Poppy Patchwork


My little bit of this big World

Sunday 6 June 2021

Ugly house

I have always thought the front of our home is ugly, I don't much like the yellow stones, and neither of us like the brown paint on the bricks, we do need to keep parking spaces for 2 cars, so the stones will stay, but we have tried many times to see if we can get the paint removed from the hand made local bricks underneath. 
This is hubby's garden, he get to choose what is grown here, this year he has removed the shrubs from these pots and popped in flowers, the shrubs each year have died in these pots. Both pots are special they belonged to our lovely neighbour Win and sat outside her front door, her nephew gifted them to me.
We have finally decided how we can be rid of the horrible brown paint, but these 3 plants are in the way, after discussion it is decided we will cut them all right back, they all should regrow without any issues. We also need to move the 2 smaller water butts at the side of the house, just until the work is done, hubby will decide what plants stay in the front and what he wants to change. 
Our house has lots of 'new' additions, extension at the back and a bedroom in the attic space, none of them show at the front of the house, which makes the front of the house original as it was built in the 1930's, making it over 90 years old. I would love to see the bricks again, but to remove the paint would be a hard task and would damage the bricks, therefore taking away the beauty of them. So sadly we have decided to have the house rendered, most of the loose stuff will be removed and the rest covered up, the house will look neat, but never to see the original bricks. It's taken us 11 years to make this decision, we always hoped we could find a solution, but everyone we have spoken too has said the same, and we don't want to damage the bricks. 

Other houses in our street with the same design have all different looks, the ones I love the most are the houses where their front garden is  traditional with flowers and a lawn, it does soften the look, if you are thinking why buy an ugly house, the back and inside the house is perfect for our way of living, I never expected it to take so long to sort the front. 

10 comments:

  1. I always wonder why people paint brickwork. My parents lived in a 1930s house and many people in their street painted the bricks, my parents left theirs as they were and in my opinion it looked much better. I hope rendering will give you more of a look you want.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We bought a house built in the early 30's. And apparently lots of bricks produced were cheap, flawed and ugly, hence many painting or pebble dashing over them. Two rooms in our house had no plaster on them but were a new type of board being used for the first time. It was down to shortages post war and mass building etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The bricks used in this area were made locally at Fareham bricks, just a couple of miles down the road, I think the imperfections make them beautiful.

      Delete
  3. Like Jo I too wonder why paint brick? There is a pub on the way into town that was brick and it looked ok, it blended in then someone at the brewery had the idea to paint it orange, it stuck out like a sore thumb and was the talk of the town for quite a while. Since then they have painted it a more subtle colour but now it needs maintenance where the original brick would have needed none! The rendering on your house will give it a more uniform look.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As frugal on Essex says you were lucky to escape the dreaded 1930s pebble dash! As children we used to pick put the most interesting ones in my grandparents house. Goodness knows what damage we did.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I loved pebbledash as a child, I would pick it off walls whenever I could, yes we are happy not to have it here, that said, if the house had been pebbledash we would have sorted it much sooner.

      Delete
  5. When we started renovating the front of the house, cutting through the walls to add some windows, we discovered that there was no insulation in the walls. Living in Canada we need insulation. Got some blown in, but then decided to check on when the front part of our home was built. Turned out it was first on the tax roll in 1921, this year the old part of our house turned 100. Scary.

    Why on earth would they paint over brick?

    God bless.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love those beautiful pots ! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are, we were given 4 in total anther one similar, and a round pot, the other 2 are in our back garden.

      Delete
  7. I’m sure you’ve explored all the possibilities before you decided to render, it’s so annoying that someone painted the bricks, Our house in Italy is rough rendered and painted a lovely terracotta, We had white rendered house in North Yorkshire that we painted a dusky pink with dark brown doors and windows I’m looking forward to seeing what you do.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails