fists

This make my face hurt

On December 8, 2010, in Observations, by Bob Borson

I am generally a glass half full type person when I write these posts but I have to confess that I am probably more of a glass half full needs to be poured over your stupid head type person in real life.

Doesn’t that sound terrible? Probably because it is terrible – although for the record, I would never pour a half glass of anything over someone’s head. Depending on the contents (*lava*) I’m sure there would be litigation and jail time involved and while I think I’m funny, I don’t think I could handle prison time for an assault kinda funny.

I was having a conversation with some people recently and they singled me out as a person who prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. Moi? They even described it as if it were common knowledge – sort of like this:

Nelson: “Did you see the house that is going up on the corner of such-n-such? As Bob would say, it looks like someone broke it’s face with a poo-fist.”

Bob: “What?!?”

Nelson: “That’s right. Poo-fist”

Mary: “That does sound like something you would say.”

Bob: “I’ve never even seen that house!! How would I know it looks like someone broke it’s face with a poo-fist?”

Nelson: “I didn’t say you saw it, I’m just saying that’s what you would say if you did see it.”

Mary: “In fact, I’ve actually heard you say it before (looking back at Nelson) …  it was totally funny.”

Bob: “Okay, maybe I have said that phrase before but you’re taking it out of context … when I said it, it was funny. You make it sound mean.”

Mary: “Yeah, Bob has a point  - but in all fairness to Nelson, you do make up sayings all the time. Remember using “Gorilla’s armpit”?”

Bob: “No – I never said that before.”

Nelson & Mary:  ……

Bob: (glaring intently, waiting for combustion)

Nelson & Mary:  ……

Bob: “OKAY!! (looking at floor) … maybe I did say that … “

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I have a reputation for speaking my mind, I think that’s what I owe to people. I don’t try and be mean about it, I think I’m being funny. Surprisingly it doesn’t go very far endearing you to others. This isn’t the house that “Nelson” and “Mary” were talking, but it’s pretty bad. It does look like someone broke this houses face with a poo-fist … or maybe it’s just me, because I am a total jerk. I’d say please enjoy but if you like this house, I demand that you stop ready this blog – I’m totally serious … really, I am.

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Look at how the brick and stone come together at the corner. That’s nasty.

Three courses of brick, then some stone … then 6 courses of brick followed by some more stone – and then a whole mess of brick. It looks like tabs on a bend and fold paper house.

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click to enlarge this beauty

So this is the side elevation – the one facing the major street and therefore visible to all. How about all those different windows huh? Aren’t they (mmrhgggaaaahh) – sorry, I think I just threw up in my mouth – aren’t they great? Let’s see, you have 5 windows here in this picture, 4 of which don’t match any of the others – different material, different sizes, different window mutin pattern. But just don’t worry about that … I mean, c’mon. Who notices stuff like that?! It’s actually a lot worse. Let’s zoom in on the brick work around those 5 windows (again because it bears repeating – 4 of which don’t match any of the others…)

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click to enlarge (at your own risk!!!)

Holy Gorilla’s armpit!! It did get get worse! Starting on the left:

  • The top of the first window is roughly level with the solider course of brick above the window
  • The second window is glass block – which I have become famous for hating – and the top of the window is slightly above and into the soldier course of brick. It also has duct tape in the center which I am thinking is because they are having a hard time finding a glass block that will fit there. I could be wrong, we’ll just have to wait this one out.
  • The top of the third window is slightly below the solider course.   Of course it is … three different windows and three different conditions at the soldier course.
  • The top of the fourth window has a different brick course layout all-together but there is still a little sliver of brick in place (look at the top left corner of the window) WTF! You will also notice that the new trim board (it is unpainted here) doesn’t line up with the existing brown trim board … why would it? pshhhaw – totally awesome in that it couldn’t be worse.
  • And now we are at window number five – yet again, completely different than the others. At least they took the time to center the foundation vent under the window so that it would look – wait a minute – NO THEY DIDN”T!!!!

There are plenty of other things that the person who is renovating this house for resale is doing wrong, I just don’t see the need to continue pointing out anymore of them – it’s like kicking the dead.

This make my face hurt

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LEGAL NOTICE: by the way, the names here have been changed to protect the few people who actually talk to me in real life. Also, do NOT look up poo-fist on the internet **shudder** I may never recover.

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About the author

Bob Borson

Dallas architect who specializes in modern design. I'm AIA, Leed AP, NCARB certified, and previous Dallas AIA Young Architect of the Year (2009).

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  • http://twitter.com/turnageb Bryant Turnage

    Bob, I think you’re more of a kindred spirit than I even realized. I certainly try to keep it professional, but sometimes I just can’t hold back my opinions – and that house deserves the full brunt of criticism! I have to admire your creative way with words, as well.

  • Anastasia Sheveleva

    Oh Gosh! My face really hurts right now from laughing. You definitely gotta come to Russia some time and not to Moscow or to Saint Petersburg( Though there are lot of crappy buildings there too) but just a random city) Architecture will blow your mind with those unpredictable decisions you just showed. In Volgograd we call it Volga-style)

  • timmyjoe42

    Wow, that’s pretty bad. I think I could do a better job at the masonry if I did it myself and I have never laid brick before. Maybe they are going to cover it all with EIFS.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks Bryant – do you sleep?

