Where do the stairs at the bottom of the pool go? Where?!?

June 27, 2017 7:47 PM

Going to Orlando? With 29 of your favorite friends? And looking for a place to stay? Why not rent The Captain's Quarters III? You might never even make it to DisneyWorld.
posted by Mchelly (94 comments total)

In case that was too mystery-meat-y, just... just look at the pictures.
posted by Mchelly at 7:48 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Delightfully tacky. Looks like the sort of thing I would've designed when I was about 10 years old, except there's no roller skating rink.
posted by Ickster at 7:58 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

Oh man. There's a couple places like this in Palm Springs (CA), and I'm thinking about renting one for my 50th birthday.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:08 PM on June 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

The only space that isn't completely awful and hideous appears to be the laundry room.
posted by Flashman at 8:09 PM on June 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I rendered one of those rooms (zebra print carpet, stone wall, black/brown sofa, blue chairs, green polyhedron table thingies) in POV-Ray about 20 years ago.
posted by Spatch at 8:15 PM on June 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

My sims would have loved it.
posted by loquacious crouton at 8:23 PM on June 27, 2017 [42 favorites]

I was more into Captain's Quarters I, and to a lesser extent Captain's Quarters II. Now they've totally sold out.
posted by HeroZero at 8:24 PM on June 27, 2017 [17 favorites]

I was going to ask someone to explain the pool to me but now I see the post's title. (But seriously, where do they go?!?!?)

Actually, upon further inspection, I think it's so someone can serve drinks and still be eye-level to the people in the pool without being in the pool themselves. That's a boring answer though. I'm sorry.

Also, while the rooms look like someone vomited up a bag of Skittles, the bedrooms weren't too bad -- until I got to the salmon pink one. Then I was like "noooooooo" *clickclickclick* "make it go awayyyyyyyyy."
posted by paisley sheep at 8:26 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

As further evidence that I should never win the lottery I like the colour scheme. I mean not for a home but to stay in a week for a family reunion or something it's kind of funky.
posted by Mitheral at 8:32 PM on June 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Really, there's *nothing* untacky in this house. It's a masterpiece, in its way.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:39 PM on June 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Seconding paisley sheep, it's for the bartender who gets to stand in the Florida heat in a tuxedo serving you drinks in the pool.
posted by nestor_makhno at 8:42 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

To quote the gentleman I overheard once while milling about the Americana mall in Glendale, CA, the architect who designed this place had a lot of class.
posted by hwyengr at 8:47 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

See, now if I win the lottery, I will let that pool bartender dress in whatever he's comfortable in. I just want drinks, I don't need to feel classy about it.
posted by stevis23 at 8:50 PM on June 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

I would kill for that kitchen.

Every other room, though, I just want to kill.
posted by vverse23 at 8:51 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

this place has square toilet ideas and taps that peel out of the mirror

it is beautiful in a cocainey sort of way

I would like to visit it but I would be grasped with a dread that there were things that happened here that were every bit as dreadful as the ones that haunt a ruined Second Empire 19th century mansion
posted by Countess Elena at 8:52 PM on June 27, 2017 [22 favorites]

Yeah... like that place is garishly beautiful, but unless they hire a forensic cleaning crew between tenants, I'd hate to run a black light through that place...
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Why ALL driving games? You could have done so much better! MAME cabinets! Killer Queen!

The rest of it seems fun enough but you know everyone would just hang out in the kitchen and then fall asleep in a pile in front of a movie.
posted by poe at 9:00 PM on June 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

thanks for the reminder that although i may be poor, at least i have taste
posted by entropicamericana at 9:03 PM on June 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

I like the lazy river around the pool. And I'm admire their dedication to arcade games. But oh my, is that garish.

I just drifted off into daydreaming about how awesome it would be to have a lazy river in my backyard. I don't swim, but I do enjoy lounging in an inner tube with a book. And we could build a bridge over the lazy river and have a kick ass patio in the center. With a brick oven for pizza. Alas, but the high water table makes that impossible. (My across the street neighbor lives on a little hill and is the only one in my neighborhood who is able to have an inground pool. The rest of us deal with flooded basements on the regular.)
posted by Ruki at 9:04 PM on June 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

poe: "Why ALL driving games? You could have done so much better! MAME cabinets!"

