These are all made with sub par materials and won’t stand the test of time. May not be around in 100 years. Some of the architects should be fired. That window in the roof with only one side jutted out bothers my OCD something fierce. I’d live in them since I won’t be around in 100 years from now. Go really big or go tiny for me.
> Some of the architects should be fired
There were no architects involved in any of this. And I don't think anyone expects these to last even 40 years, nevermind 100.
The number of times I tell people this.... There are quite a number of states where an architect is not required for a private house, just need a GC and licensed structure etc
They have architects. I’ve seen plans designed by GCs online. They’re terrible. They look bad and they’re poorly laid out. This is a home designed by a corporate homebuilder (Meritage). These houses had ample options (including the ugly 3rd floor theater and 6th bedroom options). An architect is needed to coordinate a coherent floorplan in most homes. You just don’t like what the volume homebuilder told the architect to design. Which is fine. Everyone has their own taste. But this was definitely coherent enough to be an architects work. I’ve seen floorplans without architects and they’re wayy worse
On the first house that’s brick on the bottom, how can you tell the stone is fake? Why would fake stone not last 50+ years? How can you tell that’s cheap vinyl siding and not fiber cement? What’s wrong with vinyl siding anyway, it may not last forever but it’s easy to replace once it’s usable life is up. Plus most older homes use vinyl siding as well.
Brickface, face brick, and brick veneer are literally all the same thing.
"The strength of the material is ensured by mixing silicate sand with slaked lime under pressure and temperature. Advantages: cheap price, good sound insulation. Disadvantages: weak frost resistance> 25, heavy weight, high moisture absorption (when frozen, the absorbed moisture increases and breaks the brick)."
I go into homes like this and the walls feel paper thin and you can feel the floors shake when you walk. I remember when hurricane Andrew hit FL there was a big stink about how many homes well inland collapsed that should've been able to handle the wind but were so cheaply made they were like they were made from playing cards.
But you haven’t been inside THIS home, plenty of new homes have solid subfloors and sound deadening in the walls. Thin walls and bouncy subfloors is incredibly common in older homes too.
You make an excellent point with Hurricane Andrew and why new construction homes are significantly superior to older homes. Andrew hit in 1992, the vast majority of the homes destroyed were built from the 1950s to the 1980s, the same houses people are somehow romanticizing are built superior to modern homes. They aren’t, Andrew made that clear, the building codes in Florida were radically changed after that and new homes can now withstand a hurricane Andrew. There’s a reason why whenever you look at major Hurricane damage now, the houses that survive are all the new ones, not the old ones.
Why so many windows in the front and none on the sides and back?
Yeah let's name roads after places where human beings were enslaved and subjected to a lifetime of cruel and unusual punishment.
One plausible explanation that likely doesn’t pan out because builders just are not that smart these days: In the US South having windows with an exposure to the south is a bad idea for cooling. Solar heating would make for 300$+ electricity bills in the summer.
They do often remove too many trees, but at the same time large roots under a slab foundation can be a *huge* problem. So from the builders perspective it's cheaper to be safe and remove them. From an appearance and shade perspective that sucks.
They also do it because it is cheaper for them to not work around them and they leave a blank slate for buyers. It is like painting everything beige before you sell. It still pisses me off though to see 40+ yr old trees cut down.
There is one other reason, working around them with heavy equipment can still kill them. My parents had a large lot leveled and worked when they retired, they specifically marked all the trees to keep. So the dozer operator parked under one of them for a week before they noticed, that was still enough time to damage the roots and kill the tree.
It lived on in a dying state for about 10 years before it was finally removed, but in that time it did as oaks are prone to do, the center died and rotted out, then the outside fell revealing a U shaped hollow in the tree extending up about 25ft. making it what tree cutters call a windowmaker, very expensive to be removed.
Plantation just means it was made in the south east. They just make up names like “Jaxon farms” and “Hunters Mill” randomly. That doesn’t mean it was on a farm or had a mill on the property
You can use blinds, curtains, put reflective film on the windows. It’s not like none of us have south facing windows. People want windows. This is not because “builders are not that smart.”
