I just finished speed-reading the new book, House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes by Daniel McGinn. It was facinating to get the inside scoop about the excesses of square foot mania, new home neurosis, renovation psychology, tempting TV shows, flipping failures, agent career stats, and vacation home valuation. It seems that the home tours, including bathrooms, and discussions of real estate values over the past five or six years I experienced at parties were not some local fad, but part of a nation-wide obsession with houses as the ultimate trophy to prove something to the neighbors and ourselves.
I certainly have been part of the craze, scanning real estate sections on Saturday mornings to see what homes were going for in various neighborhoods, including my own. I have watched a few episodes of HGTV, at least enough to know that if we had cable I would be addicted to at least a couple. Our own building project is far enough away that I can't camp out at the job site every day. However, I am starting to gear up for the main house project, one I know will involve many more decisions and could easily spiral out of control. Reading this book helped me plant my feet firmly in the smaller, more efficient house camp, after all, the kids will start leaving the nest 6 years after we move in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Well, our neighbors are too far away to impress, but we do love our house, and are always working on it in some way.
Is it obsession or lust?
I don't know. In the process of buying this house and moving in, we bought brand new furniture for the first time (we are middle-aged so we waited a long time) and I certainly wandered the aisles of home improvement and home decorating stores, dreaming. Now I mostly have the house the way I want it, and I sometimes cruise the Home sections at places like Target, but not as often. Mostly I look, I hardly ever buy anything.
Maybe "house obsession" is a stage.
I remember watching TOH and dreaming.Now we are slowly putting in wooden floors ourselves, and we are plenty busy with that.
I guess you could say that my husband is a champion DIYer, whereas I dabble in it, but am more interested in the results than the process!
Post a Comment