Tasteful Friends - colour saturation set to zero, tackiness set to 100

How many chairs do you need?

Get rid of the furniture (which doesn't come with the house) and some of the flooring, and the place would be nice enough.

[quote]It doesnt look too bad from the exterior

Apparently your taste is as bad as their's.

Relentlessly horrible.

[quote]colour saturation

Is OP Lady Fairford?

It looks like what I would imagine Ron and Casey DeSantis to live in and consider tasteful.

Why do they have all those jars on the kitchen counter? What's with the Chanel symbols in front of the fireplace? How many sofas do they have??? It's all ghastly. Looks like an extended family of gypsies lived there.

[quote] Apparently your taste is as bad as their's.

And your understanding of the possessive plural is as bad as their taste.

Sounds like someone knocked down an old house on the lot and built this monstrosity in 2018 or so. Now, they are moving to Florida to retire.

hard to understand the scale of the place with those terrible wide angle lenses. From outside it looks like your average McMansion oriental style but from inside it looks as large as a palace built by Saddam Hussein.

Iss exquisite. If I not marry such rich man and live in NYC, Palm Beach and oh yeah Washington DC I could easily live there vit maximum class and style.

I can hear the yelling in another language already from outside the house.

So what country are we thinking they're from? I want to say Persian - but not many rugs. Romanian?

Those sofas and chairs are so specific - and not something you'll find in America very easily. It feels Eastern European or somewhat Middle Eastern?

I love how the one kid's room has a red comforter - FUCK this white shit - I'm having some color dammit!

For every one of these horrid McMansions, 50 sustainable and environmentally responsible dwellings or units could be built.

The American construction industry is motivated by perverse incentives to do everything bad. Which is why we have a housing crisis in the USA.

Riyadh relocated to suburban Chicago.

The outside is shitty. The inside is hideous.

R13 - American construction industry is for maximizing profit, so build the largest homes with cheapest materials. There's not enough 'starter homes' or mid priced homes being built.

I've been saying for many years that the government (well, not now under Trump) needs to go into housing development. There aren't enough homes being built and we're already short something like 8 million homes right now.

If nightmares came in white and silver…

Every country's construction industry is for maximizing profit.

It was built in 2022. That’s crazy! Looking at the photos, I assumed 1980-1990’s. Where would you even purchase furniture like that in 2022? Did they bring it from an equally hideous previous home?

This just makes no sense.

It’s in Illinois, but you want in through giant front doors directly into a basketball arena sized living area with marble floors.

It’s hard to imagine anything worse. I’m flabbergasted.

From the inside, the scroll-y grillwork surrounding the front door looks like vines taking over the house like in a horror movie.

Are the photos desaturated? The paint color/fabric/wood everything is almost the same shade of light gray, that can’t be possible.

We think it looks fab!

It's also extremely overpriced - Arlington Heights isn't exactly fancy or that desirable.

It's so confusing - those chandeliers, although not my taste, are not cheap. And the custom drapes are also very pricey. Then they fill it with every silver and white bauble and decor piece from Home Goods and TJ Maxx that they could get their hands on.

And that tile floor BETTER be heated underneath. You don't put cold hard tile over that much space in a cold climate. Hot climate, yes.

But I can't put my finger on where they're from - I can't find ANY decor or personal pieces that would identify a cultural identity, which is really weird.

It feels like Roma because there's something off - I feel like this crap was stolen from stores or some other fraud was being done.

I used to work in Arlington Heights. It’s an upper middle class conservative suburb so I’m sure the neighbors are horrified at that travesty.

GHASTLY!!!!

R24 - UMC? Maybe a few pocket areas, but it's decidedly middle class. Nobody is impressed if you live in Arlington Heights.

All that is missing is that eerily illuminated lighting through the floor tiles from that final scene in the film '2001 A Space Odyssey'.

I just looked at listings in Arlington Heights on Realtor.com and I was surprised at the prices. It’s not a cheap neighborhood but the homes were unattractive. Not as bad as this monstrosity, but crappy postwar McMansion adjacent construction.

Looks like something the trashy wife of a mid-level mafioso would think is high style and class.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I think the previous owners voted for Trump.

It looks like a rural neighborhood that has been absorbed into the suburbs due to population growth. The neighboring houses are significantly older and/or smaller, as though some were built a century ago, some in the post-war boom (and closer together), and now those being torn down and McMansions put up as quickly as possible. There appear to be no sidewalks and the roads neither designed nor built for suburban living with cars, children, and a community in mind.