It's entirely possible that one of those stand ups is a MAME or switchable to MAME and the preponderance of driving games is because you really can't virtualize the interface the way you can with joystick and button games.

Also you really want to think twice about having a massive collection of copyright infringement (the ROMs) available in a commercial facility that your are renting to the public.

Or maybe the owner just likes driving games.
posted by Mitheral at 9:21 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I feel like if Kate from McMansion Hell ever saw this, her head would explode from all the Certified Dank™ in that place.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 9:23 PM on June 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

I don't like to leave things half-done so I found myself grimly clicking through all the images, and at some point - maybe the 10th bedroom that featured two full beds and on the opposite wall a dresser with a TV hung above it and flanked by two lounge-able chairs, every one of which somehow looked radically different from the rest yet exactly the same - I started to feel physically ill. By the end I both ill and angry. There's something about that slideshow that digs deep into some primitive shit in my brain and pushes all the no-no buttons. I think a lot of it had to do with how there's no rhyme or reason, it just went bedroom, bedroom, pool, kitchen, bedroom, bedroom, another kitchen, patio, pool, game room, bedroom and I had no sense of when it would end, what part of the house I was in, nothing at all. There were two bizarre bathtubs that I swear looked out on the same neighbor's roof, as if the listing agent (or some cosmic architect) just copy/pasted the view. There's no way you could convince me to look through all that again to find out if I was just imagining it. I know what I saw. There are no hallways. It's an impossible superpositioning of rooms upon rooms, a sprawl of inconceivabilities. Some people maintain that cancer killed Lovecraft but I now know that someone managed to send these images back in time and every cliched instance of "oh! the horror! I can not describe it!" is a direct result of him having been subjected to the same things I've seen. The colour of the captain's quarters out of space mountain of madness.
posted by komara at 9:24 PM on June 27, 2017 [43 favorites]

ObSF: Heinlein, "He Built A Crooked House."
posted by Chrysostom at 9:27 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just really, really want to see the floor plan. How does it all fit? By the time I got to the basketball court, the fitness center and the indoor third pool, I couldn't imagine it all in the same house anymore.
posted by mmc at 9:56 PM on June 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

MetaFilter: beautiful in a cocainey sort of way
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 9:56 PM on June 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

You know you're rich when you have a whole room dedicated to just two vases.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 9:59 PM on June 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

I have to give props to whoever built it-they did go all in. But it looks like they waited for the Overstock sale for all the furnishings and then said- HEY- let's not be afraid of color!
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 10:03 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

I just really, really want to see the floor plan. How does it all fit? By the time I got to the basketball court, the fitness center and the indoor third pool, I couldn't imagine it all in the same house anymore.

Maybe it's like the House of Leaves, and the interior measurements are somehow larger than the exterior measurements, and also it fills you with dread with each passing moment spent inside.

Or maybe it's the Winchester mansion of late capitalism, built to confuse and preoccupy the vengeful ghosts of disappointed vacationers.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:19 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

Maybe it's like the House of Leaves, and the interior measurements are somehow larger than the exterior measurements

Or my ex-wife with all you can eat cinnamon toast...
posted by Samizdata at 10:46 PM on June 27, 2017

Heh, I too was like, "Oooh, look at all the furniture from Overstock!"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:33 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's like a national monument dedicated to the memory of every episode of MTV's Cribs.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:02 AM on June 28, 2017 [10 favorites]

> It's like a national monument dedicated to the memory of every episode of MTV's Cribs.


Remember when you heard about all those folks from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, et al, eventually declaring bankruptcy? You may have thought "well, what exactly do the businesses that acquire those properties in the settlement *do with them*"?

Now you know.

Also, you now know what they mean by "I'm going to Disney World!"
posted by mrzarquon at 12:18 AM on June 28, 2017

"Down". Unless you're at the other end, in which case, "up."
posted by quinndexter at 12:36 AM on June 28, 2017

What happens in this room? It looks like some complicated ritual human sacrifice situation.
posted by taz at 12:48 AM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

liquorice: I thought I found it with a floor plan, but alas, it's a different 14 bedroom Disney area vacation rental (somewhat more tastefully decorated... somewhat). But you might enjoy it anyway:

8005 Twin Eagles Loop
posted by NormieP at 1:07 AM on June 28, 2017

It could be this one.
posted by NormieP at 1:10 AM on June 28, 2017

Sentient Chairs meet once again to discuss the persistent problem of what is supposed to go in the empty bookcases.

