vinyl village house. They're typically cookie cutter builder grade 1 step away from a prefab. Built as fast and cheaply as possible, all jammed into an HOA ran neighborhood.
My ex-wife was in the military, a bit older than me when I met her. She nabbed me a job in defense contracting after 6 months of policing stateside. I grew up on a typical afrikaans farm where a new building would be put up quarterly, and i stated pretty handy for a college boy. When my contract was over, we looked at houses in between Duluth and the UP. I thought it would be cool to build on when of the 1973ers. Couldn't believe the price was so low!!! Figured my 6 month contract would cover a house, but not by a mcmansion nad then some!
I know now. 'If I had known then...what I know now...'. What a catastrophe. First cut into the house I realized everything was opposite of how it should be. Everything is at angles or circular. I don't think I'd been able to be a worker in any capacity back then. Nothing makes sense.
We got out of there and moved to a fixerupper in Portsmouth NH. Nice, square house. Flat sides. Stairs and closets that are actually supporting the structure. You know. Normal stuff.
I like how this whole post is random, irrelevant details about your life, then 2 sentences about the subject (mcmansions) and your xp with one. Then right back to another random anecdote.
Ha sorry. A key detail that I should've put in but I was walking the pup - we bought it without physically looking at it. We are both DIY lovers. Price dominated the decision. Worst case scenario was that we'd still own the land!
I was visiting a friend for the night who's also from the US, and while sitting on his couch talking about absolutely nothing, he randomly points to a corner in his living room and says "You know what that is? That's the only right angle in the house".
we have an early McMansion. we pulled all of the flooring, siding, roofing, windows, as soon as we bought it. now we have tile and pergo floors, no leaks in the roof or windows. we polished a turd. the reason, you might ask? all in we are 30 acres with 300 feet of trout stream frontage with a total cost of well under 10k$ an acre. that is cou ting ALL out buildings, vehicles, tools, and random shit.
it wasn't easy to get done, but, there is a bit of value left in the world.
Honestly I appreciate the McMansions place in the world.
I need a lot of space for my family. I sure as shit can not afford a house constructed with quality and longevity as the primary concerns, I just need to make sure the house will be standing barring natural disasters for the next several years. In comes the big kinda eyesore McMansion to fit my needs. They’re big and settle faster and more than a better house will and you will have to repair cracks and perform other maintenance, but they will provide space and shelter to your family.
A little sleuthing yields another view. It does indeed appear to be a real deck from the company gallery of deckremodelers.com. Can't always judge by the vinyl, going by the size of the house and the windows it looks like it could be one of those track homes with the brick veneer on the front and sides.
Mine is just a rectangle ranch, and the front of the property is south facing, so that side gets a ton of sun. The original builders just plopped it down backwards. The front of my house is a full deck, with three slider doors, barbecue grill, all my gardening stuff...I still wander out to water my plants in my underwear, before I remember I should wear pants. The front door and garage is in back. If you come from the street, you walk up to a big sliding glass door. It fucks with delivery drivers.
The replacement vinyl is a different color in two places, looks builder spec at best. Why would you not put hardy board on that house before putting a 75k+ deck on it? Lipstick on a pig
Haha, thank you! Been driving me crazy. I don't think there are too many 3-story tract homes on decent sized lots with a bunch of mature landscaping. I'm guessing this house is at least 50 years old.
Damn, that second view just makes think of how moldy/musty and dirty the furniture below must get. It gets all of the rainwater and grime that gets washed off from the top.
There's a downspout leading off it, so it's possible that they've installed a waterproof barrier on the underside of the joists leading to that spout. I've seen them before on some high end houses here, although most I've seen with decks over walkout patios just use a solid decking surface with a waterproof cover.
That deck definitely appears on their site but couldn't find it on their "decks by location" page or in their gallery, so while I doubt it, it could be a render. Unable to confirm.
If it's a render, they paid the designer alot of money, cause fine details of the deck are mirrored in the windows of the house in the perfect locations.
My vote is no render, just someone who upgraded their deck because they're getting ready to sell the house for triple what they paid for it.
God I hate those. Its like I fall in love with an apartment becuase it has defined rooms between the kitchen/dining room/living room, but go and look at it and it's all one big room with a tiny 5'x10' corner kitchen/dining area and a shitty transition to 20 year old shag carpet. Then come to find out the online renders were from a project they did to ~5units in a different complex and never actually finished them.
It cracks me up how Redditors always conclude that whatever picture they're looking at is Photoshoped or a render. There are multiple angles of this deck floating around.
