Big Fat Deal: $4.9 million for the Kerrisdale house with the yellow wallpaper

A Kerrisdale home listed for almost $5 million boasts an absurd paint job, a very lonely fridge and a surprisingly trendy bathroom

Here’s my personal deal: I’ve been admiring this deeply sassy online column (from editor-in-chief Nathan Caddell and various other BCB writers) for the better part of a decade. Biting reviews of “the most outrageously upmarket real estate offerings in the province” (patent pending I’m sure) have long been a favourite read of mine. From $11.8 million to live like a Bond villain (“it’s a bit funny to imagine Christoph Waltz gazing out of the large windows in Lululemon pants and an Arc’teryx jacket”) to  $17 million for a mostly-underwater Shaughnessy tennis court (“the realtor has to do their best to say ‘no one has lived here in years’ in a non-creepy way”), I’m a longtime fan.

Perhaps, after an impressive resume of well-researched journalism and exclusive, authentic interviews with some of B.C.’s most esteemed leaders, it’s insulting to Nate to say that “the photos are best described as ‘taken with a 2007 Motorola Razr'” is the best line he’s written in his career. But insulting is kind of what I’m going for—welcome to Alyssa’s first Big Fat Deal. Allow me to introduce you to a Kerrisdale abode that is a true assault on the senses.

Address: 2011 W 48th Avenue

Price: $4,895,000 

Listing: rew.ca

The skinny: Five-bedroom, two-bathroom, 3,502 sq ft house on a corner lot in Vancouver’s Kerrisdale neighbourhood

The bling: This home proves that begging your parents to let you paint your bedroom an insane colour as a tween is a universal experience.  For me, that colour was Yosemite blue (this is real; it’s cool Benjamin Moore still allows 12-year-olds the opportunity to make mistakes). For this tweenaged-brained homeowner, the colour was a rebellious teal that lives in violent contrast with the dark honey millwork.

It’s the kind of colour you’re sure you’ll love for years, the same way you’re sure that the earrings you made with Coke can tabs are cool, or that Joe Jonas will fall in love with you when you lock eyes at the 2005 Burning Up tour. I can admit I was wrong… whoever defiled this Kerrisdale home should, too.

Instead, they doubled down, with an offensive orange accompanying the teal in one room, and a meek yellow in another. In fact, they’ve even broken the fifth wall (that’s theatre term for ceiling) and splashed nearly everything in blue-green, orange or a purplish hue I’ll call Flesh of Barney.

Flesh of Barney continues in the galley-style kitchen, which looks like a funhouse hallway. Minus the fun, I suppose, because I can already feel the rage I would have trying to cook in here with more than one person. (The fridge is in another room all by itself, probably for some visual peace and quiet). On the plus side, the cabinets likely hide stains well, provided all you eat is borscht.

The sad little yellow room reminds me very much of The Yellow Wallpaper short story—sure, it’s paint and not wallpaper, but it’s a space I can very much envision going insane in. The short story is meant to be some kind of comment on the plight of women or something (I can’t remember, at the time I was too busy Yosemite blueing my bedroom). The plight of this house, in my opinion, doesn’t require a close read—it requires a paint intervention.

Because, hey, I’ll admit that I love the stained-glass door detailing and that the peach-tiled bathroom is so outdated it’s circled back around to being trendy again. If you can ignore that the showerhead looks like something a medical professional would use to give you an internal ultrasound, it’s almost serene.

But in the spirit of this column, I’ll end on a negative note: the laundry room could easily be on a list of Top 10 Destinations for Getting Chopped Up Into Little Tiny Pieces. Even worse, the home is across the street from Magee, where editor-in-chief Nate went to high school. Zing!