Got a beef with McMansion next door? Beauty is in eye of beholder

It is absolutely impossible to drive up the 900 block of Indian Hills Parkway and not crane your neck when passing the new home under construction.

By comparison, the surrounding homes look like tool sheds, as one neighbor put it.

That neighbor, Violeta Toma, who lives three doors down, is still incredulous at the scope and magnitude of her future neighbor’s abode.

“People stop and take pictures because it’s such a monstrosity,” she said. “It just doesn’t fit the gist of the neighborhood.”

In fact, the scale and scope of the rebuilds going up in her east Cobb County neighborhood is not lost on her children. “My kids now think we’re poor,” she said.

Such is the newest round of infill housing that continues in neighborhoods across metro Atlanta.

The term McMansion has been used to denigrate the huge homes built by those who are said to have more money than taste. But one person’s monstrosity is someone else’s dream home, and that’s how Brett Flury sees it.

Flury is a pleasant 30-something guy with an engineering degree from Georgia Tech. A fellow who by education, foresight and work ethic has done well enough to buy a relatively expensive home, scrap it and then replace it with another edifice that will be worth well north of $1 million.

To him it’s simple. He wants to lay down roots where he grew up.

“I’ve lived in this area all my life; we want to get along with the neighbors,” he said a bit nervously