Giant insect contemplates false promise of escape from hellish decor.

Anyway, enough of that. Idea: Time for a remake of The Shining? Because this has Redrum written all over it.
posted by taz at 1:14 AM on June 28, 2017 [8 favorites]

What happens in this room? It looks like some complicated ritual human sacrifice situation.

It is one of the cheaper rooms at the Black Lodge. Incidentally, does it look like the corner (bottom right) of the carpet bends down? It is like the photographer was hanging over some kind of bottomless pit on one side of the room.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:23 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I counted 55 TVs.
posted by minervous at 1:56 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Assuming you have 29 friends who also want to go to disney world in November, it's really not that expensive: $2600 / 30 ~= $87 / person / night, which is what you'll pay for a bad hotel room without even a single bowling lane in many cities.
posted by Pyry at 1:58 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I bet that place has seen some wicked orgies.
posted by ZaneJ. at 2:25 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Something wicked this way comes.
posted by taz at 2:35 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

For me it's impossible to tell (for some of these) which are actual photos and which are renderings from some interior design software/artist's representations. Because some of them are not photos- you can just tell!

And yeah- I can only imagine the rundown state this place is in, when you see it live. Glowingly fresh, bright-shiny unspoilt tacky is cute and funky... But tacky that's seen umpteen rounds of visitors is ragged, worn, dirty, and funky in a whole other way.... I bet in person it's repulsive AF. Even if the aforementioned forensic cleaning crew is called in after every visit.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 2:40 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Notch is kicking himself right now.
posted by uncleozzy at 3:13 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

What happens in this room? It looks like some complicated ritual human sacrifice situation.

I thought it looked like something from The Sims.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:21 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The... "design" of that karaoke room is a gut punch of late 90s roller rink birthday party nostalgia for me. I can practically smell the pizza grease and stale air conditioning.
posted by mcfighty at 3:52 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well, I always wondered what the house from the B-52s "Private Idaho" might look like.

Don't go on the patio!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:55 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

On the ground like a wild potato!!
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:15 AM on June 28, 2017

I only made it through about 10 of the snaps, thinking, "yes, yes, I can see it's in Florida," before wandering away in disinterest. In the metier of tacky, the native aesthetic of the sunshine state, this seems like typical journeyman work.
posted by Diablevert at 4:21 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Something wicked this way comes.

And that way. And that other way too. Just use a black light and you'll see.

This post is good Metafilter.
posted by spitbull at 4:56 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

30 boarders at $2499 per night, makes roughly $90 a head. Throw in another 10-15 stowaways passed out on the couches and floors, and you have a pretty cheap - yet classy - spring break par-tay weekend.
posted by klarck at 5:01 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's very adolescent male and very Florida. The very canny MeFite will suss out that those might not be compliments.
posted by theora55 at 5:12 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

If Josh Baskin ("Big") hadn't found the fortune teller to change him back, but instead had made a shit-ton of money, this is what he would have built as a follow-up to that loft.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:47 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

*looks at the scenic vistas of golf courses, bare dirt and close-packed cookie cutter McMansions*

yup, it's in Florida
posted by indubitable at 5:48 AM on June 28, 2017

Probably don't look at the photos while listening to the Apprehension Engine.

Or do, I guess.
posted by allthinky at 5:57 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is a house near us which has, over the past 30 years, burgeoned into an unfinished monster with two full kitchens and a gigantic pool in the yard, way out of scale with its neighbors. It was just revealed that the owner was using ongoing expensive construction as a means of masking his illicit drug business. The place has every possible extravagance.

I'm sure the similarity ends there, but still, Captains Quarters III feels like something built by someone whose chief goal was to spend as much money as possible.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:59 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Only 4 pinball machines? Come on, there is so much wasted space. I could fit 50 in that place easy
posted by Theta States at 6:12 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Huh. I actually took a photo of the herringbon tile in one of the bathrooms, as it may solve a design puzzle I'm trying to figure out right now.

