17th century cotswold stone cottage

[Gareth Hughes]

Well, you'd be disappointed if I don't come back on that. "Taste is in the eye of the beholder" is precisely the sort of pseudo-democratic relatavistic cr@p that has led to the whole country looking like a dungheap over the past 100 years. You can't say "that looks horrible" any more because the response is "well it's my taste and I like it". Sorry Mr Pleb, but you are wrong to like it and just as I get annoyed by poor written English, architectural grammar needs to be respected too.

Back when you knew your place, your educated landlord would impose his taste on the look of everything. It may not have fitted in with modern notions of everyone having "rights" to inflict their appalling visual sense on the world at large, but it did mean things looked better.

That really takes the biscuit!! That is the most pompous post to date, and there really have been a few!!

Rob

Thank you.

 

[Nemesis]

I thought it well-informed actually.

But there you go - what can I know?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I thought it well-informed actually.

But there you go - what can I know?

Go back to sorting the dung, lass, and speak when you're spoken to... :twisted:

 

[Nemesis]

Forelock duly tugged and I back from your presence...

 

[Cloudscape]

Local to me, there are some houses with (some) internal walls that seem to have been left unplastered - not a hint of plaster even having been used. I started thinking about them after reading one of Lander's books, where he said that the worst thing you could do was expose stone walls (and because I know that's exactly what 000s of people are doing to old houses in France).

So - in these local houses, should their walls be left bare, or plastered?

At some point, I hope to incororate a stable block into my house (it's joined on). That's four rooms with (currently) bare stone that's been limewashed about once in a few centuries. Should I be plastering the rooms I want to live in (the upper two)? The stones themselves are nothing fancy - far from it.

In the stable and 'coach' bit downstairs, the mortar between the stones is clearly visible. It's interesting to look at, because it seems to contain all sorts of things and the two rooms are different.

I don't know what's right or wrong for these parts of the house.

Incidentally, as a designer, I am used to people saying 'good design is a matter of taste'. I usually foam at the mouth and bite their ankles. :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

You can't say "that looks horrible" any more because the response is "well it's my taste and I like it".

Of course you can say "that looks horrible", people do it all the time, but it's hardly reasonable to expect the entire population to agree is it? After all, there wouldn't be a wealth of architectural styles if people had always stayed pure to one tradition.

Your analogy with the English language is quite a good one; it only exists in its present form because of all the crass, insensitive and plebian abuses it has endured and subsequently embraced over the centuries. Things change, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, but they change. You are free to dislike it, but it won't stop it happening.

 

[Penners]

"Taste is in the eye of the beholder" is precisely the sort of pseudo-democratic relatavistic cr@p that has led to the whole country looking like a dungheap over the past 100 years. You can't say "that looks horrible" any more because the response is "well it's my taste and I like it". Sorry Mr Pleb, but you are wrong to like it and just as I get annoyed by poor written English, architectural grammar needs to be repected too.

Well, since you've clearly awarded yourself the right to be downright insulting to the OP and to me, I'm sure you would expect me to respond in kind.

If you weren't so bound up in your own ominscience, you might recognise that we're not talking about architecture. We're talking about taste (and no, they're not necessarily the same thing). I refer you to your own orginal insult:

do you prefer the utterly inauthentic, tasteless, vulgar, tatty and horrid 1970s pub / "Flintstones" look?

You might also care to consider the spuriousness of your comparison between this matter and English grammar. The rules of grammar can be written down and learned. Taste is entirely subjective. If I choose to paint my sitting room wall in a colour that you hate, what the hell has it to do with you? It isn't right and isn't wrong - it just happens to be my taste.

Liking a bare stone wall is no different. The OP has probably helped his building by hacking the gypsum plaster off his wall, and if he decides to leave it that way, it's his business and nobody else's (unless - as I said above - the building is listed).

This isn't a public building. It isn't even the exterior of a vernacular building, that might offend your eye.

And by the way, I didn't say I liked it. I simply said the OP has a right to like it.

 

[Nemesis]

The rules of grammar can be written down and learned. Taste is entirely subjective

The 'rules' are entirely subjective and not laid down in law. Simply because some people have, over time, published books stating that's what they think is correct usage, it is no more than their opinion really.

Although I appreciate in some cases what is being destroyed is modern plaster, the fad for exposing walls is also removing an important part of the historic fabric of buildings in many cases, with original lime and hair going into skips.

Once it's gone it's gone.

 

[Penners]

the fad for exposing walls is also removing an important part of the historic fabric of buildings in many cases, with original lime and hair going into skips.

But not in this case.

 

[Nemesis]

And although it is of course up to home owners, mostly interior walls are not of the finest quality stonework, as they were intended to be plastered. A layer of plaster gives some insulation also.

 

[worms]

I hesitate to enter the fray in this one for fear of branding myself as a tasteless plebeian. However...

My property is a 19th C cart shed converted to a house in the late 40's, mainly by the addition of acres of gyproc and cement. All the rooms are in the original building, served by a "new" lean-to passageway along the front.

I occasionally have the notion that it would restore the historic integrity of the building if I removed the gyproc from the old front wall of the original building (now internal), returning it to the original whitewashed, lime-pointed rubble wall.

Question is, would this be the "pub" solution? Would it help differentiate the new from the old? Or would I be destroying the 40s fabric which is possibly now interesting in that the modern approach to developing this property would be very different from that taken at the end of the war? (It is austerity gyproc which bears a printed warning about the quality of fixings currently available).

 

[Penners]

And although it is of course up to home owners, mostly interior walls are not of the finest quality stonework, as they were intended to be plastered. A layer of plaster gives some insulation also.

I entirely agree with all those points.

 

[Moo]

I get annoyed by poor written English,

Shhhhh !

 

[Nemesis]

I get annoyed when people get annoyed, and take new posters here to task on the quality of their written prose, rather than answer the query.

Many can't help it.