Some olde Imperial measurements. . .

[spacesailor]

" and the colour and texture of a lot of suburban brick is a bit ordinary. "

 

My next door house WAS chocolate-brown bricks. the new owner didn't like that colour so had it Painted Yellow.

 

Must have liked bananas !.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[red750]

Many homes around here are rendered over the bricks. The render stains after a while.

 

 

[Litespeed]

Ugh,

 

99% of rendered bricks are very poorly done and a lot is not even a proper render mix. I worked on rendering for a while, hard work.

 

Unless the render is done by a pro it always fails, cracks, falls off and loses colour as the pigments are very cheap.

 

You can tell all you need to know about most buildings just looking at the render. If the most visible part looks dodgy after a few years, the bones of the building would not have been done well.

 

 

[Bruce]

I got to know a bunch of brickies quite well when they were bricklaying while I was installing a ducted vacuum in the new house.

 

These brickies used the "f" word just about every second word, except for one guy who used it between syllables.

 

We all became good mates, and I learned a new language.

 

 

[willedoo]

I got to know a bunch of brickies quite well when they were bricklaying while I was installing a ducted vacuum in the new house.These brickies used the "f" word just about every second word, except for one guy who used it between syllables.

 

We all became good mates, and I learned a new language.

Also most Brickies who don't swear soon learn if they have to work with architects.

 

 

[facthunter]

And anyone who does cladding. Architects draw some weird shape and have no idea how it's going to be framed. Non standard window frames cost about 3 times that of standard ones. Flat and low pitched roofs leak.. unless the bitumen works. You pay a heap just to be "different". Nev

 

 

[willedoo]

Very true, Nev. I guess we need architects for cityscapes etc., but I've seen some bad cases where people get architects to do their new home. They get sucked in by all the arty farty claptrap, and the architect uses their money to feed his own ego. I don't mind useful practical architecture, but some of them want to turn a proposed suburban home into a sculpture with outlandishly priced ridiculous features of no practical value. If they had to pay for it themselves it would be a different story.

 

One house in my area was built about twenty years ago with a wavy roof design. The special order huge wavy laminated roof beams cost around 3 or 4 grand each back then. Probably about 10 grand each now. The only purpose it served was to make the roof look like a wave.

 

 

[old man emu]

When you look at an airplane you see proof of the adage "form follows function". This applies to the design of a house, too. The trouble is that desired "function" is a thing of fashion, and fashion is ever-changing. Over the past 25 years, I worked in an area of Sydney where there has been constant housing development, and you can see how fashion has affected function.

 

The house I live in was built in the mid-90's. The fashion then was to have a large, triangular bath tub in one of the bathroom corners, with or without spa feature. Then around the start of the century, every house had to have a dedicated home theatre room. And who would consider a house without an en suite bathroom and a separate "smallest room" with the loo out of the bathroom? The food preparation area (formerly called a kitchen) is always part of a large open plan family room.

 

The next thing to change will be the kitchen itself. While the kitchen used to be the heart of the home, it’s becoming more like an appendix. And it might not be long until it is disappears completely. A new research report, titled The End of the Kitchen?, posits that by 2030 we could see a scenario where “most meals currently cooked at home are instead ordered online and delivered from either restaurants or central kitchens”. In-home kitchens will shrink accordingly.

 

Houses are sold on the idea of "perfect for entertaining", but how many times a year do people actually "entertain" in their own homes - not counting family birthdays and Christmas? By "entertain" I mean a gathering of about a dozen people for drinks and a meal. Remember those sophisticated soirees of the past?

 

As for the external appearance of a house,

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

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[Yenn]

To tell if a house has been architect designed, just look at the roof. If it has multiple different slopes it will be architect designed

 

.

 

I worked with them years ago when the engineering firm I worked for did their engineering design.

 

I would always delay doing the drawings until the deadline as they used to change things all the time. They would change an upstairs window, which meant changing all the cyclone hold down right back to the footings. 

 

 

[pmccarthy]

We have the large triangular bath. Only used it once, caused a state- wide water shortage. Only showers for us.