is improbable.

Just let it ride. There's no need to flaunt your superior reasoning through correction each opportunity you see, Poindexter!

I'm the three happy months the couple spent living in the house before the bottom was unceremoniously evicted after the top found a younger replacement. The first thing they did was remove all the old lady crap and go minimalist.

I'm the minefield of crap littering every horizontal surface, most which was manufactured in the 1920s for conservative lower-middle class households and is about as Victorian as Clara Bow's STD sheet. Despite this, the owners will refer to me as if I am the contents of the Metropolitan Museum's decorative arts collection.

I am this thread. I started out pretty but I am as old and tired as a Victorian mansion now.

I am the very large door leading elsewhere to which I am happy to direct R225.

Mind the step - oh God.

Paul, I think we may need an ambulance again.

We have to do something about that bannister.

I'm the contractor that three days into the project (painting the exterior) I returned 100% of the deposit to the owner, packed up all the scaffolding, and left- because I was completely over 'something' trying to shove my employees off said scaffolding from nearly 30 feet up. (True story!)

The piss-elegant Victoriana queens like Quenton and Melvin who are being roasted on this thread must be knocking on for 70. Those boys haven’t been in a sling surrounded by damask wallpaper and dubious wainscotting since the Bush administration. Their flabby middle-aged slap and tickle days are well and truly behind them.

Now as to the fiftysomethings with a bunch of bad Danish Modern sniggering about them on this thread….

I'm the former owner of an Italianate inspired farmhouse. I got bored and fed up with the constant attention the house needed. I sold the house to a couple who couldn't afford the upkeep. The house was torn down 3 years ago.

I'm Melvin and leRoi's nasty break-up. They argue and bicker about who owns what, and down to the last roll of toilet paper. leRoi finds a never updated 1960s ranch home to put his heart and soul into while Melvin, bitter beyond description, does a complete 180 and moves into a finished modern minimalist home.

The end.

R230 - Actually, the imminent murder/suicide would be the end.

I'm the meticulously planned out will. I go on for pages and pages divvying up every item in the house to husband, close friends, former co-workers and former lovers with whom I still friends, siblings I have a decent relationship with, nieces and nephews, and various service people (if they've been in my employ for over 10 years).

I am the Boston fern on a pedestal. One day, I will fall over and smother Quentin’s left foot. He will never walk properly again.

I’m the display Noritake. The Waterford gets used. I haven’t been yet.

Isn't it the other way around, R234?

Plus we all know that Rheinhardt keeps vodka in that "jogging jug" and drinks from a Libby's tumbler when "relaxing."

R234 Which Noritake though?

If its the "Hertford" I'd use the shit outta that its fucking cool. "Blooming Splendour is pretty nice too

Didnt know Noritake did such nice stuff actually

I am a small flawlessly patinated yellow bowl of Chinese Dynastic origin. I was owned by a princess and bear her seal on my lip. I am the single most valuable thing in the house, but I was acquired as part of a lot sale, no one ever knew what I was.

I am currently full of sugar cubes.

I'm the airbnb guest pushing the dresser against the bedroom door. Something creepy about those shovels when they showed me the garden.

I'm Anna Madrigal and I've been living here for years and years and, Yes, I DO wear fucking caftans because they are comfortable. Now shut the fuck up, pull up a chair and let's get stoned.

I'm the house's fascinating history.

I was built long ago by man named Hugh Crane...

R240 - Melvin and leRoi will have you know THEIR house was built by H.H. Holmes!

I'm the grand piano that no one knows how to play.

I am the long forgotten 2000 gallon cistern in the attic that was original to the gravity feed indoor shower. I’m still full of rainwater. One day I will crash through the ceiling, killing at least one of the residents and at least one cat as I plummet through the floors on the way to the basement.

I'm the spliced in bits of wood in the curly maple door to the old first floor front apartment. In the 1930s my owners moved to Hillsborough and I was converted to six large apartments of 2 bedrooms each in a division of space that was not always amicable. Everyone thought mine was the finest apartment in the building: high ceilings, huge windows and window seats broad and long enough for a comfortable nap, lovely large rooms, two working fireplaces, and loads of original details unspoiled. It's why the owners bought me, well, that and the snobby address.