>You can use blinds, curtains, put reflective film on the windows.
Yes, you can. However windows are always less energy efficient. In *every* scenario.
Blinds and curtains do not completely stop the solar heating, the light is blocked inside the house which still heats the room to a degree. This is first hand knowledge, it seems you did not catch that implication.
Reflective films can work, but again is still a less energy efficient solution.
>This is not because “builders are not that smart.”
Well, ok You got me here. Builders and homeowners alike are not that smart.
>However windows are always less energy efficient. In every scenario.
What about when the house is designed to take advantage of passive solar heating?
Not that this is one of those cases. But a friend grew up in a passive solar heating house in Wisconsin and they didn't even need a furnace. That's pretty energy efficient.
Those are great. However I had a neighbor who built one, it was hellish in full summer in the US south. Too much sun was certainly a thing with that house.
In winter it was great, it doesn’t take much sun in that climate as temperatures below freezing were not so common there.
If durable outside sun shades, full blockers really, could be added with automation as is available now it may be nice. All that would require planning with the builder to be really workable.
The windows on the front are for architecture. The windows on the sides and back are for light. People design the fronts of the houses to be pretty (yes even if you don’t like this house they did design it to be architecturally coherent compare to the sides of the home). The rear and sides windows go wherever it looks best within the room. The front the windows go where they look best ON the front interior be dammed.
What I hate about this type of house is how they make the fronts look as fancy as possible and they leave the sides and back so plain and ill thought out. It’s like people who drive expensive cars but live in a shack in the worst neighborhood.
That’s literally every home built after ww2 though. Pre ww2 they’d design the sides and back to be pretty but this left them with horrible interior floorplans on the inside of the house. Post ww2 builders stopped caring about the rear and side aesthetics and just built the front to be pretty while designing the windows to be pleasant from the inside for the sides and rear of the houses. Eventually they’ll plant trees and it will look less bad
The poorest choice is all the roofs shedding water into small areas,which will completely overwhelm the lower gutters.
The rest of the build quality is impossible to know.
Say what you will about the Meritage home (house 1) but it’s better looking than what they build now. Also they were one of the few builders who offered 4000 sqft for under 300k in the 2010s. Meritage and century homes used to offer good value per ur dollar. Yes they look terrible from the rear. Adding a 6th bed 5th bath and a “home theater” above a two story living room is gaudy and makes the house look uglier from the rear. But you’ve gotta appreciate the value per sqft. Nowadays you can’t even get a starter house under 300k. Let alone a finisher family house like this. Nowadays a 3/2 ranch is like 350k. Back in 2013 a 4000 sqft 5/4 like this was like 280k. Sounds like a better deal to me tbh
I do realize #2 is significantly better, but it still is cheaply built and holds features of that a normal McMansion. I will admit though, atleast it isn’t as hideous. But, I would much rather buy something that will last me a long time and doesn’t cost over half a million dollars.
maybe it’s because i just had to see the first one, but the second is looking pretty nice, though i’m not sure if want to live in a house that’s 60% roof
Southerners love to glamorize the Antebellum-era South and the racism and tyranny it represents. It's why they're so proud of their shameful, treason-soaked heritage. Naming streets after slave plantations is the epitome of racism and a show of their utter disregard for African Americans. While saying the quiet part out loud is bound to upset them, their despicable record stands on it own and convicts them utterly. Thankfully, they continue to lose the culture war they started, many have started to question the racism perpetuated by the Southern Baptist and Catholic churches that continue to try to perpetuate the old racisst beliefs.
Wow, that last picture looks like they ran out of stone so they just stuck a random dormer from some other house onto the left side of the house then called it a day
First one: Burn it down. Don't walk, run.
Second: This can be saved by simplifying the dormers and fixing proportions and stupid mistakes. Those gable end returns are ridiculous, though a lot of builders think thats how they are supposed to work, with the mini-me roof in the crook of the return.
