I think houses are becoming more boring.

Take the house pictured here, for instance. It sits on the corner of an intersection not far from where I live (in fact, I ran out and took this picture this morning). I have no idea how old it is. I imagine it was not built to any established design but rather someone said, “I’d like a thing up there. You know, like a lighthouse or church tower. Something like that.”” And then he probably sketched it out while some guy named Joe or John or Norm scratched his head and said, “Oh, sure, we can do that.”

There is the expression, “They don’t build ’em like they used to.”” This has nothing to do with that.

The fact is, they used to build things more or less shooting in the dark. The general rule would have been best guess, in a lot of instances. Now, certainly, there have always been highly skilled and knowledgeable craftsmen, and they would have been able to make something not likely to fall down after ten or fifteen years or weeks. But a lot of building has been done by people who had no such knowledge or training.

I can draw a square, so I can build a barn.

That may or may not be true. But I can try to build a barn, even if I can’t draw a square.

This house presents an impressive outline and has interesting details and appears to be in good condition. Around the side, however, there are some cracks running up the brick that suggest foundation failure. That’s pretty common with old houses around here. In a lot of instances, foundations were too shallow and decades of rain could end up washing out underneath them. Anyway, there is a window on the side of the house which has its arch collapsing.

I would have needed to slink over their fence to get a picture of that window and whoever is in there may not have appreciated it. I took my pictures from the other side of the street.

As you can plainly see, the house has a rather intricate roof. There are a couple of jogs in the main roof that suggest to me that there were a few changes made, parts added on, over the years. I find the normal result of adding to a house is a screwed up roof, unless the addition is designed with the roof in mind. It almost never is.

Newer houses are built with roofs way more complex than this one. I see the progress in the newer housing developments and the shell of a building is up and sheathed in a day, but the roof takes two weeks to get framed and closed in. Then the roofers come in and have to cut so many shingles on bizarre angles, they end up throwing away probably thirty percent of the shingles they have.

My roof, which needs to be reshingled, is straight and plain and easy to do.

New houses will require a second mortgage to reshingle.

But I guess people like the look. But if they’re trying to match the appearance of an older house such as the one presented here, it’s not working. Probably because they design the newer houses with an eye toward singular flourish of detail, such as “Put a gable here, and have it finished with cedar shingles” or “Let’s bump out the foundation here to accommodate a nice seating area.”

Whereas this house was possibly inspired by, “Hey. I’d like a pagoda on the roof. And give it a little hat.”