Out-of-place shabby exterior, Nouveau riche tacky interior, and I agree with R23 and those cold tile floors... my feet hurt just looking at them. There's a reason they have throw rugs throughout, even on top of the carpet in the bedrooms. All that's missing is the indoor pool (so that the whole house has that clammy humidity and chlorine odor).

R29 - hmmm...I was thinking that too. Real estate agents are both Italian, but it doesn't FEEL Italian-inspired at all.

So many of those Mafia types love that Tuscan shit or there will be a wine room, or Italian flag or something identifiable. The sofas and chairs are so extra - like Russian, or Middle Eastern.

But there are a lot of columns. I couldn't get a read on the clothes in the closets either.

It's weird but it looks like they put everything out - all the pots and pans are on the stove, every container is out on a shelf, multiple towel sets are grouped together on the base of the tub.

Also - how the hell do you reach those shirts on the top of the closet? They're on racks. Is there a step ladder somewhere?

And there are FIVE tacky couches in a circle downstairs. Like I said in a previous post, there's something off and crime-y about this place.

thank god there were only 24 pics of that monstrosity.

and the staging is fucking horrendous...who puts a bunch of obstacles right at the entrance point of the sunken tub or canisters/containers of all sorts all over the kitchen counters like it's a goddamn showroom/museum?

[quote]And your understanding of the possessive plural is as bad as their taste.

LOL. English isn't my first language and I actually took a minute to think about how to write that correctly. How should it be written?

The outside looks like a funeral home.

I hate it and wish I had a clever quip to explain why but I can't come up with one. It is just perfectly hideous in every way. Has not one single redeeming factor.

Arlington Heights is a relentlessly bland boil on the ass of white suburbia, so this tracks.

[quote] A home unlike any you have ever seen before.

They ain't kidding.

R1 In German, there is this phrase about rich people "... Der hat auch nur einen A*sch zum sitzen" literally, "... and even he only has one ass for sitting", meaning that beyond a certain point, the enjoyment of wealth is naturally capped. This notion fills our souls with comfort. And my god this is tacky! Precious. And ... I noticed the ai "redesign" button but wasn't brave enough to use it.

It’s Arlington Heights so probably Greeks or some Eastern Europeans.

Isn't Arlington Heights where the house the Bundy Family from Married, With Children was located?

Also, no one with kids would ever want that house. White shows dirt and kids are dirt attractors.

My normal post for a hideous house like this. searching site finding house OK I'd rather live in something like this. Spend 200K buying it and 100K restoring it. Still not even half the cost. Again, I need water and when it goes over 72 degrees I'm dying. So it's a no for me.

like all the furniture was bought from the same place on the same day.

The furniture looks like it has leprosy.

The ammenities list DUELING ISLANDS. What the hell does that mean?

It looks like you'd get a stolen kidney transplant there.

Money laundering in monotone.

R40 - no the house was in Deerfield, which is actually a very nice area close to North Shore and very good schools. Kind of funny they would choose a house from that area for that type of family.

That asking price and no pool?

I’ll say. Consider the outside and redecorate. Those taxes are only $2,000. Don’t tell anyone. In other towns with more uniform home prices like that, they could easily be $20k. Chicago area real estate taxes are so high, they sometimes affect the sale price.

I don't understand the obstacle course surrounding the bathtub.

R49 - there's no way those taxes are only $2k. Where did you see that?

I see property taxes of $2700 a MONTH. I think you got lost. It says $2737 per month - or over $30k per year.

R51 Under the tax history it says 2022 $1,982 for taxes. I agree very suspicious. Why would it jump like that? But it is in Crook County so who knows. Maybe a mobster owned it.

You need to study the clothes in the closet. LOL

R52 - I think that was the taxes before the house was developed. The land was sold a few years ago for a few hundred thousand.

Property was built in 2022. So the taxes now are going to be high.

Where do you even buy furniture like that? A Liberace estate sale? 🎹

Whoever owned it, they didn’t build a fence for privacy nor gates for security .

About 20 years ago there was a furniture store in Chicago on Clark near Peterson that was devoted to furniture that looks just like that except it was obviously cheap quality. I was always amazed that people would have that stuff in their homes when I walked by the display windows. The aesthetic is popular among some Hispanics as well as groups mentioned above.

R57 - the one on the corner across from White Castle?

Yes, r58!!! Is it still there?

No decor in this house comes from American decor chains. Also, I don't think anything was inexpensive. It's all from a speciality dealer to an "oriental" clientele. If that is Saudi, Persian, Azerbaijan, who knows. Yes it's all tacky and vulgar and it may indeed be shoddy an ersatz, but nothing is low in price.

