Brick - and end to 3-sided brick home request (sales, insurance)

[ATLTJL]

Seriously, are masons THAT hard to find?

Okay, okay, I get how if you have a relatively inexpensive house, it would really add to the cost to have 4 sided brick if you only have brick accents on the front or whatever. If you're in that category, you probably can't/don't want to afford a full brick job.

But what the heck is with 3 sided brick?

COME ON! You already bricked 3 sides, is it really going to add THAT much to the cost of construction to just go ahead and brick the back, too? These houses are generally already moderately priced, are you really going to price that many people out of the picture by just adding a little more brick?

Do you really think that nobody sees the back of the house? Do you think that 3 sides of brick somehow make up for a back of ugly siding?

3 sided brick is ghetto.

My house only has brick accents on the front. But at least the rest is masonite or Hardiplank or whatever...it's not what I would pick, but it's better than siding, at least it kind of looks like wood planks. I'm full out admitting I can't afford brick all around instead of being a gigantic poser and having it on 3 sides only to tapout on the back like a punk.

Seriously, we need to end the 3 sided brick nonsense. Can we make it illegal?

[10 feet tall]

Agree 100%. Three sides brick is trashy looking. Makes the house and the neighborhood look cheap.

[arjay57]

Brick and frame work very well together, but it can look a bit stark when they wrap three walls and suddenly stop. The first couple of times I saw that technique I wondered, "Did they run out of bricks?"

[PKCorey]

It depends on the siding. The cheaper the home, the uglier the siding especially if they use the wood (I think) siding on the backside.

[lorilove]

But at least the rest is masonite or Hardiplank or whatever...it's not what I would pick, but it's better than siding, at least it kind of looks like wood planks.

Not sure I understand this comment since Hardiplank IS siding!

I agree that three side brick is odd but I find it elitist to call siding cheap or ghetto

Vinyl siding is the only thing exterior that I really hate. There are a few in my neighborhood and overtime the seams have come lose and pieces are bent or broken. With wood trim, homeowners tend to repair them but not with the vinyl siding homes. Also homeowners don't realize they should be occasionally professionally cleaned

[rcsteiner]

It's a horrible situation. I would like to propose a BSPLOST to help solve this problem across the entire region.

[bryantm3]

totally agree. believe it or not they built some awesome looking houses in crabapple (a community near alpharetta) that i thought were pretty classy looking:

Google Maps

they've got white-painted brick, they actually look nice instead of most of the put-up jobs i've seen over the last 20 years. until, of course, i went around back. cheapo phony siding on one side of the house! and these were pretty high-selling homes, like in the $400K+ range.

[ATLTJL]

I guess what I meant was that cheapo vinyl siding.

I know my Haridplank or masonite or whatever I have is also siding, and I'm not thrilled with it. But at least it has a little bit of texture to it and each piece is nailed up. But I think more importantly, every house in my subdivision has some kind of porch with a railing in the back. What I really hate is when you look at the backs of houses and they are pefeclty square flat vertical slabs of siding with a few windows and maybe a flat concrete slab patio, but nothing to really break up the gigantic rectangles of siding.

It looks cheap. Because it is cheap.

If I could afford 4 sided brick, or stone, or something like that, it's what I would have. I think I should be able to afford it, but someone decided it would only be on $350k+ homes (unless you get a 50's or 60's ranch).

I don't mind stucco, but I steered clear of it because of the moisture problems it can have in this climate, especially if you get the fake stuff.

I guess when I say siding, I'm really talking about the vinyl stuff....but I'm not sure if it's the siding itself of the lack of any texture or feature on the back of the houses that is really bothering me.

[LAB6120]

What's the difference, what about homes with brick face only on the front, there are a ton of those, I'm guessing its cost-related, when I bought my home, they charged me 10k for the front to be brick, they wanted 9k for each side and they didn't do the back at all. I decided to only do the front as did many others-we all have the "ugly" vinyl siding-Hardiplank wasn't an option. As you stated the cheaper homes like mine comes with vinyl, I will upgrade to a hardiplank type material when the vinyl fails, but so far it works just fine.
If I had the money, I would build a home out of poured concrete on all four sides, then put the brick facing on all sides.

[SWAMPBUCK62]

my wife is an Insurance sales person, she would much rather see an end to the fake stucco homes.