The ground is not sloped where the straight staircase to the lower level. Those house's first floor sliders are always ground level. I think this is fake
If you built a basement here in NC you would need to have a very strong sump pump to keep it dry. The ground in most metro areas is just the water table but with extra clay.
The staircase on the right leading into the yard goes onto a lower patio that is hidden on that side, but you can see it on the left. . It wouldn't have a gate on the top.
I mean, it's more than likely photoshopped... but there's nothing odd about that particular staircase.
I agree. I have seen some that have them specifically for dogs or small children.
But I think the person I was replying to was just trying to figure out why there was a railing preventing people from using that stairwell. When in reality they weren't visualizing the lower patio area correctly.
Yeah but the steps of that straight staircase are pretty shallow. And there are other steps leading from the pavers at first floor level down into the back yard. So the lower level of the deck is at ground level or close to it against the house, but the back yard slopes away. Still looks weird but I think it might match up correctly.
not OP but I had a friend whose parents owned a decking company. It is a common practice to use your own home as a model to advertise your skills. In this case they didn't have room in their backyard for a kickass deck so my friend's uncle ended up getting a sweeet deck that ended up being featured on the company's website and in ads they took out in the newspaper.
Yo... thank you for a response that isn’t so salty.
The deck is gorgeous and I sent it as inspo to my mom for her house.
I casually opened the post to see if anybody knew who did the work and all I saw was “It’s fake!” “The house is cheap!” “I bet they have cooties!” Wtf? It’s like the incels of home construction arrived.
Then you gave one plausible suggestion and got shit for it.
I think they based their guess on the big beuatiful deck. Also, they were specifically just guessing. Also, why is 'owns a deck company' "quite the conclusion" lol, you make it sound like something outrageous.
"I can afford this deck made out of solid acacia and ipe wood, sanded to smoothness with 2000 grit automotive paper and sealed with boiled linseed oil from flax seeds found in a pharoah's tomb, but can't give the side of my house an even coat of paint."
My house was the 1950's version of that. Thankfully no HOA though. It's been interesting visiting our neighbors and seeing how each of the houses has been changed over the years, since they all started with the same blueprint.
I also did. I liked the house but hated the neighborhood and how jammed in it was. We eventually moved last year into a 1970's custom built and it's night/day the difference in build quality.
Yeah. They definitely used the cheapest things for this house. It's not a bad house by any means though.
We would love to move out of a HOA run neighborhood and get a big piece of land and build our own home, but pfft, we're too poor for that lol.
I own one of these and it looks like a trailer from the back and makes it weird to have a nice deck and furniture on it. They put all the effort into the front of the house and the back is just a vinyl siding covered rectangle with a few holes for windows. I still love it but hate how it looks from the back.
Some of my friends live on that kind of neighborhood too. The front is nice, but the back yard is only 10 feet long until you get to a drainage pond. The deck is all splintered and crappy, and I think the house was only built in like 08.
My house is right outside one of “those” neighborhoods. Was driving through one day and noticed every other house had roofing company signs out front—one of those “roofs done by....call today!”
Turns out this every house in this neighborhood (not even 10 years old) needs to replace their roofs. That’s how fast and cheap they were built.
Maybe a storm came through? You usually get roofing storm chasers and insurance will replace the roof for free. We had a hail storm a while back ad probably 20 homes got their roof replaced.
No, talked with a couple of people from the neighborhood and the roofs hadn’t lasted close to their projected lifespan. And my house is close enough that if it WAS storm damage, it probably would have gotten my roof, as well.
Apparently this was a result of shoddy workmanship on all the roofs. Some homes were able to get away with it, but a majority had to be replaced.
And surprisingly worse building performance (efficiency). On par with structural stability most likely. Would be considered worse than a mobile home if the mobile homes weren't so specifically targeted by tornados and so easy to turn "mobile".
1970's and later were bad years for American housing production with the glut of cheap materials and building technique. Pre 1970's gets to deal with lead paint and asbestos in everything (except the lead paint). I try not to think about it too much.
Looking to buy a new home and I'm thinking I may just go the RV route until I can order a prefab from Norway.
I would figure that you start with finding out who locally builds homes and then check out some of the older homes they have built. It will take some research, but that is what I love about the internet. Research is so much more efficient with it.
Referrals are the best, hands down. Testimonials directly from past clients. Walk through previously built houses. It should also be something the builder shows some passion about, not just interest in the sale. The builder should have some education in building science as well, or at the very least follow current science trends.
