cultural differences, I guess

Or maybe she harbors a dislike of "follies." I happen to like the better made folly on occasion, but yours sounds a tad cheesy. Bricks? If the owners had let stone show through, maybe... Maggiepie "Turn off your TVs. Don't watch your MSNBC, your Fox, your ABC." ~ B. Obama "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" ~ The Wizard of Oz

There's a house in another city, a well to do area. They also did the distressed look and the city inspector tried to get them to change it. That is a huge chunk of change to make a house look like that. I think the city did not win.

Could be.....I have been in Germany and can't see where they do these type of things....I imagine they probably wonder why we do so many different things....even the faux painting in homes.

Hi, dawnald. I guess AnneMarie thought that the house still needed some fixing up. Where she is from, homes probably need a lot of paint work and all. I guess she does not know an completed house from an renovated house when she sees one.

Definitely cultural difference.Out here you can see the most gigantic ugly block houses that take up the whole of the lot. Really out of place. Nearby is a house built in the shape of a boat for goodness sake. I am sure that they brine the council officials to get permits to build such monstrosities. The word used to describe such dwellings is buttoo - pronounced bootoo. This is applied to anything including a person of poor taste or socially unacceptable behaviour.

Oh my gosh . . . there's this house a few blocks away from us. We see it when we have to stop at the light every morning. The house itself looks like a cool Italian villa . . . but there is this ugly wall around it that has the fake distressed walls that I think you are talking about. Mustard color walls with red bricks showing here and there. Looks like a bad set from Universal Studios. It's so poorly done that it's a fake faux - ha ha. I actually think a thick coat of paint would much improve the eyesore. Not a cultural difference in my case . . . just my opinion as a person who designs. I have seen really nicely done walls with the distressed look, but the one near us is hideous.

I guess it is. My response would probably be that it's in need of repair - but then I haven't yet come to terms with holes in jeans, so maybe it is an age thing.

LOL cultural differences, different tastes/mentalities what the person is used to and even habits. It all counts:) I suppose that this friend coming from Europe was not really impressed with turrets and distressed looks. There's plenty there, of both. I remember when I came to Canada some friends were excited to show me what they called " a real castle" . So they took me to "Casa Loma " here in Toronto. Sure I appreciated visiting, and it was quite nice, but coming from a place where "real castles" - and I mean the ones over a thousand years old - can be found by the dozen I wasn't exactly super impressed. Maybe that's what happened with your german friend.

Same thing happen to me here in Australia. Initially, I was surprised to see that most of the houses have partial fencing to their houses. The back portion of the houses are well fenced while the front portion are left bare. This doesn't happen in my country. Fencing is part of the infra structure of the house in Malaysian homes. And garages are not commonly attached to the house unlike most of the Aussie homes where the garage is part of the house unit. So yes, we are bound to meet cultural differences when we visit another country.

Probably so. I remember a story about a woman who moved to my area of Michigan from Europe back in the 1950s. She said when she came into town, she thought everyone must be poor because we had houses made from wood. Where she lived, everyone had homes made of stone or brick. Only the poor ppl in her country lived in wooden houses! I also had a friend who moved to Michigan from Fairbanks Alaska in the 1970s. Most homes and buildings there in her part of Alaska were only a few years old. She had never seen anything more than about 20 or 30 years old. When they moved to a farmhouse here (circa 1920s) she was a teen and was so embarrassed when the school bus dropped her off at home. She has since come to appreciate older homes but was humiliated to live in such an old house then. She assumed that everyone thought she must be very poor. So, I think there are even cultural differences in housing tastes right here in the USA too! :)

LOL! I am not sure it is as much a cultural issue as a personal one - "different strokes for different folks". I think it sounds pretty, but I would have to see it to be sure. In the city they were doing a restoration project to fix all the bridges and clean up the area, because it is a tourist attraction. After all the crumbling facades were fixed and had a fresh coat of paint, the city hired professional painters to come in and "spruce things up" by adding touches of their artwork on some of the bridges and walls. Many of the painters added 3-D flowers or other pretty 3-D scenes. What did one of the painters choose to paint, though? Yup, you guessed it ... he decided to make one of the bridges look like it was crumbling and falling down! They could have just saved all the money that they had just used to restore the bridge and left it "as is" if he was just going to return it to its previous condition.

Dawny, i tend to agree with her. You do not plaster over bricks, it really looks horrible. Need paint, INDEED. TATA.

The visitor does not know anything about modern architecture? It's not just cultural difference because I could easily appreciate anything vintage-looking. He is of traditional taste, that visitor of yours.

different schools of thought.. oh boy..i'm starting to sound smart

cultural or individual preference. some distressed jobs can look really bad depending on how they do it.

I don't know. Seems to me the person just has a "conventional" idea of how a house and its walls should look like. I tend to appreciate non-conventional designs.

I guess that there´s a bit of personal likes and dislikes. I would not live in the house my sister and my cousin have (made by my cousin´s husband, an architect). The first time I saw it I told my husband it looked like a huge container. Other differences have to do with wheather or other needs posed by Mother Nature (we have to make our houses earthquake proof and so they are a lot more expensive). Still other "makeups" are cultural. Our old houses are made as Spaniards made them centuries ago.

Well, I've never been to Germany, but my husband spent half of his childhood there as his father was in the military so I learn a lot about the culture in Germany from him. He constantly points out the architecture around here that looks like it is German influenced. So, based on what he has pointed out to me, I would have to say that this would be a cultural difference because he doesn't recall seeing anything during his childhood that is anything like what you've described.

it's true. last year when my grandma came to visit us during the summer,she asked my why most of our building are make with a wood structure and not brics.

What's her meaning?her house still needs painting?