Saudis with 100 million to 300 million have better taste than this, by the way, so I would say a low level fortune for this family. Millionaires but not really wealthy.

I love the matching vitrines in the dining room. They look like Cinderella's carriage to the ball. I think kids would enjoy playing in them.

Much of these furnishes could be painted in Disney emerald tones, and gold, and it would look like a princess cartoon.

[quote]It doesnt look too bad from the exterior

This and merely mentioning the "front door" without a screech makes one wonder what is wrong with this OP.

R59 - no I don't think so - but I know obviously what you're talking about. I haven't lived in Chicago in years - but I think it was gone before I left.

R60 - I think you're right - it's the sofa and chair styles plus the huge rooms with tons of seating. That seems very Middle Eastern - although I've never seen it done in this style before.

But I don't see any other middle-eastern furnishings or 'signals'. It's a tough call - which is why it's so weird.

Throw in some gold paint and it would looking something Dump and Vairst Leddy would live in.

It looks like the inside of Adam Lambert's closet.

Riyadh by the (former) racetrack. Ugh.

Was expecting a white tiled pool in the backyard.

and suddenly it's a Trump thread. It took 64 posts, well above the average of nine, but still, kudos to you girlfriend.

Whenever I see color spelled "colour" I pronounce it "coloor" in my head.

R64 She certainly has the accent for a house like this.

The cavernous living room with seating for 35 people reminds me of a lot of Dubai real estate. I wonder if the original owner was a rich Arab.

The old owners probably have something larger and even more distasteful in South Barrington.

What about the possibility that all the decor is AI generated?

“Decorate it like we’re 1st generation in Chicago, with money but not taste.”

R73 - AI wouldn't and couldn't do it that poorly.

White drapery EVERYWHERE— even in a kitchen? Surely no one cooks in there anyway.

I couldn’t look at all the pics — it was that bad.

This tacky monstrosity should be burned down immediately.

It's a bad dream, I'm back in Dubai again...noooooooooo

It’s klassy and tasteful

WOW! We need to encourage Russia to send in one of those drones it used to bomb the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant. And we need to do it immediately.

Miss Havisham finally got married

Is this the ruins of Charn? Did anyone see Queen Jadis in the photos?

This thread is the funniest I've read in ages.

Thanks for posting OP and to everyone for their posts. Unfortunately I can't think of anything smart or witty to add at the moment.

[quote]So what country are we thinking they're from? I want to say Persian - but not many rugs. Romanian?

I was thinking Russian; it seems very Russian: tasteless, overdone, an attempt to steal other styles and failing miserably. Probably spent a shit ton of $$ only to have everything look like it came from the design center at a local well-stocked Home Depot.

Thanks R82, I thought people here might enjoy this little "gem"

R3 I wasnt saying the exterior is good, far from it, although if the entrance section and everything to the right of that were destroyed by Russian drones as R79 suggests, the remaining piece on the left would be relatively inoffensive, at least by comparison with everything inside

[quote]Are the photos desaturated? The paint color/fabric/wood everything is almost the same shade of light gray, that can’t be possible.

I wondered that too R21, which is what is was referring too in my title, it really does look like what happens when you turn the colour saturation slider down to zero in the settings on computer graphics/ display software. Except there's the occasional colour burst like in the bedroom

The whole thing from the ground up looks like a house built & decorated by some Eastern European lottery winner with the taste of a pig.

If you KNOW you are having professional pictures made of your bedroom, take the moving plastic OFF your bed chaise and pull down the goddamn fitted sheet so it covers your mattress.

For fuck's sake people.

Yes, I wondered if the furniture is actually all gilt and red velvet and such a screeching riot of garishness that the real estate agent had the photos desaturated in an effort to make it less awful. Although why keep a red bedspread.

Someone here must live close enough or know an agent to get the scoop on the owners.

Further to R87, has anyone near there consulted the Cook County Assessor's database? It requires a 14-digit PIN with no explanation of how to obtain one.

The owners (or the LLC or trust fronting from them) should be listed there.

It reminds me of Jennifer Aydin's house of RH of New Jersey fame. Tacky as hell and plenty of room for extended family to sit around perimeters of chair-edged rooms.

Was it mentioned the description that a family massacre happened there? They did a good job covering it up with truckloads of white and silver paint.

The place looks more haunted than the Winchester Mystery House.

The interior looks like a home Michael Jackson would have rented/decorated during his time hiding out with his kids in Bahrain

The Russians wouldn't drone it. They'd turn it into the White House.

FROZEN themed birthday parties for 10 year old girls?

Ghastly. And located on a busy road to boot!