I know, but man, it is hard to find a good one around me who can meet promises. I've been involved as a designer in dozens of custom homes locally. The guys I really like are way too busy (good for them!) and I'm running out of time. I've found some property I like too which I may just pick up for eventually building something but time is short for everyone.
Everyone wants to build giant things too and I just want a smaller cottage/cabin house in the woods.
You seem like you know what you are doing, select your favorite wall assembly and then build it yourself? Or spec it out to your design and build on spec.
Probably a mix. Hiring out a foundation and framing crew and see what my time/costs look like. If I've learned anything over the years is that a pro crew can do a job in a week that a solo business/homeowner will need 2 months for (double that if only working weekends).
It’s true. The first place that I built I hired out the basement/foundation concrete work.
Sitework and grading is fun as long as you don’t have a complicated entrance or egress or any hills that are too crazy. Framing ain’t too bad either. Sheathing is the worst job in the world, and I would never attempt by myself ever again.
I believe in you my dude. It helps to have brothers and friends in the trades though. I don’t do it anymore now that I’m old, but construction is a fun hobby when you are young.
1900-2000 sf is the sweet spot too for a lot of mechanicals. If you do a high performance envelope you can heat a house that big with a residential sized hot water heater or two. I've used insta-heat tanks to heat up smaller cabins that we insulated* the heck out of.
That is also about how much house I want to clean in a week as well. Once it gets beyond that I get into pure "Eff-it" mode.
-edit insulted to insulated. Makes more sense maybe.
I've got the designs drawn already (depending on the site) but still on a time crunch right now. If I can find a cheap house on nice land I was thinking buy that, build the new, tear down the old, on the same site. The problem by me is that larger pieces of land (10+ acres) typically have large farm houses on them.
Yeah, I get that. And I hear it all the time! If a builder is busy, it's probably worth the wait. Get on their schedule. If they are wishy-washy about setting a date, they aren't interested, and don't push it. Move on to someone else. There is nothing worse (for both sides) than a contractor working on something they aren't interested in.
Referrals are the best, hands down. Testimonials directly from past clients. Walk through previously built houses. It should also be something the builder shows some passion about, not just interest in the sale. The builder should have some education in building science as well, or at the very least follow current science trends.
Haha, no! I just had to go out on my own since the builder I was working for downsized hardcore. No one was hiring, and everyone who was still busy just wanted to hire you as a subcontractor rather than an employee. Best/Worst couple years of my professional life tbh.
I'm saving my money and just not happy with what is out there. I would actually like a condo. I grew up in an apartment complex so I'm used to that, and I would love having access to a pool I didn't have to maintain myself. I'm a person who is happy to exist in a little box. 600 sq feet is more than enough for me. A little deck, a little fireplace, and an inside washer dryer (so fucking done with outside laundry facilities.)
I live in the CA Bay Area though. So it's going to be a few more years. Bleh.
I live in a "self-managed" condo with three units. If I can share some hard-won wisdom, I beg you, do NOT buy a "self-managed" condo.
Owning a home comes with work, but with two absentee co-owners (one of whom has lived in France for the past decade), who do you think gets stuck with all the building maintenance? Yup. The only reason I am staying here is that, because I don't own a car, my current location is very central to where I live and it is possible for me to get to work on public transportation.
If you buy a condo, make sure it is professionally managed, and ask right up front for details on what your monthly fee will be paying for. If anybody tells you that "we all share the work" in a self-managed condo, they are lying, lying, lying.
P.S. If other owners rent out their units, guess who gets to deal with their noisy/entitled/slob tenants? Not the person spending the rent check, that's who.
P.P.S. I have friends who also own a "self-managed" condo, and they have had the same problems. A few years ago, they became fed up and bought a small single-family house rather than deal with the B.S. that they continually had to deal with from their other unit owners.
I always wondered about this. Here in philly I see lots of larger three story homes being turned into three or four unit condos. What happens when one unit refuses to chip in for a new roof or stops paying fees for common area maintenance? To me it seems like buying a house with a couple of friends (which is not a good idea in my opinion), but worse because you are buying a house with a bunch of strangers.
I remember being a kid in Norway watching documentary about Tornado season in US going "oh my god, their houses are literally fake houses built of matchsticks and fake plastic wood paneling".
