Photos?

I'm interested in this as well. We are building a home right now and many houses, ours included, have more exposed foundation than I anticipated. Some folks specifically requested "siding to grade," which I'm guessing we should have done. Lesson learned... Has anyone added siding after the fact? Is this a difficult undertaking? I've also seen people build up retaining walls to cover exposed foundation.

Tell us the materials and colors used for the house above the foundation.
I have one house with "asbestos" siding painted white and the block foundation is painted a dark green. It looks quite good.

gardenweb is giving me error messages when I try to add a pic. The home has off white vinyl siding, white trim and it will have cultured stone (bucks county fieldstone) only on the bumped out foyer portion of home. No foundation will show on the front thankfully. Oh, and the foundation is poured concrete.

This post was edited by MrsB1227 on Fri, Oct 24, 14 at 21:16

My neighborhood has brick to grade.

Stucco or a stone veneer would be the first choices for me. Then paint.

I agree with lyfia. If budget is a concern, I would paint is a darker color, probably something that matches the stone in the front of your house.

It's common,just don't worry about it until others cover theirs and your neighbors complain. Most important,you should never have dirt closer than about 2 or 3 inches of brick and prefferably no closer than 4 or 5 of wood siding/wood wall plate. There are creepy crawlers that will come in through wheep holes if they don't have to leave safety of cover and concealment. Termites usualy gain initial access through mud tunnels from soil to inside structure. The exposed concrete allows early detection when tunnel starts to cross it.
Builders seldom properly backfill foundations so as your neighbors haul in soil to build up their yard,your place becomes a hole between them. Water must never stand withing 5 feet of the foundation.
My advise is don't try telling tradesmen how to build your home unless you know the trade inside out.

I have a house with the foundation painted.Looks good to me. There are paints specific for use on concrete.

Real brick and stone requires a foundation for those to be set on and probably stick out way too far to look right. Fake brick and rock would probably also stick out too much, maybe not. Extending the siding would look strange too me in most cases. Probably. I don't know your house so just guessing..

Is landscaping an option?

Agree with above. A couple of bushes make it all go away. Sure - there can be issues if you plant too close etc...

There is a corner house near me that is 20 years old. They are the only ones that never planted anything and they have exposed concrete. Looks terrible.

Plants can be cheaper than even paint.

We went with stucco, as the foundation in the back is full height (walk-out basement). I will eventually paint it.

We had part of our foundation done in stone veneer to match the landscape stone. Most of it we left alone as it isn't much exposed and is largely covered by landscape plants. Below is a pic of the stone veneer on the foundation wall. The stone walls are made of the stone we dug out of the foundation hole.

But in the back, under the deck it is exposed and it was ugly. So I had a mason come and chip off all the nubs and parge it in dyed concrete...it makes a nice back drop for my "dry river bed" landscape I put under the deck...I'm so not a fan of weeding!

Thanks for the ideas everyone. There is a walkout basement, so unfortunately a lot of foundation is exposed so bushes won't hide the problem, but Christmas trees might ;)
I'm leaning toward painting since it is probably the most economical option.

Why not stucco?

I agree with shiltsy, shrubs are the traditional solution. There are plenty of shrubs that will get very tall if you let them. The door only requires you o leave 32 inches exposed.

We have painted stucco.

we had our builder leave 1.5 inches overhang on the main house and then hired a mason to put the stone all the way around. the back is a 12ft high wall as it is a walk out basement. the labor alone was over $5000 a few years ago, the stone was around $1200... BUT the outcome was worth every penny, it turned out great! the rock on the foundation just gives a house an authentic natural look in my opinion. we are in the middle of adding an attached garage and wrap around deck now, which will hide most of the rock we have now, but we plan on adding it on the piers under the porch and the foundation of the garage.

Only4: we have cultured fieldstone on our bumped out foyer so putting the same stone on the exposed foundation would be a great option. As of now we will leave the foundation as is, we are really tapped out as we spent way more than anticipated on our kitchen, lol!

We are using hardie plank siding on our new construction home. We will end up with about 30" of exposed cinder block below the siding.

We are going to plaster the exposed cinder block with a smooth finish. We will leave it a natural cement color, but may paint it later.

Typically you would use underpinning, which is basically like a stucco. They usually trowel it directly on to the poured foundation, let it set for a little bit and then use a sponge to give it a smooth sandlike finish. You can have them color it or use a good stucco or exterior paint.

Here is what it looks like. I used it on the face of the risers and under the stone around the front where there wasn't built up stone planters.