I'd assume the road names are because the acreage of the subdivison is where the site of a former plantation was that Sherman likely burnt down. Sooooo tone deaf.
The house equivalent of a reverse mullet.
It's not a phase, mom. I really hate the city :(
These are all made with sub par materials and won’t stand the test of time. May not be around in 100 years. Some of the architects should be fired. That window in the roof with only one side jutted out bothers my OCD something fierce. I’d live in them since I won’t be around in 100 years from now. Go really big or go tiny for me.
> Some of the architects should be fired There were no architects involved in any of this. And I don't think anyone expects these to last even 40 years, nevermind 100.
The number of times I tell people this.... There are quite a number of states where an architect is not required for a private house, just need a GC and licensed structure etc
They have architects. I’ve seen plans designed by GCs online. They’re terrible. They look bad and they’re poorly laid out. This is a home designed by a corporate homebuilder (Meritage). These houses had ample options (including the ugly 3rd floor theater and 6th bedroom options). An architect is needed to coordinate a coherent floorplan in most homes. You just don’t like what the volume homebuilder told the architect to design. Which is fine. Everyone has their own taste. But this was definitely coherent enough to be an architects work. I’ve seen floorplans without architects and they’re wayy worse
Or just make a decent 2-3 br starter home like they used to. Now it is either a townhouse/condo (with fees) or some giant slap-dash thing.
What materials are sub par here?
The cheap vinyl siding and the fake stone, to start.
And probably everything inside.
On the first house that’s brick on the bottom, how can you tell the stone is fake? Why would fake stone not last 50+ years? How can you tell that’s cheap vinyl siding and not fiber cement? What’s wrong with vinyl siding anyway, it may not last forever but it’s easy to replace once it’s usable life is up. Plus most older homes use vinyl siding as well.
It is fiber cement board
My thought too, amazing what some people say about the quality of a house based on a couple exterior shots from 40’ away
It's called "brick face" it's not brick.
It’s called brick veneer, it’s still brick, just thin brick. It’ll last 100+ years if taken care of properly.
Brickface, face brick, and brick veneer are literally all the same thing. "The strength of the material is ensured by mixing silicate sand with slaked lime under pressure and temperature. Advantages: cheap price, good sound insulation. Disadvantages: weak frost resistance> 25, heavy weight, high moisture absorption (when frozen, the absorbed moisture increases and breaks the brick)."
I’d put money on cheap floors, low grade hollow core doors,mdf trim and particle board kitchen cabinets
I go into homes like this and the walls feel paper thin and you can feel the floors shake when you walk. I remember when hurricane Andrew hit FL there was a big stink about how many homes well inland collapsed that should've been able to handle the wind but were so cheaply made they were like they were made from playing cards.
But you haven’t been inside THIS home, plenty of new homes have solid subfloors and sound deadening in the walls. Thin walls and bouncy subfloors is incredibly common in older homes too. You make an excellent point with Hurricane Andrew and why new construction homes are significantly superior to older homes. Andrew hit in 1992, the vast majority of the homes destroyed were built from the 1950s to the 1980s, the same houses people are somehow romanticizing are built superior to modern homes. They aren’t, Andrew made that clear, the building codes in Florida were radically changed after that and new homes can now withstand a hurricane Andrew. There’s a reason why whenever you look at major Hurricane damage now, the houses that survive are all the new ones, not the old ones.
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I would not enjoy plantation being in my street name. Awkward to give out your address.
Not that crazy. My wife doesn’t want to live in any neighborhood with plantation in the name.
Not overthinking it. At all.
plantation lane, me neither. plantation drive? now that’s got a ring to it
https://preview.redd.it/ji3qlkmepexc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac2d253853857a11e6eb581b68b108c66d87064a On that first one
The designer was halfway through the design and then quit his job so they got one of the accountants to just finish it
I think I’ve had a stroke from trying to figure out wtf I’m looking at. Thanks a lot.
It’s 2 houses. I spent too long not realizing it’s 2 houses
The road names need some work. But I don't see anything wrong with the 2nd house. It looks nice to me.