The owners bought the house emptied out of all its occupants except me. They bought, in effect a rental business with me as their sole tenant. But I was a frail-looking 82-year-old woman when the negotiations started and almost 84 by the time the contractors arrived. I was a little prickly and resisted all overtures to move. This had been my home for decades, after all and I was old and didn't like the idea of change. The owners tiptoed around me for those couple of years, and used the back stairs so as not to interfere with my privacy so I had use of the grand reception room, too, while they entered through the basement garage and up to the kitchen, like servants in their own house. Sometimes they would make themselves known and be very direct and demanding of me. When was I moving? Showing me slips of paper with sums on them, watching my eyes for reaction. I could sense their growing contempt for me. One day when I was 85 they angrily sat me down and said what would it take? What would it take to make me move? I opened a drawer in my desk and took out a paper from my nephew, an important lawyer. It would take a one-time payment of $300,000 and monthly rent at my next apartment for however long I lived there. I was out, $300,000 richer, and in a very nice if charmless newer apartment but with a beautiful view. I lived there about 8 months and died there. The nephew got what was left of the $300,000 (nearly all after buying a few new pieces of furniture) and all my books and photo albums. The owners finally had their house back, three years of tiptoeing around me.

I'm the realtor who neglected to mention the house was built over a sacred Indian burial ground. They moved the headstones but left the graves.

That's not a house. It's tinder.

Anybody know when they'll be away for the weekend?

I am the Pink Princess!

[quote]I am the long forgotten 2000 gallon cistern in the attic.

Impossible.

R248 Well, there is/was the long sewage tank next to the 11,000 sq ft house that finally collapsed, leading to a backup that led to a plumbing job that was a deposit on a 'normal' house. BTW, it was originally built in 1827, and the crane mechanism in the fireplace that was the original 'stove' was still completely in place and functional, wow.

I'm the old Chinese ancestor painting hanging in the vestibule, even though neither of the owners actually has any Chinese ancestor.

I am the Legionella colony in the 80 year old boiler. I am waiting for Melvin’s immune system to age a little more to become really noticeable.

Anthony Legionella? Love him!

Well, R249, in an over-restored house, somone would've found a 2000 gallon cistern in the attic. Realtor, workmen, inspectors, someone would've located a large container roughly 9 feet by 9 feet by 6 feet.

I don’t get it R227. They were afraid of a ghost?

I’m the basement that hosted a wonderful private disco all through the 70’s and a few Dominican orgies as well, hehe!

We love you, Poindexter! **wink**

'Fank you R256.

I’m fainting couches that are indeed used for fainting. Melvin has a delicate constitution you see.

This is one of my Top 10 Favourite DL Threads I've read, because I myself am slowly turning into the stereotypical caftan-wearing queen restoring a Victorian mansion. The posts--and pardon me for forgetting their R #s--were spot on re: the fighting over the overbudgetting, the plaster v drywall mold and wallpaper fiascos, and the one about stealing treasures from the flea market to avoid the other queen at the register. (Who--let's be honest--both the caftan-wearing queens have diddled with a double-headed dildo at some point.)

I would add a Caftan PSA on Safety re: sashaying around all the open fireplaces and flouncing around a roaring fire, especially whilst imbibing. This is--in all seriousness--why so many older homes have the fireplaces closed off. My own brother-in-law's mother witnessed her younger sister dancing in front a gas heater at the age of 3 or 4 and being burned alive when the poor little girl's nightgown caught on fire. It also concerns me that a few posts mentioned all the heating oil being stored in the queens' basement. Time to install some split Daikin HVACs, which would also be much more energy efficient. My parents actually installed Daikins last year and are saving thousands a year on the their heating and cooling costs.

Off my safety monitor soapbox...let the cattiness continue!

I’m the sheer lace curtain panels gracing every window.

My quality descends on the upper floors.

I’m the previous three lapdogs, Quentin, Lappers, and Noodle, immortalized by the finest taxidermist in the state. We’re in display in the music room! Albert wanted simple ashes in an urn but what does he know.