I would get so lost in this house. Crazy. But the point about it working out financially versus hotel rooms is a good one. And that couple of weeks before Thanksgiving is, in my opinion, the BEST time to visit Orlando. (Did you note the cleaning fee of about $700 per stay, in addition to the basic rental?)

My biggest beef is with the all-modern pinball machines. REALLY? That much money and space and you can't include a single EM classic? They are multi-generational crowd pleasers! Seriously, pop an Evel Knievel in there and Grandpa/Grandmom and the littlest kids have an easily-shared pleasure.

(The Pinball Lounge is driveable from Disney, and will meet your pinball needs when the Captain leaves you seething in despair.)
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 6:14 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I call the vase room the "ketchup and mustard room".
posted by freecellwizard at 6:15 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

It could be this one.
posted by NormieP at 4:10 AM on June 28 [+] [!]

Now, the genius of the room design is that if you measure the outside, and then the inside, you'll find the internal measurements are actually larger than the external ones. There's this neat trick where if you make the chairs face each other you can hear a faint howling coming from the dark passage in the closet.
posted by Theta States at 6:23 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

My biggest beef is with the all-modern pinball machines. REALLY?

nein. If you're renting the place out you want the most hassle-free and risk-free machines there. Fused to the gills.
You wouldn't want some EM coil getting stuck and frying and some drunk partier just walking away from the machine.

But the lineup should be TWD, AC/DC, Metallica, Star Trek, GoT, SMVE. That foosball table doesn't need to be there, you couldn't even play it in that spot, and no one needs Kiss or WWE.
posted by Theta States at 6:28 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Someone I knew used to describe ostentatious-fever-dream interior decor as "helluscious." I haven't seen her in years but I'm just itching to send her the link to these pictures, as the apex of the form.
posted by Sublimity at 6:28 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't get you all. I'm all in. I want to experience going from room to room. I want to get lost within the brightly colored walls. I want to spend a day trying out thirty identical racing games, to see which one I like the best. I want to do this.

Then again, I also love Jupiter Ascending.
posted by meese at 7:08 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

Assuming you have 29 friends who also want to go to disney world in November, it's really not that expensive:...

I live in New England, and my mom used to ask whether she could rent a place on Cape Cod where "everyone" could come out (from the Midwest) and stay for a week. At this point we are up to 13 grandkids and 9 adults on just my side of the family, so that would be one hell of a summer cottage. Of course, I have never seen a large enough house anywhere near the Cape that's available for rent that wasn't already a B&B...and if it existed, it would cost like $10k/week.

But this place, however ghastly, would have been a godsend for my mom's vacation plans: ugly enough to talk about for years, plenty of TVs for rainy day movie-watching (and kitchen seats for coffee-drinking), and enough space for everyone to get away from each other.

The protective goggles for the kids might get pricey, but they could use them again for high school chemistry class so that's probaby OK.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:10 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

(Did you note the cleaning fee of about $700 per stay, in addition to the basic rental?)

What?! Most of the decor emits enough UV that it should be self-cleaning, like an oven.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:12 AM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

The words 'stools in the pool' strike fear in my heart.
posted by h00py at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Living in Orlando, I had to figure out where this was. I found it on google maps. Not much more information, but here is another listing on the linked site.

I live near Universal Orlando, and I always forget that there is this entire world not that far from me that is still completely foreign to me.
posted by Badgermann at 8:06 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

liquorice: "Also, there seems to be 2 double beds in almost all of the bedrooms but the listings say there are 14 bedrooms and can sleep 30. Surely they mean at least 40?"

They have a listing of beds by bedroom, a lot of the rooms "just" have single Kings and most of the two bed rooms have twins (assumed to be single occupant per):

First Floor

• Grand Master Suite 1 – King bed
• Master Suite 2 – Two Full-size beds
• Master Suite 3 – King-size bed
• Master Suite 4 – King-size bed

Second Floor

• Master Suite 5 – Two Twin-size beds
• Master Suite 6 – Two Twin-size beds
• Master Suite 7 – Two Twin-size beds
• Master Suite 8 – Two Twin-size beds
• Master Suite 9 – King bed
• Master Suite 10 – Two Full-size beds

Third Floor

• Master Suite 11 – King bed
• Master Suite 12 – King bed
• Master Suite 13 – Two Full-size beds