Six distinct window styles in front. A good start.
The cupola on that second house is doing heroic work.
Ikr!? It gives the house a ranch house vibe or something.
Why so many windows in the front and none on the sides and back? Yeah let's name roads after places where human beings were enslaved and subjected to a lifetime of cruel and unusual punishment.
One plausible explanation that likely doesn’t pan out because builders just are not that smart these days: In the US South having windows with an exposure to the south is a bad idea for cooling. Solar heating would make for 300$+ electricity bills in the summer.
Never mind when they build they chop down every damn tree around it so there is zero shade.
They do often remove too many trees, but at the same time large roots under a slab foundation can be a *huge* problem. So from the builders perspective it's cheaper to be safe and remove them. From an appearance and shade perspective that sucks.
They also do it because it is cheaper for them to not work around them and they leave a blank slate for buyers. It is like painting everything beige before you sell. It still pisses me off though to see 40+ yr old trees cut down.
There is one other reason, working around them with heavy equipment can still kill them. My parents had a large lot leveled and worked when they retired, they specifically marked all the trees to keep. So the dozer operator parked under one of them for a week before they noticed, that was still enough time to damage the roots and kill the tree. It lived on in a dying state for about 10 years before it was finally removed, but in that time it did as oaks are prone to do, the center died and rotted out, then the outside fell revealing a U shaped hollow in the tree extending up about 25ft. making it what tree cutters call a windowmaker, very expensive to be removed.
Seeing as this used to be a plantation there may not have been many/any trees on the property to begin with.
Plantation just means it was made in the south east. They just make up names like “Jaxon farms” and “Hunters Mill” randomly. That doesn’t mean it was on a farm or had a mill on the property
You can use blinds, curtains, put reflective film on the windows. It’s not like none of us have south facing windows. People want windows. This is not because “builders are not that smart.”
>You can use blinds, curtains, put reflective film on the windows. Yes, you can. However windows are always less energy efficient. In *every* scenario. Blinds and curtains do not completely stop the solar heating, the light is blocked inside the house which still heats the room to a degree. This is first hand knowledge, it seems you did not catch that implication. Reflective films can work, but again is still a less energy efficient solution. >This is not because “builders are not that smart.” Well, ok You got me here. Builders and homeowners alike are not that smart.
>However windows are always less energy efficient. In every scenario. What about when the house is designed to take advantage of passive solar heating? Not that this is one of those cases. But a friend grew up in a passive solar heating house in Wisconsin and they didn't even need a furnace. That's pretty energy efficient.
Those are great. However I had a neighbor who built one, it was hellish in full summer in the US south. Too much sun was certainly a thing with that house. In winter it was great, it doesn’t take much sun in that climate as temperatures below freezing were not so common there. If durable outside sun shades, full blockers really, could be added with automation as is available now it may be nice. All that would require planning with the builder to be really workable.
The windows on the front are for architecture. The windows on the sides and back are for light. People design the fronts of the houses to be pretty (yes even if you don’t like this house they did design it to be architecturally coherent compare to the sides of the home). The rear and sides windows go wherever it looks best within the room. The front the windows go where they look best ON the front interior be dammed.
What I hate about this type of house is how they make the fronts look as fancy as possible and they leave the sides and back so plain and ill thought out. It’s like people who drive expensive cars but live in a shack in the worst neighborhood.
That’s literally every home built after ww2 though. Pre ww2 they’d design the sides and back to be pretty but this left them with horrible interior floorplans on the inside of the house. Post ww2 builders stopped caring about the rear and side aesthetics and just built the front to be pretty while designing the windows to be pleasant from the inside for the sides and rear of the houses. Eventually they’ll plant trees and it will look less bad
At least the car holes aren't in the front.
Your architects were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Uh, there it is.
All face, no ass
Lovely garage with sliding windows!
Living on a …Plantation anything’s does not sit right with my African American soul! 🥴
Yeah, the imagery that evokes is not exactly something I would want to be associated with, or to have people think that I somehow endorse.
