I'm really glad they have a house they love, and it does fit their lifestyle. But the re-design McMansioned a historic structure. Which is just really sad.
That is the sort of house that used to be the landowning structure for all the fields surrounding suburbia got built on. Those kind of homes are exemplary within the neighborhoods that surround them. They are supposed to stand out. They have actual history and were not built last week. But now it looks like all the rest of them. It's a horrible mix of old, traditional farmhouse, and some kind of nouvea frank lloyd wright prairie house mish-mash. It's soup.
If they wanted this lifestyle, don't buy this house. If they want this house, don't make frank lloyd soup out of it. I feel awful for that house. It's actually painful. I am biased because I grew up in an area with historic structures and great pains were taken with them to remodel them in ways that honored the original feel of the past. That's gone now with this re-do.
Great lifestyle. Lovely people. Wrong house to do this to.