Bill Rancic's House: Only Slightly Less Interesting than Bill Rancic

By Margaret Lyons in News on Oct 12, 2004 2:48PM

Big article in the Trib today about Bill Rancic's house. We'd pretend like we're not interested but…come on, real estate pornography is where it's at.

The article is called "A House Fit for an Apprentice," which sounds to us like a subtle dig that his house isn't fancy enough for the Tribune folks. Apprentices are usually kind of poor and all, right? And they like, live with their mentors? And make horseshoes? Or make brooms carry buckets of water until it all goes horribly awry? If there are any buckets in Bill's house, the article doesn't mention them.

Bill lives on the North Side in a "three-story coach house." Uh, what kind of coach used to go in there? Aren't coach houses ex-garages from way back? Whatever, it's 3,200 square feet, which means it's a little bigger than 26 of our dorm rooms from freshman year, which is the only space we ever lived in that we actually measured and is therefore our only source of comparison. (It was 11 X 11.)

It looks like Bill's not much of a Trading Spaces fan—he claims to have furnished his entire house in 15 minutes. He didn't plan on living there (investment property, natch), so he put in a fancy kitchen that he never uses, a shower that he regrets not making a steam shower, and no medicine cabinets. Ah, the life! In all, it seems like Bill lives a lonely Gatsby-like existence in a house that feels like a hotel, with expensive shirts as his only comfort. He eats cereal every day and listens to Counting Crows, which means he could probably be just as happy living in our old dorm, where we ate cereal every day and complained about other people listening to Counting Crows.

We kept hoping for "and that's his money vault" or "that's where the hookers crash" or "here's his champagne faucet," but we're going to have to learn to live with disappointment. Bill's kinda rich but not very creative. Somebody get that guy a few episodes of Cribs.