I'm the antique Victorian dressing screen positioned at the big Victorian glass front door to obscure the living area from anyone who might come calling unexpectedly. I'm always there because it's always party time!

R259 lucky you! You're right about the HVAC/ heatpumps though, we have Mitsubishis, fantastic, keep the place warm and dry in winter, cool and dry in summer.

I am not afraid of modern tech as long as it can be concealed. My dream home would be a High Victorian smart home - lots of tech can be hidden behind all the lace and frills, and an LED bulb under every tasselled and fringed chintz lightshade

We're the photos of nieces and nephews casually placed here and there to remind straight intruders that we're normal and have family just like them.

I'm the damask wallpaper... in every room... in every jewel tone.

I’m the loaded stare one receives after mentioning the word “camp.” Hissssssss!

I'm the lead pane windows with central stained glass motifs. I am everywhere. Have you lot any idea what it costs to repair or replicate me?

I’m the staircase newel post finial that looks like a tig ol’ bitty.

I’m the attached Addams family-esque conservatory. We’ve both tried unsuccessfully to grow orchids and ferns, but have ended up with succulents plunked into overly ornate Majolica Jardinieres. It’s creepy and it’s spooky.

I'm the brand new leatherbound "literary classics" bought from a Barnes and Noble BOGO clearance sale a couple of years ago. They sit in a "study" that one of the queens hoped to turn into a "home office." No one has ever worked, read or studied in this room and not one of me will ever be cracked open.

I am the ember blown off the fireplace through a sudden draft. I am slowly settling in the floor vase with the Peacock feathers and the dried Pampa grasses.

I'm the speed with which the place subsequently burns down.

No caftan-wearing queen would EVER put jewel-toned wallpaper in a Victorian restoration, you grease-fire-worthy bitch at R265!!!

Knowing that Victorian wallpapers were muted to the point of dinginess is on the Caftan Card eligibility test.

R273

[quote] Victorian wallpaper, much like many of this year’s runway styles, was brightly colored and often full of floral designs.

Do you know more than the Smithsonian, our greatest institution to be founded by an actual bastard?

I’m the dust.

This thread has opened a portal to hell. And it looks like a Christmas tree designed by Bob Mackie, with background music on a harpsichord.

I'm the chimney sweep.

At least that's what they like to call me.

I am the leering goblin face you finally see in the wallpaper pattern.

Once you do see me you'll never stop seeing me.

And I'm everywhere...

R273 they look dingy now because the colours have faded. As R274 points out, the colours would have been extremely vivid when new, so putting jewel-toned wallpaper in a Victorian restoration would be completely authentic if you want to make it look like it did back in 1875 which to me is the whole point - no "modern contemporary touches"!

I am a large looking glass with a small crack in the center. The small crack is how the queens were able to afford me, as I am otherwise a handsome article of furniture.

Interesting story about the crack.

It was caused when the lady who once owned me turned to see what she thought was a man standing in her bedroom. She hurled a vase at the intruder. It stuck me, the mirror, for he was actually behind her...

Good night.

We're the "persian" throw rugs they use to cover the old flooring they didn't have the money to refinish.

The owners don't understand that throw rugs and old people don't go together. Probably because they don't consider themselves old.

We're just lying here waiting the Mrs. Marcus moment.

I'm buyer's remorse. It had set in a good while ago for them both though neither will admit it to the other. They don't know when to quit. Their latest acquisition....

We're the pre-caftaners waiting to get it for a song when they die.

[quote]r273 Knowing that Victorian wallpapers were muted to the point of dinginess is on the Caftan Card eligibility test.

It just so happens you’re a [italic]lying sack of shit.[/italic]

Just so you know, Victorians loved bright, gaudy colors. New dying chemicals and printing techniques put vast hues of colors on the market that had never been possible before.

I imagine the plaids, especially, were quite terrifying.

R284, the colors were intense in part because gaslight was coming into general use and it caused the pastels favored by the 18th century and early Romantic periods to seem sallow or browned-out. This was particularly true of greens and pinks.