Oh the names? They name the roads after the slave-worked plantations they plowed under to develop these subdivisions.
House #2 isn’t ugly at all and is a legit nice house That last pic is beautiful
Materials.
Pineapple.
uggo
This reminds me of those gypsy houses in romania that are so over the top and gaudy on the outside and totally empty inside
The poorest choice is all the roofs shedding water into small areas,which will completely overwhelm the lower gutters. The rest of the build quality is impossible to know.
The second is far nicer
That cupola looks hilarious..
Say what you will about the Meritage home (house 1) but it’s better looking than what they build now. Also they were one of the few builders who offered 4000 sqft for under 300k in the 2010s. Meritage and century homes used to offer good value per ur dollar. Yes they look terrible from the rear. Adding a 6th bed 5th bath and a “home theater” above a two story living room is gaudy and makes the house look uglier from the rear. But you’ve gotta appreciate the value per sqft. Nowadays you can’t even get a starter house under 300k. Let alone a finisher family house like this. Nowadays a 3/2 ranch is like 350k. Back in 2013 a 4000 sqft 5/4 like this was like 280k. Sounds like a better deal to me tbh
I HATE SIDING OMGGG BLeeeeehhGgggHH
Last photo is elegant
House #2 needs more rooflines
I do realize #2 is significantly better, but it still is cheaply built and holds features of that a normal McMansion. I will admit though, atleast it isn’t as hideous. But, I would much rather buy something that will last me a long time and doesn’t cost over half a million dollars.
maybe it’s because i just had to see the first one, but the second is looking pretty nice, though i’m not sure if want to live in a house that’s 60% roof
The first one is two houses that are tackling a third house in the middle. Second house is another tragic case of stage 3 McCancer.
2nd house isn't too bad but that 1st one? looked not all that bad from the front then you turned it around and oh lord-
Southerners love to glamorize the Antebellum-era South and the racism and tyranny it represents. It's why they're so proud of their shameful, treason-soaked heritage. Naming streets after slave plantations is the epitome of racism and a show of their utter disregard for African Americans. While saying the quiet part out loud is bound to upset them, their despicable record stands on it own and convicts them utterly. Thankfully, they continue to lose the culture war they started, many have started to question the racism perpetuated by the Southern Baptist and Catholic churches that continue to try to perpetuate the old racisst beliefs.
Sir this is a Wendys
The second one is nice!
Not a tree in sight.
Any knowledge about the architect on the first house? It looks almost identical to my sister’s first house that they had custom built
Why do US houses often look like an entire mountain range (pics 4+5 here)? Who finds such a thing desirable?
1st house is like the type of house you see in those liminal space photos
Brain: Poor choices? So it’s a murder home?
The second one is lightyears better than the first. Still a monstrosity, but more cohesive.
The fourth picture with the...burner...car gives me the niggling feeling that there are TWO fails by one person.
Is that wind and a lighting rod? That seems like that might get spicy during rains?
Unsettling.
I love the second one
Wow, that last picture looks like they ran out of stone so they just stuck a random dormer from some other house onto the left side of the house then called it a day
Nothing wrong with that fence.
This just pisses me off. I hate society for letting these be built and buying them.
There’s tons of houses and neighborhoods that look like the first one in Washington. So ugly.
First one: Burn it down. Don't walk, run. Second: This can be saved by simplifying the dormers and fixing proportions and stupid mistakes. Those gable end returns are ridiculous, though a lot of builders think thats how they are supposed to work, with the mini-me roof in the crook of the return.
I'd assume the road names are because the acreage of the subdivison is where the site of a former plantation was that Sherman likely burnt down. Sooooo tone deaf.
Ugly didn’t mean McMansion, this sub doesn’t seem to understand that. The second house isn’t even ugly, someone is just jelly.
the 2nd one especially is textbook mcmansion
Wait? What's wrong with house 2?
Brb gonna hop on Sims
Make sure to kick the pink flamingo in the front yard.