I like it but wow, where's the greenery? Everything looks sad and dejected!

Also I know nothing about the durability or climate in which this material should and should not be placed.

I don't really understand the question -- what do we think? It's not uncommon to use a pricier material for the front of a townhouse than for the sides and rear -- e.g., brick and stucco -- a balance between cost and looks. Here the front is super-modern, but the door appears to have fallen from space (19th century space), so I'd replace that with something modern in the first ten minutes.

Yeah.... what acm said. That door...

Everything about that house says 'low-budget-flip'.

Three different sizes of windows that don't line up, and from 2 different manufacturers
A door that was bought for price rather than appearance
Badly installed vinyl siding
Cheap vinyl soffit

This is what they refer to in Philly as a 'lipstick and rouge job'. The panels and vinyl are probably hiding failing brickwork.

No it was to replace old aluminum siding.. it’s a very urban neighborhood hence lack of green.. In person it’s very chic

Too me it looks like painted panels of plywood. Might look better on a modern home but not on this.

Bennyben u should dumb lol it’s cement board guys please step your comments up.. this forum smh the house sold for 300k

That house sold for 300k?! Wow.

I like the look, other than the door. they (you?) added a whole floor to it, which seems like a ton of work for 300k, but maybe it was cheap to buy.

Sky, yes I know it's cement board. But it looks like sheets of plywood.

"I’ve seen this done a lot.. and seems it would save alot of cost.." - yeah, anything that saves a lot usually looks it. I agree with everything that tatts said.

Actually adding the 3rd level isn’t that expensive if u have a walk up attic with rafters and not trusses...

Mark Demerly: "The material is a cement board panel and the color is integral with the panel. The product was by CBF at www.cbf11.com. It was installed over a liquid applied air infiltration barrier with core-vent venting strips and mechanical stainless steel fasteners. We also installed black masking behind the panels to project the air infiltration barrier that we had used and to darken the shadow line.
[The fasteners appear invisible...] The fasteners are exposed stainless steel with hex heads for a cleaner look."

Could the white 'outlines' be altered?

Like how the cement board is used on Everdebz's example, but not on sky's.

Bennyben75 it seems to be a popular look... One block over

I think it makes a tremendous socioeconomic statement.

(not a positive one)

House combover.

Or they were flipped by the same person who got a deal. I think it looks ugly and not in keeping with the area (which does actually have some actual quality architecture in with the cheap mill worker townhouses.)

I’m just curious - is this house in the U.S? In a major northeastern city perhaps? I have never seen this style in person.

With wood siding you need an overhang -- preferably 16" or so -- or you're asking for trouble.

To me, using two kinds of wood as in this pic makes it appear you ran out of the board siding you used on the side and didn't finish the front.

You might consider something more like this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/51/d6/7651d6f886e5d5f768736fc20a7c13a5.jpg

The vertical boards on siding panels in the gable creates a different look for part of the siding but results in a finished look.

You should see some of the street maps. It’s craziness.

Also I believe some of the housing stock was actually built BY the mill or mine owners (then ‘sold’ to the worker by way of keeping back part of the wages forever) so you know those were done as on the cheap as possible. Most of our Titans of Industry back in the day were not all that great as human beings, at least for much of their lives.

(Andrew Carnegie was a big steel guy, and he did eventually decide that culture was important even for workers, and so built community buildings - mostly but not exclusively libraries - dotted here and there in the neighborhoods where he had workers. Plus the big main library and museum in Pittsburgh is from him. But as a result you can be in an area of really pretty dumpy houses - probably economically depressed even now, a lot of those neighborhoods haven’t recovered well even though the city itself has - and then come across a building with gorgeous old stone and fixtures and beautiful tiling and trim work inside, because Carnegie put a library or a gymnasium or a concert space there.) (We also have an excess of fantastic churches, some quite close to each other, because where the workers DID put money and spare time and energy was into their church - and since they kept importing people from whatever country had the most people desperate to leave at the time, you’d have a group of Italian people next to a group of Polish people next to a group of Germans next to a group of Ukranians, and none of them spoke English all that well so they wanted their own church in their own language, so they built one. And of course lots of them were craftsmen from back home, so they showed off their skills in the church construction since there was no need for that kind of thing in the mill or mine.)

I think it looks awful !

Make the house appear to be thoughtfully and harmoniously designed on all sides. Don't make it look like the builder ran out of materials or the owner "cheapened out" after the front was finished.

