Vicki Gunvalson Decides to Stay in the Big House

SELLER: Vicki and Donn Gunvalson
LOCATION: Altimira, Coto De Caza, CA
PRICE: $1,780,000
SIZE: 4,000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Truly unique one of a kind custom estate on a one-third acre lot with a spectacular view of Saddleback Mountain and the golf course! Walk to the clubhouse thru your own gate. Every detail is handcrafted with old world charm, yet modern convenience. 2 masters–one down! Media room. Secluded end of culdesac location. In the process of being upgraded, new paint, carpet, stone floors, slate bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: By far one of Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's favorite television train wrecks is the gloriously disturbing reality show The Housewives of Orange County. Certainly the children have all tuned in to The Bravo to see this stunner of a program on which a handful of rich, tan, highlighted and Botoxed women in suburban Orange County, CA, open the doors of their banal suburban mini mansions and let us all peer inside their embarrassing lives behind the gates of Coto de Caza. Children forgive Your Mama for saying this, but these boojie bitches mustn't have an ounce of shame because they seem to relish letting the world know their children are obnoxious, entitled and inarticulate mush brains, except for Kara and Briana who seem to recognize that getting a proper education and speaking correct English is a worthwhile endeavor. And don't even get Your Mama started on that sorry lot of emotionally checked out huzbands. Jeezis H. Christ they're enough to make a ladee go lesbian.

Anyhoo, on the Season 3 opener last week we learned that hardworking, successful and obsessive control freak (and our favorite Housewife) Vicki Gunvalson and her huzband Donn had purchased another banal mini mansion in Coto de Caza, the upscale guard gated community where it appears one must present a pair of fake double Ds to even meet with former Playboy Playmate and real estate agent Housewife Jeana Keough.

Although empty nesting Vicki and Donn had already purchased the house and hired a burly looking queen named Frankie to poorly decorate the place in a faux "Tuscan" style, she was having some remorse about downsizing from a 5,000 square foot house into an only slightly less ostentatious 4,000 square foot house. Over dinner with Donn one evening, she fretted about how living in a smaller house and installing a new $250,000+ backyard swimming pool extravaganza might compromise her feelings of success and empire building despite the notion that they would be able to pay for the new house with the equity of the old house, thus being wonderfully free from a large mortgage payment each month. But alas...

Thanks to an OC tipster we'll call Penny Lane, Your Mama has learned that Vicki and Donn have put the new and smaller house back on the market just 6 months after purchasing the 5 bedroom and 6 bathroom property for $1,650,000. Naturally it's listed with Jeana and the Gunvalsons are asking $1,780,000, a $130,00 gain that should just about cover the real estate fees and the truckload of furniture from the Broyhill Furniture showroom.

Although listing for the house indicates the house measures 4,000 square feet, property records actually show that house at 3,055 square feet. The bougainvillea covered house is well located for privacy at the end of a cul de sac and overlooks the Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club. The house currently does not have a swimming pool, but there is a shabby looking sport court that Vicki and Donn planned on ripping out and replacing with one of those uniquely American backyard swimming pool complexes with a grotto, slide, bbq center and whatever other new-fangled swimming pool accoutrement that the designer mentioned.

Your Mama is so overwhelmed by the interior photos of the Gunvalson's all beige faux "Tuscan" freak out that we don't really know where to begin discussing this disaster? We have never been to Tuscany, but if it really looks like this (and we sincerely doubt it does), Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter would both sooner run bamboo shoots under out fingernails than go there. Ever.

Just the study alone has Your Mama wishing we had some spare needles to render our eyes sightless. What in the world is that place? The suit of armor? Oh. My. Gawd. You have got to be kidding, right? The vase of pussy willows? Come on Frankie, you can do better than that, can't you? Does this look like a room that anyone would actually use? For what?

Your Mama simply can not go on without compromising our health. So we're going to leave the discussion to the children while we take a big fat nerve pill and curl up in a fetal position in the corner trying to erase the image of that frightening fabric swagged over the kitchen window that has been seared onto our brain..