The use of arsenic in green dresses and ornaments corrected this - and also led to the deaths of many seamstresses and the occasional socialite. It was finally brought to the public attention when a physician made a study of a ballroom carpet after a soiree of some 200 people and published a report that there had been enough arsenic left by the gowns and gentlemen's sashes to poison every single person present.

The comment in Gosford Park "Green...such a difficult color..." refers to the resultant scare.

r285 is why I love DL. Such interesting historical knowledge.

[quote]Victorians loved bright, gaudy colors

R284 I knew it - I'm a Victorian at heart

Oh and everything else you say is absolutely right too

I’m the good friend that can get them a discount on the William Morris wallpaper. By the time this dump is papered, it’s gonna look like the set of My Fair Lady. So deliciously low indeed.

I'm the 1970s horror film filmed here long before the queens knew the house existed. I am titled "The Hideous Mansion" and hoo-boy do I ever live up to the title.

The Queens finally see me over a Halloween weekend and practically shit a bright red brick when they realize what their master bedroom was once witness to.

LOL - some time ago I posted a thread about let's be a middle aged gay couple in Embalm Springs and was eaten alive for being cruel to our own.

I guess it's literally all a question of taste.

I’m the Voysey wallpaper Cecil fell in love with for the scullery, where the cats eat, and that Jerome said was much, much too expensive.

Cecil insisted he could stencil it, pointing out he did have two Art History degrees, but the project is a crude, drippy mess (shelves to work around) and has remained unfinished for four years.

Jerome brings this disaster up whenever Cecil blithely says he can “tackle anything.” If he’s really mad he’ll ask if the Arts & Crafts Movement truly is Victorian, adding, “But you’re the supposed Arts major.”

^ Very well played. I'm going to bed chuckling. xo

I'm the hydrangeas that have never been the desired color.

R291 that wallpaper is called, get this "I Love Little Pussy"!! I shit you not.

Since I am not an Arts major and only have an engineering cert from trade school I wont fuck round trying to stencil that. I'll just get some good quality paper and use my colour printer to do the job, matching and correcting colours on the 4K monitor connected to my laptop using an open source graphics software package. No mess, no fuss, and once I've worked out exactly how to print and cut with a few dry runs using ordinary paper I'll have the lot done in a night

Not quite Victorian as you say, but still fucking cool

I am the creaks and moans in the wooden frame that keep the queens terrified at night. The house is in a shady part of town, after all, that has failed to gentrify during the last decade. There is a baseball bat under the bed. Melvin insists “there will be no gun in our house”. It’s not really the home intruders he is worried about...

Stealth Pete bashing thread!!!!!

[quote]R294 I wont fuck round trying to stencil that. I'll just get some good quality paper and use my colour printer to do the job, matching and correcting colours on the 4K monitor connected to my laptop using an open source graphics software package.

You could order a sample of the original. That could help with the color matching, if needed.

i DO love Little Pussy ! !

Might a stained glass panel be next ? ?

I’m the grungy convenience store just around the corner, I know… can you believe it? This neighborhood.

They mostly sell lotto tickets and expired Goya. Alfred refuses to set foot in the place. I brave the din on occasion for late night Little Debbie binges. But always with a silk scarf over my mouth and sunglasses. I have to tap my rings loudly on the counter for two minutes just for counter service. I know, it’s ridiculous!

R298... more something along the lines of this, I think... it would be wasted on a wall.

Yes, very bright colors for ladies' clothing came into style somewhere in the mid 19th century, as new dyes based on coal byproducts were invented, which produced the most vividly intense colors that anyone had ever seen, brighter than the dangerous "Arsenic green" of the early century.

That doesn't mean that luridly colored wallpapers were the fashion. Even as brilliant colors appeared on dresses, it was still fashionable to have dingy muted wallpaper.

No, this is the Degas.

Degas again.

Dinge queen!

[quote]Victorians loved bright, gaudy coloreds.

We especially loved it when they tap danced for us.

L-O-fuckin'-L, R305

I am twee embroidery work. I was invented so well-to-do young women would have something to do other than slash their own wrists in the face of how fucking boring their lives were.

I am the porch swing.

I...don't want to talk about it.