    The real killer is that this house – more particularly that lot, sits on a street full of million dollar homes and I know that someone is simply trying to update and then flip that house. The house was old and not that great before but now it’s a piece of garbage.

    Seeing that things like this are okay with people really bothers me – like I’m some fringe element pointing out details that nobody cares about or will notice. That is a shame.

  • Anonymous

    Anastasia,

    One of these days I hope I do come to Russia – and Volgograd so that I can see the statue of Mother Russia. I hate to admit this but I know so little about Russian architecture that I would have to study up for a while before I went. One day…

  • Anonymous

    Hard to believe but they took all the original brick off the first floor and came back with the Texas Chalk stone and brick work. You should see the mortar joints. Not are they super wavy but they are really thick and uneven – over 3/4″ in some places.

  • Val Short

    What a fabulous post! I actually laughed out loud reading it. Everything so true.

    Unfortunately living in the DC area we see alot of this in what I call pseudo-colonialism. Everyone here this “brick front” — (like you are fooling a lot of people who dont’ see all that aluminum siding on the other three elevations! And then the glued on shutters!

  • McGeeArch

    Wow… I thought these were the “before” pictures. Poo-fist is too kind a word. “Crap” comes to mind. The phrase “how did this designer get a license” comes to mind. Yikes.

  • Anonymous

    Aahhhh buddy – there wasn’t any designer on this project I can guarantee you that. This “design” is the result of doing without thinking or planning more than 1 brick in advance. Anyone who would actually try and make this look good wouldn’t do what they are doing here. One sloppy mistake after another.

  • Anonymous

    Yikes! I can’t also tell you just how much I love seeing a brick soldier course set into a stone veneer wall.

    For the record, I fully expect to see glued-on shutters here (except they won’t be glued, they’ll be “installed” with duct tape folded back over onto itself press-on style)

    Thanks for commenting Val, I appreciate it.

  • Jason Hoppe

    And I figured those types or “styles” of houses were only in the Mid-west. The sad thing, is that they will have granite countertops, cherry cabinets, marble this, and something considered elegant that. And that is what the person who buys the house will look at. They don’t care that the windows don’t match, or align. They care about what it looks like inside. There is an upside to this house…… telling the pizza delivery guy that you live in the “crap” house on the corner will make it easier to find.

  • http://www.eco-modernism.com Becky Shankle

    Frankenhaus, anyone? Yikes.

  • Larry Bloom, AIA

    Oh Becky – Frankenhaus – good one! Darn, I couldn’t stop laughing during my reading. That was hilarious. So here’s the thing – I see this stuff all the time. It’s amazing the kind of crappy construction and design we live with sometimes. I think it shows how much complacency there can be in construction (and yes, designers) to let this stuff happen. It’s a darn shame.

  • http://twitter.com/mfrech Mike Frechette

    Yuck…though I think you have stumbled upon some new architectural vocabulary with the “exclamation point soldier course” in image #4.

    And if there are any Upright Citizens Brigade fans out there, they’ll know that this house may indeed have been poked with a “poo-stick” (presumably clenched in a poo-fist.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOhI3k3JPI (don’t worry the video is from comedy central and not all that gross.)

  • Jeremiah Russell

    AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! HOLY GOD THIS IS JUST TOO FUNNY! you honestly can’t make this stuff up. How much do you want to bet this house was built entirely with materials that were on sale at Home Depot or found on Craigs List? :-P

  • http://twitter.com/bensmithson ben smithson

    I do a little bit of web work here and there. And I’m a HUGE fan of grid systems. (Grid systems come from newspaper times, where emphasis is placed on clarity, spacing, visual hierarchy, and most importantly, alignment.) To me, this house is an amalgam of wishy-washy additions and second-thoughts / last-minute changes. It seems to lack a sense of overall visual strategy, like they’re trying out a bunch of different window heights and materials to see what works. Sad.

  • http://twitter.com/Splintergirl Amy Good

    Hmmm…would this be a case of going to the local RE-STORE store and buying whatever windows they happen to have? I have to wonder, though, how long the tabbed on concrete has been there…how long the whole house has been there.

    This post makes me feel better about the extreme costs my family has outlayed in every replacement window, painfully making sure they match.

    I wonder if the neighbors have a large and high fence?…hmmmm?

  • http://www.kitchens.com Kim

    I have a very similar glass-block window in my bathroom, and it has a small rectangular metal opening in the middle for fresh air–could that be what this one has going on? Although it really does look like duct tape.

    Do you have plans for a part two analyzing how the second and first floors (don’t) work togther?

  • Anonymous

    I would not take that bet

  • Anonymous

    it definitely has that “I’m starting here” look to it without consequence to the decision. I honestly don’t think whoever is doing that work cares. Otherwise, you think they mistake #1 and they fix it or at least take a break and make sure that the mistake isn’t about to happen again 8 feet away.

