Shutters

It's really not that bad except the paint job every 10-20 years which costs as much as a new car, but back in the day they had oil paint which didn't peel like latex does. Still, imo, worth it to live in an historic, unique, drag queen of a home.

As someone with an old wooden house, it's actually not bad. They're built so damn well that they just.. stay there.

The expensive part is if you need to do any renovations. Updating electrical, plumbing, and HVAC sucks.

The looks you get when you tell your contractor you want plaster, not drywall.

They had to find a guy who still knew how to do plaster walls when we redid our bathroom. He was well past retirement age.

I put in about 40hrs a year on scraping and painting and the total building envelope is only 160m2, and is much less detailed.

And 'juvenile delinquency' stopped after they took lead out of gasoline.

You didn't see anything!

The lights have always been this way.

It's like all those stories from the 1800s of clocks stopping the moment a person died. Turns out of a lot of the clocks back then would stop running if you turned them sideways, which a lot of doctors did at night to be able to read the time of death.

Oh wait, here comes a happy and naive young family from out of town.

I work for a city that's an enclave for the mega-rich and is going through hyper-gentrification. People are buying 3 million dollar houses, tearing them down, and building 15 million-dollar houses.

It's the 1%ers being pushed out by the .01%ers. It's a whole different planet.

But the contractors still suck and cut every corner they can, so it really is the same anywhere you go.

100 years from now haunted house stories will be about boxes with big garages in front.

And they all look alike in some developments. One cheap house after another, all exactly alike. Crap materials, horrible construction. Seriously, who wants to live in that kind of neighborhood?

New builds really bug me too. They're so pricey and big, yet the developers keep putting them on postage stamp lots. Like, who wants to spend that much money on a freestanding house while being so crammed together that you might as well be sharing walls?

While this house is beautiful and magnificent, it probably also needs to be gutted, insulated, rewired/replumbed, and lacks common hidey holes for central air. All those shingles are custom now, and the whole thing needs repainting regularly. The doorways and stairs are narrow, and most of the rooms are small by today's standards. The windows aren't low-e, and even with all that, it'll still probably leak air like a sieve.

It is a magnificent house, but it's also an absolute money pit to maintain, heat, and cool.

What other choice do people have? My options around here are 100 year old failing cardboard houses, or overpriced stupid Zillow Grey boxes. It’s that or just abandon my family.

Vinyl siding never looks good. Use any other material. And the insides are all sterile tones of grey. All the "luxury" apartments in my area are all grey. The floors this grey vinyl pho wood. Grey cabits and counters. Bleh

You can't charge a ghost for haunting your house, it's not like they live there.

I'm thinking the next 10-20 when all these data centers are emptied and become liminal spaces.

That's a cruel backhanded swipe at Ferrari

Also, they want something they can remodel every few years.

Do those numbers mean something?

ALDV? I don't get it.

ranch in the suburbs

I thought that was what they call eating out in Iowa?

Literally the plot of some Phasmophobia maps lol

One who complains about the lack of Bree and the quality of the toilet paper?

In a way it has. Lumber harvested today is from much younger trees made to grow fast, so they have fewer rings and each ring is wider. Compared to older lumber that was often harvested from natural growth forests which is of course unsustainable, but is stronger and more dimensionally stable than new lumber.

Or more likely inhaled a lot of black mold spores

they're spouse interacted with a demon child thing and it left marks

lmao

The real truth is cheapass construction goals. Straight lines and few details are easy enough for less skilled labor to complete and it is easier to hide imperfections when there are fewer details.

If you think curves and pillars are hard to represent in software, you'll be aghast how hard they are to represent with hand drawings.

Your typical architect or engineer of the era would need a kit of dozens of French curves to achieve proper specs in the drawing.

I think auto cad's role in minimizing residential craftsmanship pales in comparison to pre-fab techniques, fewer craftspeople, high volume assemblies, necessity for faster builds, less old-growth timber availability, and a philosophical shift in the economics of home building that now lean more towards speed and mass production.

Huh? There are zero problems with any curve you can imagine. The issue is that each one is unique instead of mass produced. Most do not spend the $$$ on top.

That house is a nightmare for any craftsman working on it too. You can pretty much forget about most external DIY stuff. Straight lines make for easy projects. Even crooked lines that are supposed to be straight are better than the curves and twists on this thing.

Look at it this way: Brutalist buildings are more “honest.”

All modern buildings are brutalist (reinforced concrete, bare materials) until their glass / metal / brick facades are put on.

The Obama library is the anti-trump building. It’s devoid of flamboyance, false adornment, unnecessary material, or flashy opulence. It is exactly what it wants to be. Imposing but unobtrusive on the skyline. It’s part of the scenery, without becoming the scenery.

Jesus. That looks like Bracknell.

A lot of people love Brutalism, but it's not for me either.

I'm seeing a traumatized dog, lol