In alt.home.repair on 29 Jul 2005 07:27:27 -0700 Banty
posted:

In article , meirman says...


I've seen quite a few townhouses or doubles (side by side duplexes)
where they were originally built the same, but they put roofs on
separately, in different colors even, they put different siding on, or
paint the entire house different colors. That's worse than a fence.
(Is this fence in the front yard or back?)

In fact, that's the reason townhouses now are built with all adjecent
houses different colors. Because when n'hhood were all the same
color, the neighbors would on purpose or for laziness paint or trim
with different colors. So some would be the same and some would be
different and it looked terrible. Now they are all different, so it
doesn't look bad when a given pair doesn't match.


Now whoever decided to make the houses different in the first place is very
wise. Makes a livable plan that allows for human beings, exhibiting actual
human behavior, to live together. It's the approach that everyone is supposed
to be lock-step that doesn't work.

(And what the Sam Hill is the horribly worng thing with differentiating two
attached houses in the first place??)

I think they look worse when first built than it does when all the
houses are the same color scheme. (mine have light brown, smooth
brick for the first floor, and russet brown t1-11 for the "privacy
fence, and the second floor, and the door trims on the first floor,
and the front door. One of the reasons I bought it was that I thought
it was pretty. These are townhouses.

I think when every house is different, it doesn't look good.

Here each building includes 8 townhouses, and they are in 4 groups of
two. That is, the elevlation of the houses changes as the building
goes up a hill, and the setback changes a foot or two, but only groups
of two, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, are always the same elevation and the same
setback. They always share a roof. I think it looks terrible when
two of them can't agree and they each put on a roof, that's a
different color (apparently the HOA has no rules about roof color.)

In NYC and downtown Baltimore, the brownstones or row houses don't
come in pairs. And in a couple cases, I've seen them put on stone
siding on a brownstone while the rest of the block is still
brownstone. It looks terrible. In Baltimore, they call it formstone
(I think it was invented here) and it is very popular, but it still
looks bad when a block looks OX0XXX0XX where X is either the original
finish and O is formstone or the other way around.

So far my strip is ok, with everything russet brown, but at the top of
the hill, where it was supposed to be harvest gold or something, a
half a dozen people bought paint without finding out where they were
supposed to buy it, got the wrong colors, and that strip looks
terrible. I sort of like it better when the houses are all the same
color, but having them all different colors is insurance against what
happened at the top of my hill.

Looks terrible how?

Various versions of yellow, gold, and something I can't name that was
meant to match the original color, that all clash with each other.

Plus it was a poor choice of color in the first place, because there
is no aluminum or vinyl siding made in any color like it. (Actually,
only 2/3rd of the houses at the top of the hill are that color. I
think that row, with the 1/3 that is brown, was the first row built.
All the rest are brown.

Banty


Meirman
--
If emailing, please let me know whether
or not you are posting the same letter.
Change domain to erols.com, if necessary.