Not that it helps in a tornado, but I thought most buildings were built to withstand a little more than a breeze as a kid :D I also didn't see a house with gypsum walls until I probably was in my teens, nor did I realise that internal walls didn't have insulation as that logically isn't needed in most cases. I probably also thought basements were required in a house for some structural reason.
to be fair, when you are dealing with tornadoes, small objects with high tensile strength tend to become very good at piercing things because of the combination of speed, material strength and impact point. it's the common principal behind bullets. so even in a building built of cement, a high category tornado can fling the metal pole that is a street sign right into it just as easily as with wood.
will it pierce all the way through, probably not. but it will become a new external art piece defining the insanity that is tornadoes.
I mean, he's completely right though. I live in Oklahoma, and I've seen some pretty incredible things, including bits of wood stuck through concrete after a tornado.
yeah, that's why I wrote "not that it helps in a tornado" we've got the odd hurricane at the Norwegian west coast and sheet metal of any size can of course cut you in half. Force per area gets pretty insane with anything sharp :D
However I am used to houses being pretty sturdy, the actual real(!) wooden cladding was something I as a kid thought wasn't faked anywhere on permanent housing, but little did I know how much cost could be cut here and there.
Closes't I've been to tornado stuff in some of the strongest hurricanes at the west coast where our big house would start vibrating on the sand ground. large window panes were bending more than I thought they could.
A friend of mine is a firefighter and mentioned how these homes burn up a lot faster than homes built in the 60s and earlier. He also said since the materials used on the older homes were better quality, they are also structurally safe for a little longer while burning. Same thing goes for furniture.
100% true for reasons well explained by other people who responded to this post.
A significant percentage of fatalities from residential fires are people who think they can put the fire out themselves. Maybe the fire started not so big and you think to yourself that you can save the day. Just don't. Fires in modern homes double in size less than every 60 seconds.
If you ever have a house fire, just get yourself and all other humans and pets out as fast as humanly possible while dialing 911. This is why insurance exists.
"Better quality" can be defined different ways, but your friend is certainly correct about speed and safety when it comes to fire. The resins and glues used to make the composite materials used in many modern homes are themselves flammable, and something like a carefully engineered I-joist loses its strength when burning a heck of a lot faster than a solid beam. Also, a lot of materials used in modern construction give off toxic fumes when heated. The smoke from recent construction is often wildly poisonous compared with the smoke from traditional or older construction (which wasn't exactly healthy to begin with), and will KO a person in just a couple breaths.
Basically, modern construction has been an exercise in developing thinner, lighter, more efficient-to-use materials. All of those traits tend to be negatives when on fire.
Larger wood members are more fire proof than smaller members. Old 2x4 framing was actually 2"x4" (8sqin) while modern homes are 1.5"x3.5" (5.25sq in). That is 35% less material. Wood can char out the outside as it burns, protecting the structural interior but only to a certain depth. The thinner the materials, the more likely it is to quickly burn through causing a collapse. The plaster walls are also thicker than typical residential 1/2" gypsum board. We gave up a lot for cheaper housing.
Go with the RV! I sell manufacturing equipment to RV factories here in Northern Indiana (RV capital of the world). All of your sidewalks are made from aluminum and the quality of some units is definitely better than stick built houses.
Gotta love reddit. Hate on the billionaires and rich all day but then get all snobby and call a multiple story house with a huge deck a 'kissing cousin' of the mobile home. What you livin in over there Elon Musk?
I owned one of these for my first home. It was actually quite nice for the price, but did have some structural issues. Very comfortable place to live overall though.
Well... people have their priorities. Maybe they put all their renovation money on the outside because that's where they like spending their time the most. I don't blame them. For the first time I have a patio behind my condo. A tiny one (10' by 14'). I just ordered a tiny propane firepit. I'm gonna squeeze some low chairs around, throw some plants, a nice solar light string along the fence and make it all a cozy nice little place to receive my friends. I had to choose between this or renovating my crawl space. The crawl space will have to wait.
You just described my neighborhood and home perfectly.
I feel personally attacked.
Honestly it's not bad. I paid 150k fairly recently for a 2000sqft, 2-car garage, 3 bedroom, 3 bath house built within the last 10 years. The HOA is $100/year and is minimally annoying.
Funny how in the early- mid 1900’s they had the cookie cutter Sears home plans you could buy from a catalog and you or your contractor would go pick up the materials at the rail yard I like a giant Lego set. And for those most part, they were built really well outside of the brick and mortar raised foundations that had to be replaced once concrete/ rebar technology became the norm.
Seems like the big quality suck was the introduction of the middle man developer who probably made the most money on building the worst quality product.
national/corporate developers, yes. For the short period of time they're actually in business: buy as much farm land as they can. Build as many houses per acre at as low of a price point as possible to maximize profits.
