This is a new house being built near where I live. All they build around here now are houses in the $500,000 and up range. This one is about 5000 square feet I’d guess and the neighborhood is marketed “From the high 700’s”. “It’s a whopper!” as my mom would say. I only sketched the part that applies to the observations below.
FYI, we live in the last neighborhood of small 1970’s houses in the area. Houses of “lesser distinction” you might say. So, I tend to hold these high end houses to a higher standard than my own house.
One can understand design “oddities” in a house like mine. After all, “high design” wasn’t a house marketing concept when my house was built. But with these new neighborhoods, the houses are heavily marketed with words like “elite”, “elegant”, “up scale”, “select reserve”, and “architectural integrity”. So, you would not expect to see obvious design screw-ups or “oddities” in a house like this.
For that reason, I couldn’t resist mentioning this one. It’s an all brick home designed in a somewhat “Georgian” style of architecture. However, somebody decided it should have a little “English Tudor” element to it. So they skillfully trimmed out this little jut-out on the second story with the “Tudor timber and panel” look. That in itself is quite out of place on a Georgian style house. But to properly bring attention to it, they’ve added the lovely little window thrown in as an afterthought.
It’s like somebody said, “Oops! we should make that room a bit bigger. Just hang it off the side of the house and make it look Tudor.” Then later, “Oops! silly us. We forgot to put a window in that jutty-outty thingy we added.”
The result is an eyesore. It’s the only window on the entire (3 story!) side of the house. And what’s with the position of the window anyway??? It’s not even centered horizontally in the panel it occupies. Sadly, the “jutty-outty thingy” is the first thing you notice approaching the house from the east by car. Because the house sits in a curve at the top of a hill, the front holds secondary interest from the street approach.
Let’s see now…how would a Realtor pitch this…? “Notice the Tudor add-on with its unique, assymetrical window. A delightful example of the architectural integrity incorporated into every one the homes in this elite neighborhood. It’s so unique. It’s the only home in the neighborhood with a Tudor look…”
Every $790,000 house should have an English Tudor, jutty-outty thingy….don’t you think?
If I’m gonna spend $790,000 for a house, it better dang well be planned out and properly designed in advance of being built! Oops! “Dang” isn’t a word in the elite lexicon is it? Sorry, my bad. Now you know why I live in a home of “lesser distinction”.