Piratefoxy this subject house is in the south side flats not the slopes.. and you said not keeping with the area... what look is good for the area? Standard lap siding? This is turning into a decent thread

Honestly I’d like to see people working to renovate the houses with an eye towards the overall age of the neighborhood, taking architectural cues from those buildings that exist that do have more in the way of details to work with. There are old buildings dotted around the city that could easily be used as inspiration to spruce up an older house, even if all the details aren’t actually original to that house due to the socioeconomic status of the original owners. This is a city with a lot of history and a lot of architectural variety, we shouldn’t lose that because people want to flip houses quick and dirty and so line the streets in ‘popular’ areas with whatever they could get a deal on for materials or installation.

Plus, there’s nothing wrong with standard lap siding if it belongs on the house style. Just because McMansions have seventeen billion finishes including at least one stone and one brick it doesn’t mean all houses have to. A house with properly done lap siding and repaired and freshly painted trim and good landscaping can have plenty of curb appeal. (That goes back to taking cues from the neighborhood. Make it what it IS, just in better shape, all cleaned up from the residue of however many years of steel mill pollution.)

In some cases, where a house can’t be salvaged, putting up a modern design can work, but it needs to be done sensitively with an eye towards creating a good contrast with the old housing stock in the area. The British can be quite good at this - they’re dealing with buildings that quite frequently are MUCH older than what we have to work with, and where you really can’t sensibly add on and have it look original - or doing such an addition would be artistically dishonest about the original building - so you’ll see homes and other buildings which are quite old paired with unashamedly modern construction that still WORKS because they’ve gotten the lines and the proportions and textures of materials right. And usually being UNASHAMEDLY modern is part of it - all the new parts are modern and they all go together, there’s no ‘well, we did this part modern, but then we had this door from 1993 hanging around so we’ll just use that, and eh, just put regular siding on the sides.’

I mean, we’re talking about housing stock that has history. We shouldn’t be trying to slap a bandaid on so we can pretend it’s all trendy new-build. They can be perfectly nice homes for people starting out in life without trying to pretend the houses and the neighborhood have always been a hub of nightlife and drunk college students. It’s disrespectful.

Plus I personally think it’s way more interesting to live in a place that has History and doesn’t try to pretend otherwise, even as it lives in the present.

Yea you had me until the last part... I don’t think making a “cheap” modest home is appealing.. in popular areas make the homes as nice as possible.. I included 2 renovated townhouses I think you would like the style that are also a few streets over on 19th

I didn’t say they had to be cheap, just that we shouldn’t be trying to pretend they’re something they aren’t. If someone wants a super modern new build, that’s what they should get. They shouldn’t get an old house that has had some ‘modern’ finishes slapped on like a bandaid. It’s ugly and, like I said, I think it’s disrespectful to the house and the history of the area. You can use modern finishes in a way that’s sensitive to history, but it takes skill. I don’t think I’d personally try, because I’m not sure exactly what it is that makes the juxtaposition work in some cases and fail horribly in others.

I do think those two look MUCH better. The one on the left could probably get away with a little more trim around the windows (to add visual interest and make it look more finished) using a trim style/profile that’s regionally and age appropriate for the house. (I wouldn’t copy the house next door necessarily, but I’d take a wander around and see what’s already out there in the neighborhood - in that area where the houses tend to have so little detail you’d probably need to look also at commercial buildings from the same sort of time period, as they tend to be more architecturally interesting.)

Those two also look much much less ‘cheap’ to me than the HardiPanel thing, which mostly just looks like someone forgot to finish the house. Those HardiPanel houses if I was looking to buy I’d find a home inspector with a reputation for being painfully thorough, because it just looks like whomever redid the house would’ve taken the cheap shortcut on fixing structural and functional issues (like plumbing) too, even if the interior finishes looked spiffy on the surface.

(ETA: I specified people starting out in life not as a cue that they should be cheap, but because that’s one of the primary markets for that area, the homes are generally not of a size where someone used to modern space would want to raise kids from little. So you’re looking at singles, couples not planning on kids soon or at all, maybe a handful of downsizers who want to be closer to the shops and restaurants in that area. Mostly probably a first home purchase for people with well paying professional jobs so they don’t have to go cheap for a first home, but they don’t want to be in the suburbs or have to deal with a sprawling huge house, either. It’s kind of like a nice city apartment, but in house form.)