This week we skip another 20 years forward. In 1970, the year we’ve lept to, Mr. Smith has passed away and Mrs. Smith is in her 80’s. The house is too big for her, but she is vehemently against being put in a home, so her son has moved in to help manage the place. Let’s decide that the Smiths had three children. Their oldest, a son, has gone into the family business, he’s too busy to help out. Their middle child, a daughter, has children and a family of her own. The youngest Smith boy will be helping Mrs. Smith in her old age. He works under the oldest son at the family company and is very keen to prove he can do something his siblings can’t. He is easily in his 50s, but he’s got no family of his own and never strayed far from home. He isn’t a bad guy, he just lacks direction. We’ll call him Jimbo to avoid any more ‘Mr. Smith” nonsense.
The moment he walks into the house he announces everything is going to change. The place is drafty and old, and Mrs. Smith hasn’t had the energy to take proper care of it. He’s got a bit of a complex from being outshined by two successful older siblings, so he’s going to go above and beyond here. Not only is he going to make the place more comfortable, he’s also going to fully modernize it for her. His mother will spend her old age in a stylish modern masterpiece!
Modern for the New England area 70s, anyway. I’m sure all this money poured in will make the place really, really marketable in 20 years. This is actually an investment.
Those of you with taste should really avert your eyes for your own protection. Lucky for us, Jimbo isn’t interested in the exterior of the house. Unlucky for us, he has access to an entire building company’s worth of nepotism and materials. Uh oh.
He’s put laminate over the original hardwood floors and entirely gutted the kitchen. He even managed to swing a modern all-wood-exterior refrigerator. Take that, overachieving brother and sister.
More hardwood gone, this time for giraffe-print carpet. He’s gone with an accent piece in the dining room, and kept the living room and entry area ‘understated’. His mother keeps telling him she’s really fine and he doesn’t need to redo the place for her, but he insists. She wishes he’d keep up on the chores he’s actually there to do, like the laundry, but he’s pretty engrossed in the project at this point. Mrs. Smith’s daughter now comes over twice a week to help out despite her other responsibilities, and Jimbo presses on.
I’m almost tempted to spoiler the next image just for everyone’s stomachs. It is my solemn duty to inform you, though, he’s painted the wood stairs.
Mrs. Smith was put up on the couch for a night to allow Jimbo to put a coat of what we’ll call ‘Smoker’s Ivory’ on the hardwood staircase. A moment of silence, if you will.
Oh lord help us, he found the laundry room. The space Mr. and Mrs. Smith last worked on themselves, the blue paint she painstakingly put up, the tile they scrounged from worksites. Jimbo started on the basement because he was worried about the homemade PVC pipe railing, and then he just kept going.
As we get upstairs, to the rooms damaged during the Great Depression, Jimbo once again plays the hero. The leak has long since been fixed, but the mold persists. He spends an afternoon scrubbing at it with bleach, and once calls it ‘good enough’ as he hits it with a paint roller. Once the paint is dry, he finds it’s bubbled badly where the damage is. Fine, wood paneling it is.
The damage is still there, of course, but now it’s hidden under wood paneling! Best of…both…worlds?
The only rooms completely left alone are the attic and the bathroom. He would have redone the bathroom but Mrs. Smith insisted he didn’t. The pink tile was one of the few things in the house that was fully her decision, and she still very much likes it. Otherwise, it looks like we’re spending the next few decades surrounded by yellow, brown, and orange. Oh, joy.
Programming Language for Games
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
Do It Again, Stupid
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
I’m struck with the sudden realization that this project is actually a retelling of Beetlejuice.
I don’t have much to say, other than I enjoyed reading this
The slight nausea of such intense 70s decor really adds to the immersion of the piece. Well written, Bay!
I think you’re too hard on Jimbo. The place looks really nice after his redecorating!
“Nice” is…a word that…can be used to describe…certain things…sure!
What happened to the door to the kitchen…?