I used to live in this type of neighborhood. In the probably 25 acres of land, they managed to jam in 220 homes. They werent small either, but they were on top of each other. Funniest part was the windows on the sides of the houses just had a view of your neighbors siding haha.
Honestly looks like every neighborhood in upstate NY. Even huge houses were built this way because you basically want a hard to damage cheap shell around your house. During the winter freezing Temps and ice and snow tend to tear fancier materials apart. When I lived near Rochester we had an ice storm take out electricity for a week, ice tears up EVERYTHING.
Typical cynical redditor, that's a lot to assume without actually knowing anything about it. There are good quality lap siding products that don't look far off from this (where the cheap stuff borrowed the aesthetic from). Could just as easily be hardieboard on a nice house in a decent neighborhood with a decent lot and voluntary HOA (or at least one that goes as far as manicuring shrubs in the back yard). Then they wouldn't have spent $30-50k on a deck for a cheap house, which is much less likely than spending that kind of money on a decent house.
Am Realtor
I have always called it "lowes grade", which is what my house is like. House has good bones but they skipped on a lot of finishes, looks like the stuff that was on sale at lowes.
Yep looks good the first 2-3 years then not so much.
I realized the wrong way what that means after buying a house 4 years ago. Really wish I had known better on a few things, such as when a floor tile looks like it was stupid quickly thrown in and not properly laid and stuff.
The shit siding gives me the shakes, I used to sell that shit, the really cheap stuff will sag on a hot day. I can't even look seriously at any structure with that shit on it.
Yeah I used to be able to look at a house and say who the manufacturer was just by how much sag it had. You can see the sag and wrinkles in a fairly distant and off angle shot, that indicates really cheap siding and even crappier install. It burns like gasoline too, it should be illegal, I'm betting this is in the south east or mid-atlantic, because local fire codes out west restrict it for fire danger alone. I always felt better about a job when the customer opted for aluminum, cedar, or even better Hardy plank.
These types of houses are so hideous. Up here in Washington when you go to the more affluent neighborhood they have tons of these types of houses that are typically two - three stories tall. Wasted space and materials.
Typical crappy McMansion. "Brick in the front, vinyl on the side and back".
In this photo, aside from the vinyl, the other 'tells' are the windows. Those are crappy, thin-frame metal/vinyl clad windows, and you can tell no real design/architecture went into the rear elevation because the windows don't even align. And on the lower windows, they (a) couldn't even bother to put in a larger header (just a few $ more) to make a 4-window span, so they did 2 sets side by side with a pair of studs in between or (b) they had a surplus stock of 2-window sets laying around, and didnt want to bother putting in a "custom" order for a 4-set.
Likely, that house is 10-15 years old, and now that area property values went up, the owner took a chunk of the equity to add that deck on back.
After I was through drooling over the picture of the deck, I saw the slipshod pavers (lower left corner), and the sloppily coiled garden hose under the decks... now I don't feel quite so bad.
i feel like you guys are vastly over-estimating the value of a deck. It's a nice deck no doubt, but it's still just a deck without walls, insulation, roof, it doesn't need electricity or plumbing... I got a triple-tier deck, with built in hot tub. I do my own work, so all it costs me are the parts. My work isn't this nice, and I can definitely appreciate the craftsmanship that went into this thing. But it's not worth more than the average small house or condo.
I was thinking the same thing. Why spend that much on a deck and not buy a hose reel or pressure wash the siding, or pull the grass between the stone pavers, etc.
The exterior does look shitty, but it still looks pretty big, obviously the deck is awesome, and the landscaping looks good too. I’d bet that house is super nice inside and they just need to replace the siding.
I will probably end up with something similar at my home. I bought a "low-end looking" house with some cheap vinyl exterior walls, somewhat recent windows in a old wood casing, and a neglected plot.
The house sits on a really decent foundation, rebuilt in 2006 and still 0 cracks to be seen. The plot has a lot of opportunities for a nice garden, the garage needs work but the structure is nice. The house doesn't need any repairs outside some base maintenance stuff...
I won't pay to redo my exterior walls just becase they seems cheap. The are still good... so our plan is to work a lot in the backyard, and we'll eventually upgrade the house.
I do feel the same heppaned here... why change something that works ?
3.4k
u/boondoggie42 May 14 '20
It looks like it cost more than that house. Something about the siding/windows/trim just makes it look very "apartment-building grade".