In article , meirman says...
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.
This all sounds very nice, but that houses should be netral colors like that,
and that houses (even built-same townhouse duplexes) should all match is a
matter of taste.
I think when every house is different, it doesn't look good.
Your opinion.
A couple of stories:
I'm old enough to recall how the rows of built-same and painted (almost) same
Cape Cods built in Levittown, NY,right after WWII were held up as awful examples
of the Sameness of American Suburbia. Pictures of the matched rows, each with a
car in the driveway, would be plastered up as example of a social malaise that
was supposedly symptomatic of alienation of American culture. I don't subscribe
to all that, of course - decrying the (as it turns out, very temporary) sameness
as some Big Evul is just as silly IMO as blaming the lady on the corner who
painted her house pink for the downfall of the neighborhood. But, if you go
down those same streets now, what with different replacement sidings and
windows, dormers, and additions, Levittown is far from an example of stifling
sameness! And IMO it certainly doesn't look bad, nor would it look better if
they all chose the same vinyl siding limited to Beige, Sand, or Clay.
Folks who bought old Victorians and strive to restore the house to the original
condition and colors. They *think* they'll find the original color was
something on the order of - white with grey trim and touches of, maybe, deep
rose, find in the archives that their house in 1900 was purple, red, with deep
blue items of trim! Or something like that...
So this is really a matter of taste. *Why* is a set of marching houses, up the
hill, all biege brick with russett brown T1-11 supposed to be such of such
aesthetic superiority over yellow, gold, and what other variety would be decided
upon by other townhouse owners?
Surely that photo of houses on Telegraph Hill in San Fransisco that is so often
used would be left in some archive if all those houses were matching beige with
russet brown!
Banty
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