Pittsburgh "remuddling"...

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by SorryIMovedBack

remuddling and stripping the historic architectural details: No, I think it happens whenever the less affluent and less educated take over. Sharpsville, PA, is a small town with a great number of wood frame homes, probably most of which were Sears catalog or other catalog houses, purchased as a kit and delivered by rail. Sharon and Farrell also have a lot of those, because they were put there as company houses to house workers for the local steel industries. Almost all of them are covered up with aluminum or vinyl siding, and have had the Victorian or Arts and Crafts details stripped off. They are just dozens of bland rectangular boxes today. Putting in slider windows or downsizing the windows and boxing in the leftover space is pretty common, as well. People here are not very well educated and not necessarily very skilled at homebuilding. So, they do some halfazzed remuddle to make it more energy efficient or modern-looking or whatever the motivation was. Dropping the ceilings is another popular trend that was only recently halted by the equally goofy trend of great rooms with vaulted ceilings. People do all kinds of ugly and cheap changes to old homes here, because the millworker mentality is that if you want a nice house, you have to build a new one out in the boonies someplace, so you can pee off your front porch and nobody will see it. That's very important to bumpkins and the local variant of yinzer, apparently.

Wow, you are so erudite! Grate too have yinz back hear.

[ferraris]

I'm curious to hear some opinions on painted brick. I'm against siding over brick, but I'll admit that sometimes painted brick can look nice (and sometimes it can look horrendous).

When did people start painting brick? Is it something that was done 100 years ago when the homes were first built?

[BrianTH]

I agree painted brick can sometimes look OK, and I actually kind of like the look of brick that was painted but then the paint has worn back off. But I am too much a fan of unpainted brick to endorse it.

Sometimes brick is painted right away, but I think it was mostly done in subsequent generations as house color trends changed, and/or people wanted to distinguish their house from their neighbor's houses more dramatically.

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday

I'm curious to hear some opinions on painted brick. I'm against siding over brick, but I'll admit that sometimes painted brick can look nice (and sometimes it can look horrendous).

When did people start painting brick? Is it something that was done 100 years ago when the homes were first built?

I've seen it where it looks fine, but only when the owners have kept up with repainting when needed - which is what always makes me scratch my head when I see a painted brick house - someone had a place that required little outside upkeep & then paid money to paint over their brick which will then entail more $ and upkeep over time.

[ML North]

Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday

I'm curious to hear some opinions on painted brick. I'm against siding over brick, but I'll admit that sometimes painted brick can look nice (and sometimes it can look horrendous).

When did people start painting brick? Is it something that was done 100 years ago when the homes were first built?

Perfect timing. I had a conversation with someone just last evening about how painted brick can look good on the right home in the right place.

You're in the War Streets, right? This house, at the corner of Resaca and Taylor, has a relatively new coat of paint that I think looks pretty good. And this blue house isn't terrible and fits in with the other colorful houses on this block (I think the home to the left is now green).

In my opinion, though, those just don't compare to a great unpainted brick, like this house, which is among my favorite homes in the whole neighborhood (I love how the window headers have settled and are just a tiny bit crooked).

In un-remuddling stories, this house on Monterey was recently stripped of the white paint shown in the picture and now looks much better.

[happywithbraddock]

I think the only paint that should ever be used on brick is a colored lime-wash. Not as dramatic as some late-90's fuschia paint jobs I've seen, but much more pleasing in the long run. Also, if you use a wash with high available lime content, you've also just sealed any tiny cracks in your bricks or mortar.

[ferraris]

I think in cases were sloppy re-pointing was done, or where poorly matched brick was patched in around windows, painting could be a good solution. But it's just a theory of mine, I haven't noticed any real examples of houses using paint to cover that up...so either it is effective, or nobody is doing it.

[wyoh]

Anyone know how costly it is to have someone come in and remove the paint from outside brick? For one of those Mexican War Streets homes is it like 1-2k or more like 10k?

Also this is probably an obvious question to most of you but are the colored bricks that are used in many houses in this area painted or originally that color? Meaning the yellowish ones like this house between the two red brick ones:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sheri...96.21,,0,-5.73

[BrianTH]

It is hard to be sure from that picture, but I'd guess the brick was originally that color. Lots of different brick colors were common in this area--yellows and creams of all sorts were particularly popular in addition to reds.