    All we can hope for is a tall fence and lots of foundation plantings.

  • Anonymous

    there are no neighbors and no fence on this side elevation.

    Yes, resale and Re-store is right.

  • Anonymous

    No future plans to continue to eviscerate this house. I might come back later and post an updated construction photo or two.

    It is duct tape – for sure. That is one item I am particularly interested in seeing how it resolves!

    Thanks for commenting Kim -

  • http://twitter.com/ClarityK Sarah Lloyd

    What are you doing taking pictures outside my dream-house, anyway? ;)

  • http://twitter.com/DMS_StructEng David Sharpe

    Blimey. It must have taken real effort to build this badly. Well done. Not. (Bob, “poo-fist”? Really?)

  • http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com Jody Brown

    Rare occasion where MORE glass block might help. Perhaps a glass block fort constructed between my eyes and this piece of …

  • Anonymous

    really

  • Anonymous

    a pair of glasses with a piece of glass block for each lens. They’d be really big and bulky but as long as you put black frames around them, you’d be soooo cool.

  • Anonymous

    Ha! As if.
    (better than taking pictures inside your dream home…)

  • Anonymous

    Wow.. That is an insanely haphazardly constructed home! To think it HAD to have a permit right? I am sure the permit would tell you the applicant’s name as well as maybe the architects so you can pound sense into them with the poo-fist! The biggest question still remains to be answered though… WWVID? In conclusion.. I think the ducttaped hole is for a yet to be installed dryer vent. Just a guess.

  • r m c

    I’ve actually seen someone (in dallas) tear brick off a 50′s style brick home and add the rock to the corners to mimic this and try to tell me its an upgrade!!! You should head out to Cedar Hill sometime and check out the apex of this insane trend… 3 types of brick 3 types of rock and a little aluminum siding to round out the design.

  • Richard

    Reminds me of my first year of teaching drafting & design. I had a student do something like that for a house he was actually going to build. When my face contorted and I asked him what the freak he was thinking, he told me his dad has some spare winodws & doors from a build that he was giving him to build with….The student never completed the program, but I heard he did build the house. So now there is a second house that looks like “someone broke it’s face with a poo-fist.”. LOL

  • http://twitter.com/Alexandrafunfit Alexandra Williams

    It’s like you’re trying to hurt my feelings on purpose, by posting pictures of my abode. Do you know how much time I spent making it so lovely? Do you know what duct tape costs nowadays! Pssssst. I have more duct tape, too, and am willing to do your shutters!
    By the way, Bob, even the caption “Click here to enlarge this beauty” sounds kinda, you know, suggestive. But I’ve been clicking for hours, hoping to get enlarged!

  • Anonymous

    Ah, Bob crosses the highway and into my neighborhood (the wrong side). Yes, this house is right outside the grocery store I go to and I see it EVERY WEEK. AWE FULL!!! My biggest pet peeve is the brick/stone mismatch, only because people do it ALL OF THE TIME! Please don’t choose materials based on one brick and one rock, if you MUST have that brick and stone look. Thanks for pointing out the window heights, I had missed that since I see this mostly at night (probably best). Is that a rowlock course under a cut soldier course in window #4? Now I have to go look.

  • Anonymous

    While your looking more closely, take a peek at the mortar color – the bottom doesn’t match the top. To someone just driving by, it’s an eyesore but to the person who really looks at it – an abomination.

  • Tumblewood

    You’d love this old Old National Bank building I inspected this week. A very cool building. Built in the mid 60s and obvious the architects were some smoking some good stuff. The structure of the building itself is really cool, but the individual pieces of “brick art” are the highlight. All through out, pieces of art carved into or out of the bricks. I was fun looking around.

  • Anonymous

    Bob – you are such a hilarious devil! I just re-read this post for like the umpteenth time and it still makes me laugh.

    Your biggest fan,
    Bob

  • Babs

    Bob, That is the most disgusting piece of crap that I have seen since Dollar General stores! That house is nasty looking! I guess they let anybody get a building permit these days. It’s so bad that I thought  perhaps, for a minute only though, that it was some sort of gag…Did the owner pay these jerks? Well we have to cut them a break when it comes to the longer window…they didn’t want to cut a hole in the floor to make the window fit so they cut the brick instead! Wait ! Is that really a foundation vent , and where is the floor line anyway??
    Oh look! The masonry is waving to you! Please take more photos when the effloressence starts taking over the wall from the white mortor and mortor snots on the wall. (let’s have a moment of prayer for the poor brick, shall we?)

  • ahp378

    So I know this post is super old and I’m sure someone’s pointed this out already.  But I really enjoy how they seem to have gone for some kind of symmetry around the front door on the two faces of the two different parts of the house, the one being a good 12+ feet back from the other.  As if someone thought that two matching pairs of windows was enough of a stimulus package to keep this bad boy limping along.  Or maybe it just gives a false impression of intentionality because the rest of the house is so blatantly atrocious. 

  • Anonymous

    Ouch.  This is the kind of aesthetic masterpiece that made me leave the suburban Midwest.