Very cool! It puts the “zoo” back into “Seuss”.

Despite the attractive outdoor areas, the inside, while nice, seems to have missed its potential. Most of the rooms are fairly small and the ceilings are too low for an upper-end home (Pics 6-10). The living area in Pic 5 is pleasantly larger, but the only true exception is the grisly “trophy room.” (It’s telling that it’s the one room to which they devoted so much space. Without so many examples of the current owner’s need to dominate and kill everything on four legs and two wings, as well as continuously prove that prowess to himself and everyone who comes into his “castle,” it would be an awesome space.)

Sadly, the decor is mostly tan and brown. *…yawn…* The few other colors are also warm, even heavy, which doesn’t help with the small room/low ceiling feel. Yet there’s sensory overload in some areas due to excessive use of patterns. For example, in the entryway (Pic 4) we see tiled floors and stairs (with large lighting features on every riser, alternating sides), white wainscoting with mill-work outlined sub-sections, more sub-sections on the brown newel posts, fancy iron stair rails, popcorn textured ceiling, sponge applied mottled paint job (seen throughout the house), and a door with multiple sections of windows, each of which, along with the two sidelights, have multiple small panes of beveled glass. While it’s not nearly as overwhelming as some spaces we’ve seen, it could have been better pulled together for a much nicer result. The door is the best feature; while it’s “busy,” set among better chosen materials it could have made the entire space a real winner.

The one other odd thing I noticed is a total lack of cornices, not even minor 2″ ones that could work with the low ceilings. The abrupt, unheralded change from wall to ceiling adds to the oppressive feeling. Even a tiny cornice might provide a sense of transition and ease the effect. As I said… missed potential. In spades.

Aside from the kinds of trophies in the “trophy room”, it’s an intriguing buy. From what I can see, the main house is nice.

But what I find the most interesting is that the additional buildings could serve any number of business endeavors. I think it likely that the selling owner used it as a taxidermy shop… or maybe an armory… or both. I could dream of many a business venture here: high-end automobile restoration, recording studio, video production, custom finish carpentry, software development, leadership development center, high-end custom clothing design…