Third Floor Private Suite

• Private Master Suite 14 – King bed

Even then the math doesn't work out. I wonder if there is some local regulatory/tax reason to limit it officially to 29 people.
posted by Mitheral at 8:19 AM on June 28, 2017

Are there other stairs in the pool that I'm missing? The only stairs I see are bridges so you can get in the pool without having to wade through the lazy river like some kind of icky poor person.
posted by artychoke at 9:07 AM on June 28, 2017

There are stairs in this shot that seem to lead to the service side of the swim-up bar.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:19 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

...or the secret level where they keep the really fun stuff YOU CAN'T HANDLE
posted by Mchelly at 9:30 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

The real problem is all the cable repairmen and pizza delivery guys who show up all hours of the night and just wait expectantly, asking where they should stand.
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:12 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

omg, you have to check out NormieP's link. It's an Antebellum mansion facade grafted onto a minimalist modern back end with Regency, Empire, Frank Lloyd Wright antiques, a dining table from St Paul's, Marla Maples bathroom vanity, a stainless steel bathroom...every bedroom has a completely different theme: Japanese, Cape Cod, 60s Mod, Hollywood, Key West, Santa Fe, Old West, New Orleans...

The scariest photo is the overhead view. The homes on the right are equally massive, built right out to the lot line, and on the left is a freshly bulldozed dirt lot, awaiting the next maga-mansion. This is a thing which I never knew about until today.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:51 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't know if "maga-mansion" was a misspelling, but if so it was a provident one, because there's no better term to describe some houses.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fool for tacky beach vacation architecture. Some of the happiest days of my life were spent in a vacation rental in Seaside, Florida, before they beiged it up to film The Truman Show there, and if I won the lottery I'd be looking the place up on Trulia. And I love elaborate pools and lazy rivers. But this place somehow raises the hairs on my neck, the sense that "behind every great fortune, there is a great crime," sort of thing. Possibly it was intended all along as a rental property and there's no need to feel that way. I'm just a superstitious woman, I suppose.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:02 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

It is about 1/2 mile from a nice little horse pasture / barn that I've stayed at.

That part of FL is really weird. It used to be all horses/cattle because the soil won't grow much. Just brutually hot, humid misery that smelled like seedy livestock.

When Champion's Gate opened and the 2008 real estate crash happened it became a wasteland of deserted and empty subdivisions. Now the McMansions are taking over. The new residents appear to have voluntarily spent vast sums to live in a place that I left because it sucked and there was nothing to do.
posted by pdoege at 11:11 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

omg, you have to check out NormieP's link.

The 3D Tour thing is pretty cool. Too bad the The Captain's Quarters III's listing doesn't have that.
posted by achrise at 11:29 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The 3D Tour thing is pretty cool. Too bad the The Captain's Quarters III's listing doesn't have that.

You'd need more than three dimensions to represent the topology of The Captain's Quarters III.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:44 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

Yea, one wrong click and suddenly you're inside your monitor looking out, then you slowly turn around, and the two guys from the Money For Nothing video welcome you to your new existence.
posted by achrise at 11:55 AM on June 28, 2017 [16 favorites]

So, these houses are mostly built from the start to be vacation rentals (when i was a kid, my family would club together with a couple of other families and rent significantly scaled-down versions in the Outer Banks) but this seems like a good time to introduce you guys to a house that has been the bane of my existence since it was built. I drive past it every time I go to my parent's house. It is emphatically not a vacation rental; people are supposed to fucking live in this monstrosity. Behold.

you can't see it in the pictures but there are bronze eagles on the gateposts and fake palm trees that they planted when the real palm trees died because we're in goddamn Maryland. Also they light it with purple spotlights at night. I hate it SO MUCH.
posted by nonasuch at 4:52 PM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

It might have five or six too many roofs and minarets but the Casa De Amor (which means literally, House Of Love) of Potomac is leaps ahead of The Captain's Quarters III. You can at least see that it's made with some craft from quality materials (that mosaic pool, e.g., is beautiful), while the CQ III is just foam and stucco, slapped together.
Fake palm trees and purple spotlights are pretty awful though
posted by Flashman at 6:11 PM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

The exterior of the Casa de Amor is attractive; it's the interior that is completely mobbed up. I am pretty sure, from the water stains, that the statue of the lady in the small fountain has jets installed in her nipples.

