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i find brick front houses embarassingly cheesy. does anyone think that brick front is nice? why do crappy builders keep this trend alive? it is so tacky and cheap looking. why is it still around.
i find brick front houses embarassingly cheesy. does anyone think that brick front is nice? why do crappy builders keep this trend alive? it is so tacky and cheap looking. why is it still around.
I can respect that many people like the brick front, but I don't understand the three-sided brick home.
Brick is expensive, so many builders just put the brick facing on the front, and use hardiboard etc. on sides / back. Having an all-brick house (at least all brick facing) is desirable by many home buyers, preferable to hardiboard, and even to stucco. That's a generality, so please don't attack the messenger.
The thing I can't stand is all these new houses they build where the entire first floor has brick but the second floor has siding. It looks like the house is incomplete or that the builder ran out of money to finish the upstairs.
It is cheaper so that is why it is done. Sometimes, you have very little choice, when the standard in the neighborhood is brick facade on front only. I found it odd decades ago when I first saw it, but ended up living in one myself. It would not have been so bad if the siding had been a high quality vinyl, but the hardiboard meant expensive painting every few years . . .and we also sustained damage to the hardiboard b/c we lived in area w/ harsh winters and water damaged many areas of the siding after 10 years.
Sometimes, if you want to be in a particular neighborhood, you just have no choice b/c those are the types of houses that were built in that neighborhood.
We purchased an older home this go round - all brick. Not having to deal w/ the repainting issue has been wonderful. Plus, the insulation factor - this house truly does stay warmer, longer, even w/ the heat off.
I would hate to give up my all-brick house, but if we got transferred and the neighborhood we preferred only offered brick front facades . . . we would do it again - but would prefer vinyl siding to at least lessen the $$ and time we had to spend w/ painting and upkeep/maintenance.
I don't understand the trend, either. I always thought of this end of the state as being largely brick and/or stone homes with the clay in the Piedmont, and access to stone as well, so I was truly surprised to see the number of brick-front and 3-side brick homes. Why bother? Just do the whole house in the hardiplank or other siding, then.
I wouldn't want to make someone feel bad about a home they chose to live in, but I agree, it just looks like cheap, cheap, cheap construction. I suppose they off-set the 'cheap' look with the broken roof lines, which I also think look silly. Isn't that a significant increase in cost -- all the angles to a roof?
Having lived in all sorts of homes, growing up, and as a homeowner, I much prefer a brick home for all sorts of reasons -- less maintenance, largely. But, realtors here said an all-brick home can add as much as $25,000 to the cost of new construction. Why are people so determined, then, to be in a brand-new home? We're in a quality home, in a nice area, all-brick, with nice amenities, but bought the house about 6 years old. Everything still looks and feels 'new' and an added advantage is that the landscaping is maturing. Seems like most anything we do to the property now is 'icing' on the cake.
Having grown up in a neighborhood of brick ranches that had siding as "accents" (from the 1950's and 1960's .. having two different building materials doesn't bother me.
I have seen neighborhoods where the brick front houses look incredibly cheap, and neighborhoods where it looks okay. A lot of it has to do with the design. You can still design the rest of the house to look intentional as opposed to "we ran out of money".
One thing that helps is having the same windows all the way around. A lot of builders use divided lights in the front, but then single lights on the sides and back. It looks weird.
We are building in a new subdivision -- brick on the front, 1/2 brick sides. No brick in the back.
We paid the extra $10K to do the 1/2 brick sides, because the entire neighborhood has it except for one house. We could have done all brick sides, but it would have been more like $20K - and not worth it when compared to the rest of the neighborhood.
Similarly, we did not choose to brick the back, though we could, because the back of the house in siding is not ugly (it looks intentional, not an accident) and out of 100 homes, only about 2 are bricked on the back. The additional $20K would not ever be recouped at sale.
Personally, if I could have afforded an all brick home the size I wanted - I would have. But, since labor actually costs a LOT today, we bought and are happy with, what we could afford.
Brick is expensive, so many builders just put the brick facing on the front, and use hardiboard etc. on sides / back. Having an all-brick house (at least all brick facing) is desirable by many home buyers, preferable to hardiboard, and even to stucco. That's a generality, so please don't attack the messenger.
I agree - I finally graduated to an all brick home.
We started with siding (cement board), then to 1 side brick with vinyl (yuck!), next to 3 sides with Hardiplank, now finally 4 sides brick!
Never had a stucco (or even looked at one). I know all too much about the "stucco issues".
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