I am an iron doorstop shaped like a locomotive.

I have broken four toes thus far.

Tee hee.

I am the wiring.

Every now and again one of the queens will think of me at 3 AM and pass the rest of the night staring in horror at the ceiling.

^Wouldn't they have restored the old wiring with new when they replaced the plumbing with copper pipes?

[quote] pass the rest of the night staring in horror at the ceiling

This also happens after our monthly scheduled sex night.

R308. I'm that other swing, the one down in the basement.

I don't want to talk about it, either.

R310 They were cheap (copper is expensive these days). So they replaced the mains and boxes but left most of the internal wiring intact.

Which is a good reminder of something the mansion doesn't have: fire extinguishers.

But they're so ugly, R314!

Ditto smoke alarms, sprinkler systems, a fire-escape for the fourth floor tower bedroom, etc.

R315 Maybe it's intentional. They'd probably be happy to see the firemen come.

Well, yeah, duh, R316. But there's online porn for that.

[quote]Even as brilliant colors appeared on dresses, it was still fashionable to have dingy muted wallpaper.

Not exactly, R301. Through the whole of the 19thC taste in color changed rapidy, and not always in a neat succession but with simultaneously disparate tastes in color and pattern and design. This was even more pronounced in the seven decades of of the Victorian era. If you seek an example of "dingy muted wallpaper" colors you will find it. If you seek an example of eye-seeringly intense colors you will find those, too.

Your illustration is an 1883 painting by Edward Lamson Henry, a decade most often characterized by the peak popularity of William Morris all over stylized floral wallpapers in monochrome or muted color ranges, or in polychrome schemes with bright colors used as highlights against generally dark fields decorated with all over pattern. Morris' wallpapers were reasonably mainstream for middle class houses, and if they didn't make it in directly, the same taste was adapted by other designers of the period in cheaper, more accessible patterns that, then and today, are called generically Morris wallpapers though a good many are knock-offs or "in the taste of." Edward Lamson Henry was an American painter whose work often shows room interiors and nostalgic scenes of the Old South (he was from Charleston.) In your example from 1883 you see the subjects were upper middle class or rich, an "old family" by the look of the 18thC furniture mixed in with some mid-19thC furniture in the French taste. The chimneypiece is in the Federal style, but it could as easily be Federal in period as Colonial Revival, but the suggestion is that it is Federal (even if the proportions of the applied decoration are more 1880s) because of the gilt overmantle mirror that sits atop it. It looks like a room where, recognizing changing taste, some of the old family furniture was brought forward from the back rooms and put center stage; an informal hooked rug, a popular home craft thing of the 1880s and useful for catching sparks from the fire, is laid atop a geometric patterned wall-to-wall carpeting (in strips) from the 18020s-1840s, the gilt curtain rods with acanthus carving date to the same period. It's a room where things in and out of taste cohabit, and the most fashionable of these are the oldest: the sofa, the secretary desk, the Chippendale side chair of the younger woman, and the girandole mirror between the two front windows and the overmantle mirror each a bit later but still old, and now, since the 1870s, fashionably antique. Because there is no pattern, it's possible that the walls are not papered but possibly just painted plaster (the color extends up through the cornice), but either way it's an appropriate drab color scheme for the period. Whether it is meant to be seen as fresh or an old family house whose walls had not been painted in half a century we don't know; it could as easily be one as the other, and all the more so from a Charleston painter where rooms with ancestral furniture never quite went out of style (the portrait of an ancestor in outmoded clothing is perched up high, 1880s hanging style, in an 1830s-40s gilt frame, surveying the scene.

Yes, you can find examples of drab colored walls and wallpapers, from the 1820s, from the 1880s, not so much from the period in between, but it's just one example. You could as easily find an example typical of another taste from the 1880s that was muted in reds or greens most likely, overlaid with geometric patterns of gold or silver, or wild swirly flowers highly stylized or not, or a quite intense coral-red, or yellows on golds, or a decade earlier turquoise or robin's egg blue. Wallpaper was never one thing or one look or one style in the 19thC, it was a lot of things all at once.

