A record of House In Pasadena?

Ok, so this is right up there with the weirdest thing we have ever seen in our past nearly-three-years as bloggers. Lately a reader (thanks Sara!) wrote alerting us that she had seen photos of our living room and guest bedroom on a vacation rental site called Airbnb. And apparently the “landlord” was claiming that they were photos of their house in Pasadena- and charging $48 a night with priority to anyone who booked it for one or two weeks straight (to the tune of $336 to $672) since they “received so much interest.”

Is not that weird???? What happens when people get there and it does not look like that? Or perhaps it does not get that far because it is all a scam and this person takes the money and runs without providing an address? Either way we were adequately skeeved out. And of course we contacted both the webmaster of the site along with the “landlord” to let them know that those images were ours and they were firmly planted in Richmond and not for rent. Fairly soon thereafter they were took out. Whew. But so odd right?!

It ranked up there with the time that another reader (thanks Michael!) wrote to us shortly after our big bathroom reveal to tell us that they saw some girl named Amber on Rate My Space claiming our bathroom after photos as hers.

The good news is that it was getting strong feedback. But the bad news was that it was not her bathroom! The funniest thing about that situation was that Amber was answering questions about the paint color and where she got things (all of which were wrong, so we were totally confused to see her claim that our $100 Overstock sink was a $400 splurge from Kohler and that the walls were some shade called Cucumber Dream instead of the actual Dune Grass hue that we used). Is not that weird? Of course we simply commented under the post with a link to our site saying “Wait- that is in fact our bathroom! You can see where we got everything and how it all came together by following this link.” Literally within a minute the post was took out.

In fact now that we think about it, the Rate My Space thing might have been stranger than the room rental incident because the room rental person seemed to be in it for the money, so the idea of a scammer stealing a photo and trying to make some loot with it kind of makes sense. But is not it odd that someone found a photo of our bathroom and thought it would somehow be rewarding to claim it as their own on Rate My Space (where there is no dough on the line)? Perhaps she did not feel like redoing her bathroom so she thought using our photos would be a shortcut? Or she thought it would be funny? Consider us stumped.

Thank goodness for all of our lovely readers who have eagle eyes and thoughtfully email us every time they see our casa somewhere that it does not belong. We are used to hearing that our pictures are on eBay or Craigslist when someone’s trying to sell an identical rug or duvet. And we even saw before and after photos of our front yard on some landscaping guy’s website in Texas (so crazy, right?!). But the latest Rate My Space and vacation rental listing have been the most odd by far. What do you folks think? Can you figure out some ulterior motive for the Rate My Space thing? Have you ever seen your photos somewhere they did not belong? Do tell.