The new owners of the iconic house from Home Alone have vowed to restore its original look after a renovation sparked backlash from fans.
The half-acre property in Winnetka, Illinois was fully renovated and expanded in 2018 with a glossy, minimalist design replacing the classic, cosy home aesthetic that became widely beloved in the 1990 original film and its 1992 sequel Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.
Many fans of the films were vocal in their objection to the redesign, and now the new landowners have revealed that they are in the middle of a renovation project that intends to restore the home to something close to its original look.
The property was purchased for $5.25million (£3.88million) earlier this year, and in an interview with NBC5 Chicago, project manager Scott Price has said: “Our vision is to bring back the warmth and just the love from the movie. There were so many great colours, and it just made you feel like family and like home, and we want to bring that magic back.”
The house was built in 1921 and has five bedrooms and six bathrooms, while the property also includes an indoor basketball court, a movie theatre, a poker room and Lego statue of the franchise’s star Macaulay Culkin in his iconic scream pose.
The house previously went for US$1.58million or GBP1.24million in 2012. In 2021, the house’s previous owners put the house up for rent on Airbnb for just one day in conjunction with the Disney+ reboot, Home Sweet Home Alone.
For just one night, the house was booby-trapped like in the film, and was hosted by Buzz McCallister, the elder brother of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin from the 1990 film. The Airbnb listing also included “plenty of Chicago’s finest pizza” and “a candlelit dinner of microwavable Kraft Macaroni & Cheese”, as well as a meet and greet with a tarantula and a LEGO Ideas Home Alone set to take home.
Last year, director Chris Columbus revealed how Kevin McAllister’s parents were able to afford to live in such a property – his mother, played by Catherine O’Hara was “a very successful fashion designer”, while his father, played by John Heard, might have worked in advertising.
Culkin, meanwhile, recently shared that his two young sons do not realise that he played Kevin in the film. “Man, they have no idea who they’re sitting next to, the entire time,” he said. “They just go, ‘Oh, there’s Kevin.’ They call him Kevin Disney, because of Disney+, which shows the little holiday trailer.”
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