Short answer: you can never pin down Victorian wallpaper to a few descriptive words because it was everything, sometimes all at once.

I'm SO happy to have a place to fight over 19th century wallpaper! I love you all!

I'm a copy of the portrait of Elizabeth Báthory. The residents bought me at an auction in Hamburg. I hang on the living room wall adjacent to the fireplace.

I’m the overly formal dining room. The table is perennially set as if royalty will be arriving momentarily. Rumor has it the Bernardaud dinnerware is reproduction. Nasty queens! How very dare them.

I am the sudden demise of this thread. I mirror the murder-suicide of the Caftan Queens that was predicted in it.

I am the kitchen spiral staircase that was originally for the servants. I will assist in the demise of this couple when Jerome pushes Quinton down the steps. He will blame the Turkish silk slippers Quinton used to wear.

I am the ambulance technician charged with extracting stiff, fat Quinton from the narrow and steep spiral staircase. He is upside down, so the caftan slid, covering his swollen face with its terrified expression but exposing his clean shaven privates and prominent Prince Albert.

I'm the dog. Even I run from the sight of that.

I'm the overpriced Christopher Dresser wallpaper by Bradbury & Bradbury.

I'm chipped glass doorknobs.

I am PRICELESS!

I am Hudson, NY. My streets are lined with these places.

Also, there's someone passing out plastic bags of cat hair cake at the corner of Warren and Third.

Sometimes I miss the crackhouse days.

I’m the great idea we come up with to solve our massive, entirely reno-related financial woes: starting a B&B here!

I'll raise R326's Christopher Dresser with a $16,000 collection of trashy gay Christopher Radko xmas ornaments.

"Quinton, please! How many times must I tell you? Unwrap these treasures from their original boxes only over the specially padded and blanketed Kimball & Cabus [i]japonisme[/i] center table!"

I'm the tax assessor come to re-appraise your B&B as commercial premises.

And you thought you were going to get rich. The nerve.

I'm the screws securing the signed Patty Duke photo to the wall in the downstairs bathroom.

We are the nine boxes of Christmas decorations stashed in an upstairs closet at the end of the hallway. Only half of us have been re-used. Tacky, but expensive, new decorations are bought each year in early November.

Hudson, NY is indeed the entirety of this thread.

I am the creepy dolls

I'm the ghost of Lizzie Borden... considering where to go on vacation.

R335 I love Victorian decor, but I draw a hard line at dolls, yecch. That would actually be a nice place minus those things.

Fortunately my partner and flatmate are even more skeeved out by those things than I am.

R337, I could not live with this wallpaper for more than a week. It makes me dizzy.

Mmmmm, Kimball & Cabus

Oh, dearing myself: Kimbel, not Kimball.

We're the fire-retardant caftans they wear specially at Christmas when the electric lights are all replaced by candles.

R339 thats pretty cool, lots more here. Dont see this stuff down under mores the pity. We're pretty sorely deprived of rococo too

I'm the British version of this house.

I'm damper, draftier, and far more grim overall, being constructed of shit-brown brick or dull grey stone.

[quote] I would add a Caftan PSA on Safety re: sashaying around all the open fireplaces and flouncing around a roaring fire, especially whilst imbibing.

Wasn't this how Jack Cassidy died? Shirley had to do some serious damage control.

I'm the cobwebs.

I'm the cob.

Discarded on the porch stair after the BBQ on the veranda.

Quentin is about to stand on me.

R328 Oh honey. Miss the crackhouses? Just walk two blocks north-east from Warren Street.

Turkish corner? Who said that?

Come over here and sit beside me. I want to show some my inspiration board for a redoing the tower guest room as a Turkish Corner.

I am Miss Havisham. I feel right at home with these two caftan-earring queens.

We're the long-simmering feud with Michal and Topher from the minimalist decor thread, because WE are the taste makers in this town!.

Guess who is coming to dinner?

I'm the small I LOVE YOU THIS MUCH figurine on the mantle. Not counting these queens, I'm the oldest thing in the joint. GTFOH with your fake Regency Repos.

I'm the wadded balls of excessive sani-wipes now wreaking havoc with the 110 year old plumbing.