The back door Jimbo replaced with something he thought suited the space better. Same with the door into the kitchen, and the unseen door to the basement. They’re still there, the space just looks slightly different since they had to make room for the stairs to the basement in the last post.
I always enjoy these posts. The trip through time is fun and I would have no idea where to even begin were I to attempt this myself. Always looking forward to the next one.
I recently started watching Property Ladder on YouTube – a British show from the early aughts about developers buying houses, redoing them, building extensions and selling them.
What I find the most enjoyable is when they try to go for a “modern and stylish” interior design, similar to what we’re seeing here. And there’s just something so… 2005-2007 about those designs that I absolutely love it :D
The host herself (who’s an experienced property developer) often says that going for that style is a huge risk, but God bless the stupid people who never listen to her :D (and if you’re into seeing idiots not listening to experts and getting their comeuppance, try to hunt down the Property Ladder episodes from around 2008. That’s when it really gets good!)
How can you go for a timeless design with modern technology if you don’t know what is modern?
No excuse for Jimbo not getting someone to assess the damage though.
The point would be that going for ‘modern’ is a risk in itself. ‘Modern’ is something that will inherently age and become ‘dated’ very quickly. You’re better off going for ‘timeless’ which is a trickier thing to nail down, but when done correctly can keep the value up for years to come.
I really feel like someone with this thinking in the past is what led to me growing up in a bedroom with an orange shag carpet.
I’d like to comment but I’m blind to interior design aesthetics to the point I can’t see anything outrageously wrong here.
But felt the need to comment to show I’m still following. Call it “spamcare”.
*presses f to pay respects*
Aaa! This giant project, and he didn’t fix the one thing that was actually wrong…
Y’know… maybe he has good qualities, somewhere, but he’s clearly being a huge asshole here!
*Offers to help, but it’s purely about his own ego
*Doesn’t do the stuff that he is allegedly there to do, at all. Doing the laundry? Pffft, that’s not glamorous or impressive! He’s not there to be, like, a maid, gross. Laundry is beneath him (even though it’s specifically what he’s supposed to be there to do). Not beneath his sister, though!
*Doesn’t listen to the person who actually needs help, because what does she know. This isn’t about you, mom.
*Isn’t even trying to do anything actually useful, as far as I can see–except maybe the basement railing. He’s not improving the insulation or anything. The house isn’t going to be any less drafty or inconvenient when he’s done! It’s all purely cosmetic.
*Actively inconveniences his 80-yo mother when she’s in the way of his idiot vanity project.
*Fails to fix the one thing that is 1)actually wrong and 2)in range of this project, and just hides it instead. It’s not like mold is a health or structural hazard, right?
Yeah. ?
Well, it doesn’t really seem to be as much of an ego problem as it is an issue with a massive inferiority complex. I know it sounds like it’s the same, but saying it’s about ego implies he’s doing this to please himself, while he’s actually doing it because he wants to please others, he just doesn’t know how to.
He’s not a bad guy, just terribly misguided and not particularly skilled.
Yeah, but to me it slides over to “being an asshole” (of the dumb, thoughtless variety, not the actively malicious variety) when he doesn’t listen to his mom and continues his project OVER her protests. I think in general if someone tells you they don’t want the “help” you’re trying to give them, you should at least believe that they don’t want it, and re-evaluate what you’re doing–not just automatically assume you know better and that they’d be grateful if they really thought about it.
Plus not providing the actual, specific, help he’d agreed(?) to kind of makes it like a bait and switch!
Finally some good interior design, but where the lava lamps at?
Aside from the colors of the drapes and carpet and the specific pattern on the couches, that photo could have been taken in my grandmother’s living room (on the island I grew up on). Those lamps, the coffee tables/end tables with the little columns, the standing candles, the stuff on the tables and the walls… those things are some of my earliest memories, haha.
Also I have become remarkably invested in the story of the Smiths. Its been a very fun series and very well written!
At least the place wasn’t haunted by Mr. Smith