Truly Inspired Homes
Some builders have a specific vision in mind when designing a home. Whether they are recreating the home of someone powerful or replicating a house from TV or in the movies, some people take their inspiration seriously and make it into their everyday reality.
In the following slides, including numerous examples suggested by Realtor.com, you’ll see homes inspired by people, politics, and pop culture—and because most of them are for sale, you’ll also get the stats such as price and square footage. Click on to see these inspired homes.
By Colleen Kane
Posted on June 28, 2011
Inspired by the Movie HALLOWEEN
Location: Hillsborough, North Carolina
Year Built: 2009
Price: undisclosed
Square footage: 1,900
Bedrooms / baths: 3 / 2.5
The Myers House NC is the home of Kenny Caperton and Emily Currier. Caperton is a lifelong horror fan whose favorite slasher is HALLOWEEN (as you’ve probably guessed). He got the idea to build this replica after seeing the real house where the movie was filmed in Pasadena, California, while he was house-hunting. They drew up a plan to recreate the house without the aid of the original blueprints. However, they didn’t duplicate the 1970s décor and appliances of the original film, instead opting for a rustic / Victorian interior style with vintage Halloween items and memorabilia as accent pieces. Oh, and the Mike Myers mask on the Newell post.
Inspired by the Movie Up
Location: Herriman, Utah
Year Built: 2011
Price: TBD, but "should be below $475,000"
Square footage: 2,800
Bedrooms / baths: 4 / 3.5
Third generation homebuilder Blair Bangerter’s claim-to-fame inspiration came while watching the Pixar film Up, when he realized the starring house was so well planned out, it could be built in real life. After getting permission from Disney/Pixar, Bangerter Homes set about building the fictional turn-of-the-century style house, and the results will be featured in the 65th Salt Lake Parade of Homes—with many balloons attached to the roof.
The house is being replicated down to details like furniture and wall murals. “Many dedicated sub-contractors and suppliers who worked on this one-of-a-kind home have enthusiastically added their expertise to get the details right,” said Bangerter. “More than once you could catch them using portable DVD players on the site to review how some detail looked in the movie and how it could be replicated.”
Inspired by the White House
Location: McLean, Virginia
Year Built: 1995
Price: $4,650,000
Square footage: 12,020
Bedrooms / baths: 6 / 8
Numerous replicas exist of the nation’s First Home, and one of the best-known ones, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is pictured here. The statistics above are for another White House replica home currently on the market in McLean, Virginia. The seller is an unnamed engineer from Viet Nam, who wanted to pay tribute to the country that took him in, according to a blog on the Washington Post website. This replica was built to the specs in the original White House blueprints but on a one-fifth scale. The private home moonlighted as a stand-in for the White House in the filming of the movie Independence Day. For the homebuyer seeking a presidential home of color, a robin’s-egg blue version is on the Chicago market as well.
Inspired by the TV Show the Simpsons
Location: Henderson, Nevada
Year Built: 1997
Price when new: $120,000
Square footage: 2,182
Bedrooms / baths: 4 / 2
The real-life version of the Simpsons’ fictional home at 742 Evergreen Terrace was built as a contest prize. Although the look has since been toned down to conform to the regulations of the housing tract’s homeowners association, at the time the exterior and interiors were done in the cartoon’s bright colors, and it contained 1,500 props. The winner chose to take the alternate prize of $75,000 cash instead of moving in to the house, so after it opened to the public for a month and a half as some 30,000 lookie-Lous including Simpsons creator Matt Groening toured it, the house was de-Simpsonized and sold.
Inspired by the Virginia Governor’s Mansion
Location: Eads, Tennessee
Year Built: 1999
Price: $800,000
Square footage: 7,999
Bedrooms / baths: 5 / 5 full, 1 partial
This Colonial style home on four acres with a lake view is a custom-built replica of Virginia's Governor Mansion. It features a fireplace in the master suite, a cook’s kitchen with huge island and dual stainless refrigerators, and a brick patio with outdoor fireplace.
Inspired by Snow White’s Cottage
Location: Los Angeles, California
Year Built: 1976
Price: $1,175,000
Square footage: 1,896
Bedrooms / baths: 2 / 2.5
This woodsy cedar cottage was designed by and built for Adriana Caselotti, who provided the voice of Snow White in the 1937 Disney animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Inside is a mix of themes: rustic, Polynesian, vintage, seafaring and, of course, Snow White. The home’s description on Realtor.com cites a few features you don’t see in a lot of real estate listings: “Restored wishing well and dwarf bridge,” and also included in the purchase price is an original painting by a Disney studio artist.
Gardens Inspired by Versailles Palace
Location: Thousand Oaks, California
Year Built: 2009
Price: $19,995,000
Square footage: 16,000
Bedrooms / baths: 7 / 11
The legendary Gardens of Versailles, as expanded by King Louis XIV, embody the manicured French style and they are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A 16,000 square-foot single-family mansion tends to embody more of a millennial American style, but very few modern mansions have such striking and elaborate planting schemes as this one, which were fashioned after the famous Versailles predecessor.
Inspired by Monticello
Location: Alpharetta, Georgia
Year Built: 2002
Price: $9,250,000
Square footage: 13,043
Bedrooms / baths: 9 / 10
The design of this lakeside mansion, situated on 60 acres in Georgia, is inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. The third U.S. President designed Monticello himself, and it drew from the neoclassical principles of the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Okay, so there’s no dome in this new version, but it shows some of the same careful symmetry, scale and proportion of Jefferson’s design. And the new one includes more than a few extras that Jefferson’s Monticello probably didn’t have, like a media room, walk-in closets, or the his-and-hers master baths.
Inspired by the Movie Home Alone
Location: anywhere
Year Built: none, yet
Square footage: approx. 4,000
Bedrooms / baths: 4 / 3 whole, 2 half
The Colonial Georgian home that starred in the 1990 film Home Alone rather famously went on sale earlier this year. (Ahem.) The attention given to the house prompted Brandon Smith of Southgate Residential to draw up plans for people who want to build their own McAllister house, where they can perhaps leave one of their adorable children home alone to foil any bungling burglars.