Eight-time Grammy-winner Mary J. Blige just bought a new place in Saddle River, New Jersey. This 4.2-acre home was on the market for $17 million, but the hip-hop artist got it for a bargain when she bought it earlier this month for $12.3. In cash.
A source close to Blige told the NY Daily News, “She [...]
By JULIA @ HOOKEDONHOUSES.NET
Real homes are to model houses what we normal women are to fashion models. Supermodel Cindy Crawford famously admitted, “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. I have fat days, ugly days, blimp days, days that I just feel terrible about myself. I don’t want to have to be beautiful all the [...]
One of the biggest problems with houses today is that so few of them have any real character. If you read my post about our family-room makeover, or saw the photos from my writing-room makeover, you know we started with a big, blank slate of white boxy rooms when we moved into our house.
Our solution? A [...]
Sometimes it’s hard to know when it’s time to move on, and when you’re better off staying put. Especially in this real estate market, things are trickier than ever.
One of our neighbors argues that we should all sell now because the market might get worse before it gets better. Another wants to sell but is putting it off until the market [...]
In the interest of full disclosure, since we’re talking about wallpaper today, I have to admit that I used to sell it. I not only worked for a year at Wallpapers to Go, but I sold more rolls than I can count as a designer’s assistant in the 1990s.
Maybe this explains my aversion to it [...]
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I’ll admit it. I have a history of picking the wrong paint colors. There was the Craftsman White, which looked completely neutral on the chip but turned a pale yellow in our foyer. The Irish Spurge, which turned our upstairs hallway into a dark, depressing cave. And let’s not forget Compatible Cream, which was a decidedly incompatible yellow-gold in my [...]
I just discovered a fun new book called The House Always Wins by Marni Jameson. Not only is it filled with helpful advice for the do-it-yourself decorator, but it’s laugh-out-loud funny, too. My favorite combination!
Some of the topics the book covers:
Why your house will never look like a model.
A sane person’s guide to choosing flooring.
Cabinets are like [...]
Your favorite posts for the past week here at Hooked on Houses kind of surprised me. First of all, so many people stopped by to see A House as Big as Utah that my blog broke all records for most-visitors-in-one-day.
The second most popular post was one I wrote over a month ago that had never [...]
Well, folks, you know it’s bad in America when rich-as-Croesus attorneys like Keith Barton, who owned this sprawling estate in Alpine, Utah, lose their homes to foreclosure, too. The house is on 9 acres with an incredible mountain view. Barton, a personal injury attorney who is famous for his “One Call–That’s All!” TV commercials, tried [...]
I love touring fabulous houses, even if the only way I can see them is online. I’m betting that since you came to a site called “Hooked on Houses,” you do, too.
Here’s a 100-year old mansion in the Compton Heights neighborhood of St. Louis that has 4,400 sq ft with 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths. [...]
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"Julia, I love the name of your blog but really, you should issue a warning to go along with the name...a girl like me needs to know that I WILL GET HOOKED on Hooked on Houses. Your blog is wonderful!" -Pat Layton
