Category: Real Estate

I know that colors tend to come and go as fashion statements, and maybe soon it will all change.  But I have to agree with the people complaining about this trend (now referred to as the “Grey Plague”):

‘Tasteless’ homeowners have been slammed over a trend of ruining pretty homes with dreary paint-jobs, supersized fences and Astro-turf lawns, dubbed the ‘Grey Plague’.
A number of examples have been shared online in recent weeks, showing how once picturesque white houses, often dating back centuries, have been transformed into ugly, grey mountains stripped of greenery and often with imposing front features.

Here’s an example:

Yes, that’s the same house.  The picturesque, somewhat eccentric Victorian cottage has been turned into some neo-Bauhaus nightmare, the shrubbery replaced with… concrete, and the family dwelling has come to resemble the offices of a small architectural firm.  To call the change “ugly” is to understate the matter.

I know, I know:  it’s a private property issue, so all you librarians can go back to reading Lysander Spooner or Atlas Shrugged.  Of course you should be able to do what you want with your property — but as it’s in the public domain (being oh-so visible from the street), I likewise have the right to express my opinion that it looks like shit.

The other bitch about a modern trend has to do with this fascination for the color gray / grey (depending on which side of the Atlantic you live;  both are correct).  From the linked article, look upon this foul eyesore, and despair:

For those who’ve never been to Britishland, allow me to mansplain.

Both these pics were taken on a sunny summer’s day — but, as the old joke goes, that’s not the way to bet when it comes to British Weather.  At least 80% of the time, it looks like this:

…cold, damp and dreary.  In a word: gray.

Now use your imagination and add a gray day to the white house in the pic on the left-hand side, and to the gray house on the right.  That’s right:  putting a gray house into a gray day turns “dreary” into “gloomy”.  Kinda like Edinburgh on any day, come to think of it:

(That was taken from my hotel room just after lunch, in October 1999.)

I don’t really mind gray — light gray — as an interior color, although I think it tends to make the room feel a little cold.  In fact, the walls in our current apartment are light gray and while we’d pick a different color (e.g. pale blue or a very light tropical-beach-sand color) if we had our druthers, the gray doesn’t offend.  However, the outside of our apartment complex is a dark gray, similar to the gray Victorian above, and that makes me want to bring the dynamite, especially when (like today) it’s overcast, chilly, drizzly and as New Wife calls it, “positively British”.  Here’s what I’m talking about (taken at about midday yesterday):

Change that to white walls with gray accents, and we’re talking turkey.  As it is… ugh.

Anyway, as I said at the top, maybe the fashion will change and gray will be replaced with some other color.

My luck, it will be avocado green.  Then there will be murders.