Harry Potter And The Balloon Mortgage Of Kalamazam

Good news for fans of the Harry Potter movies! If you live near London and have some considerable spare cash lying around, you can buy the iconic house that Harry lived in.

In the films the location was home to Harry's relatives the Dursleys, and was famously located at 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. The real world address is 12 Picket Post Close, Martins Heron, Bracknell, Berkshire, England, because British addresses just don't know when to stop.

The two story, three bedroom house features an attached garage and is selling for 475,000 pounds, which works out to a little under $620,000. Yikes! That seems a bit steep for a house that's slightly over a thousand square feet. I'm sure the fact it was featured in the films has nothing to do with the inflated price.

The house was used only for exteriors during filming, as the interiors were all shot on a sound stage.

The listing features a few shots of the actual interior, and it looks like the realtor pushed their wide angle lens to its limit in a flailing attempt to make the place look bigger than it really is. How can I tell they used a wide angle lens? Because most wall clocks are circular, not stretched out ovals, that's why.

The home also features a garden, or "back yard" to us non-Brits. The wide angle lens got a workout here too, unless the house really is shaped like some sort of extreme trapezoid.

I can only imagine the living hell the new owner of this house will have to endure, as carloads of fans pound on the door day and night, demanding to see Harry or get a look at the cupboard under the stairs. Hopefully the owner has a good wand and knows the Crutiatus Curse. Crucio!

It's A Gen-You-Wine Fixer Upper

I was doing my decennial house cleaning this week and I found this old photo. It's a picture of my house from several years ago, right before I moved into it.

Looks a bit, er... unkempt, eh?*

You know, this photo reminds me of something, but I can't quite figure out what. Hmm... now where have I seen this before?

Oh yeah. Now I remember. It's practically the same house!

Pity the place didn't come with a hot Hungarian wife though.


* Don't give me that look; I've made a lot of changes and cleaned it up quite a bit since this was taken.

This Gives New Meaning To The Phrase "Trick This House."

This tastefully decorated home is located here in town a mile or two from my place.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the owner of this house is not married...

I wonder if the idea behind this is similar to using wooden decoys when duck hunting? Throw a couple of decoys in the water, real ducks fly over, see them, land next to them, and BOOM! Perhaps the home owner is hoping that a decoy female displayed on his roof will attract any flocks of supermodels that happen to be strolling by.

It's interesting to note that this is not an ordinary mannequin. It appears to have been specially sculpted into a "Slave Princess Leia lying in submission at Jabba's feet" pose. I had no idea they made such things.

If you look closely you can also see what appears to be silver duct tape around the mannequin's ankles, which is presumably holding her fast to the roof. Unfortunately the tape looks a little too much like shackles.

I drove past it last December and the owner had put a scarf and wool cap on her for winter.