15 Comments
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Lee Macdonald's avatar

Have you ever noticed that the second peacock reflects as a face in the mirror? And can you now unsee it?

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Regina Savage's avatar

Your dining room is just lovely- the wall paper and mirror have so much expression and character. They seem to be telling a story:) the trip up state was definitely worth it and gotta love chat gpt!

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Mark Sundstrom's avatar

That's a nice solution, and I've been wondering how you accomplished that ever since you posted the photo on X/Twitter. My house isn't nearly as old (twenty-something) and thank-goodness no plaster walls, but I'll consider ChatGPT as one of my advisors for some upcoming projects.

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AB1977's avatar

The room looks beautiful, but I feel like you gave up too early on taking up the walking-through-doors hobby.

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Dennis Bittner's avatar

AI's not (yet) perfect, and it will likely always be somewhat dangerous, but it seems to be getting better all the time......maybe exponentially, but human brains don't do that well on grasping exponential changes anyway.

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Paul not the apostle's avatar

Ok. Interesting and slightly troubling. If technology helps us do something or makes us feel better are there other human reasons to still not embrace it? I understand this is another step on a continuum but at some point people are going start to want to hand out human rights to AI and pretend they are us.

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Doug Freeman's avatar

Well done! Please send a pic to the chatbot to get its feedback and let us know what it thinks!

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Tony's avatar

Where I come from we just tear down all the interior walls of a house like yours and make it open concept from the front door to the back door. Load bearing walls are carefully replaced with supporting beams in the ceiling and the non-load bearing ones are just knocked down with abandon. Victorian houses had little narrow hallways, cramped parlours and dining rooms, and far too many doors for modern life. Open concept design makes for functional space and loft-like airiness (especially if you have the high ceilings found in Victorians) but it’s not for everyone. A friend of mine says it’s like living in a fuselage and to be honest, it is pretty charmless and every open concept row house looks the same inside. You, on the other hand, created a super charming space that I hope you wind up using often. It looks wonderful and, hell, the next owner can knock down the walls.

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Kat Rosenfield's avatar

I’m an open concept hater!

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Mark Sundstrom's avatar

I'd like to ask why - and not in an adversarial way, just curious (maybe a future column topic?). I lived in a high-rise condo for many years which we helped design as mostly open, with two moving walls to close off spaces. In the late 90s I had read about moving walls so requested the designers include them. It was fun, and everybody who saw them loved them (or at least said they did!) They had some see-through parts, spaces for art, etc. I have moved (literally) beyond that but overall enjoyed the concept.

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Paula's avatar

Have it both ways, open concept or closed concept depending on circumstances. Open allowed panoramic views of the city and nice office space. Close the wall and you have a private

guest bedroom.

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snek's avatar

Job well done and it looks really great. I've been delegating all kinds of jobs to chatGPT with mostly successful results.

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OGRE's avatar

When me and my wife were looking for our house, we ran into some issues like that. We live in Florida though, so there aren’t any homes as old as what you have there.

There was one house that literally had no closets. It wasn’t that old, it was built in the 1970s. It had one giant pantry as you came into the front door — into the kitchen — that was it. None of the bedrooms had closets either. Perhaps they were big C. S. Lewis fans?

Some houses are just laid out strangely. Most newer homes are cookie cutter, so there isn’t too much variance. But many of the older homes sometimes have really cool, or really weird features.

I heard of these houses in Georgia, where on one side of town, all of the windows go down to the floor — all the way around the house. Come to find out that it was a workaround for tax purposes. There were some places that taxed homes based on “finished” square footage — or window area, windows were seen as “luxury features.” So, the workaround was to bring the windows to the floor, and claim that they were doorways, or walls (if the glass was glazed).

There’s some really strange stuff out there.

But what you did looks cool, and pairs nicely with the peacock wall!

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WSLaFleur's avatar

Having just moved into my own home, and having built the interior myself, I'm feeling more motivated than usual to comment on this post. But all I really have to say is that I probably would've removed every single door from their frames except the closet one and decorated it as a throughway.

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David Schlenz's avatar

I think it needs to go an inch to the left.

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