Fantastic pool though. I am all about strange swimming pools. If we can't have deep ends anymore we should at least have mosaics.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:34 PM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well, nipples *are* supposed to expel liquid....
posted by Chrysostom at 6:53 PM on June 28, 2017

Maybe I just have really poor taste but I'd gladly live in the Casa De Amor (maybe turn off the purple spotlights though)
posted by Orca at 7:15 PM on June 28, 2017

I bet in person it's repulsive AF. Even if the aforementioned forensic cleaning crew is called in after every visit.
This comment haunted me. The rugs, man, all on the edges. I've been in kindly-worn rentals and can attest to it being a thing even when grammie comes by occasionally and there are like fifteen things in the place.

Badgerman's Goog' map shows it in Freeway Gardens. Freeway. Gardens.

That's motherlovin' sand trap doe. You could put that house in the middle of it and still have more sand moat than your neighbors have gap.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:48 PM on June 28, 2017

The mosaic pool is a WADING POOL, according to the listing , and 'Versace mansion inspired' because of course it is.

Honestly, while the Casa de Amor is and always will be my nemesis, it does have a fair bit of competition from the rest of that stretch of River Road. Probably this should really go in the McMansion Hell thread, but my god there are some tacky-ass faux chateaux along that drive. And a tacky-ass faux Monticello. And some egregious crimes against Craftsman architecture. And this collection of Pringles cans with a house built around them. It's lawyer foyers and roof nubs everywhere you look, basically.
posted by nonasuch at 8:15 PM on June 28, 2017

Chrysostom: "Well, nipples *are* supposed to expel liquid...."

And yet I've never seen a statue with water dispensing nipples that had a dozen holes like real human nipples [NSFW? - bare human breast being expressed]; they are always a single stream. Not that I'm a water fountain nipple connoisseur or anything.
posted by Mitheral at 10:30 PM on June 28, 2017

The mosaic pool is a WADING POOL, according to the listing

Wait - why? I mean, even if you don't have the underground space or the desire for a full pool, why not make it an endless pool thing so you can at least swim in it? All the toddler-drowning risk, now for an eighth of the fun!
posted by Mchelly at 10:34 PM on June 28, 2017

Because the point of the pool is to have water covering the mosaic; the deeper the water the harder it is to see the mosaic and the more the edges of the mosaic are hidden behind the walls.
posted by Mitheral at 10:41 PM on June 28, 2017

Remember Camp Mefi? Forget cruises or campgrounds -- this place is just crying out for a meetup.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:18 PM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Honestly, while the Casa de Amor is and always will be my nemesis, it does have a fair bit of competition from the rest of that stretch of River Road.

Oh my god, it took me a minute to realize everyone was talking about THAT house. I grew up in Maryland, and we always used to drive by there on our way to the canal or one of the pick-your-own farms in Poolesville. THAT house. So many memories of driving by and discussing, as a family, how that place could have been built.

It's been a while since I lived there, but I think my personal nemesis was the one with the really tiny windows set really high in the wall (maybe that's Casa de Amor?). All the walls were this horrible pastel beige, and these tiny little windows just looked horrible. It was the most enormous, most ugly monster of a house I think I've ever seen.

There was a house we used to call the "Park Lane Hotel" because it was just a big brick building that took up every square inch of the lot it was on. In this neighborhood of (mostly) modest houses, it looked like a hotel. It remains, to this day, the worst McMansion I've ever seen, in a neighborhood I remember being increasingly packed with them even 20 years ago.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:03 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Not that I'm a water fountain nipple connoisseur or anything.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:04 PM on June 29, 2017

For those that enjoy their kitsch more refined, be sure to check out The Madonna Inn on the west coast... (hover over the names for images)
posted by Theta States at 6:13 AM on June 30, 2017

Whatever, I like it. I like the color. I like all the bathrooms, I would do a bathing tour of all of them. I'm over boring ass off white minimalists looks in the name of taste.
posted by WeekendJen at 12:18 PM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

There are some seriously sweet bathrooms. I'll give you that.
posted by Mchelly at 2:41 PM on June 30, 2017