Blood boiling corner

[Gareth Hughes]

A thread in which to post all your favourite examples of how to enhance and improve your period property :twisted:

To kick off,

Extension of the month:View attachment 1

Replacement windows of the year:

 

[Ian Bond]

Nice pics Gareth.

I do like what they've done with the wagon wheel - really gives it that olde worldy feel.

As for 2nd pic - they must've been desperate to use those window frames, given the inordinate amount of trouble they've gone to to fit the building to them, rather than the other way round.

Crazy. A bit like this, in the Yorkshire tradition of continuing the patio up the walls...



Here's some appropriate musical accompaniment (works best if you right click and open in a new tab, so you can view the lovely pictures at the same time)

http://www.ziplo.com/Crazy.wav

 

[Kenny]

Gareth, those pics made me smile Ian........like it!

Kenny

 

[biffvernon]

That red house has the most brilliant windows. Where is it? By the writing on the sign I suspect it may be some way off.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

That red house has the most brilliant windows. Where is it? By the writing on the sign I suspect it may be some way off.

Beyond "Russia somewhere" I'm afraid I don't know - it was emailed to me by three friends on the same day.

 

[Raylea]

Mmmm Interesting!! sorry just got to pick my bottom jaw up of the floor, is that really for real?. It must of took more effort to cut it all out then to put them where they were intended. Mmmmmmmmm Interesting!!!!

 

[middi]

We take coservation laws for granted and generally accept them as necessary to preserve and prolong life of historic buildings, this attidude will instill a sense of belonging within society .

It is very sad to see those "hacked about" lovely windows. Unless it is a window sized telescope !!, in which case the owner intends to look into the future and " sod the past" .

 

[Flyfisher]

Those windows are truly astonishing! Not even the worst cowboys with the most blatent disregard would go to the trouble of doing such a bad job.
Perhaps there are some internal constraints that required them to be installed in that way? There has to be a reason, surely?

 

[biffvernon]

They represent the right of the new proletariat to well lit accommodation, cutting across the bourgeois predilection for Greco-Roman nostalgia that consigned the exploited workers to dingy garrets.

 

[piper]

They represent the right of the new proletariat to well lit accommodation, cutting across the bourgeois predilection for Greco-Roman nostalgia that consigned the exploited workers to dingy garrets.

Well - Biff is of course correct. What about our bourgeois "Good Taste"? Who's to say the popular culture liking for vertical crazy paving and Olde Worlde diamond panes is any "worse" than our ever-so-middle-class preference for tasteful (and expensive) lime render? It's the Macdonalds vs. organic vegetarian muesli argument all over again, or like the accusation that classical music is "elitist". However, I'm only doing a bit of devil's advocating :twisted: and certainly don't want to start a whole new debate.
Meanwhile - I have been wanting to post these pics ever since I took them in Spain last May, but was too lazy to get my head round posting pictures. Now it's easy to post them, and this is the perfect thread - enjoy!
View attachment 2
View attachment 1

 

[piper]

A final Spanish picture, from the same village in Las Hurdes, Extremadura, as the monstrosity in my last post ("tasteful addition") Good practice is beginning to appear here and there. This is a nice restoration in traditional style.

 

[biffvernon]

Piper, how do the shutters in your last picture, right foreground, work?

 

[piper]

Piper, how do the shutters in your last picture, right foreground, work?

Sorry Biff, I'm afraid I don't know. It was getting late when we walked through this village, and the place (some sort of local enterprise centre) was all shut up. Going on similar, but not identical, shutters seen elsewhere, I guess they just hinge back from the inside, though they look in one piece rather than two halves - sorry, can't remember. At the time I was more interested in the random slate roof and the stonework. A man I was (trying to!) talk with in the bar of the place we stayed owned a holiday house in the village, which he was trying to restore in traditional vernacular local style, and was very upset at the way so many new developments were being built in bland, all-purpose, modern "Spanish" style - concrete, red mass-produced tiles etc. (however - no plastic drainpipes, all metal as far as I could see). I couldn't understand all he was saying, but there was quite a bit about lack of planning laws, and corruption of local politicians to avoid such regulations as there are. We may sometimes complain about Building Regs, but in some ways we do things better here. Las Hurdes is a fascinating region, with villages among very steep intensively terraced hillsides, very depopulated now, with a history of extreme poverty and isolation, but now with quite a lot of effort going on to promote local businesses, tourism etc. and to emphasise the strong local culture, regional food, traditional music etc. including efforts to revive and preserve the local vernacular building traditions. But the few really good new buildings in traditional style nearly all seem to be municipal, state supported, and a drop in the ocean of mostly hideous private new builds. I guess this story can be repeated across much of Europe (if not the world).

 

[Ian Bond]

Well - Biff is of course correct. What about our bourgeois "Good Taste"? Who's to say the popular culture liking for vertical crazy paving and Olde Worlde diamond panes is any "worse" than our ever-so-middle-class preference for tasteful (and expensive) lime render? It's the Macdonalds vs. organic vegetarian muesli argument all over again, or like the accusation that classical music is "elitist". However, I'm only doing a bit of devil's advocating :twisted: and certainly don't want to start a whole new debate.

The answer to that, is they've taken something that was a simple, vernacular form and beautiful in its own right and uglified it.

There is such a thing as poor taste, and it's got nowt to do with money or social class.

 

[biffvernon]

Yes, we don't do so badly compared to many places. A town I've visited in France a few times has very strict conservation and planning rules, with lime being more abundant than cement.

 

[piper]

There is such a thing as poor taste, and it's got nowt to do with money or social class.

I entirely agree. As I said, I was in devil's advocate mode. Unfortunately, too much money often means more opportunity to display the poor taste.

 

[piper]

Piper, how do the shutters in your last picture, right foreground, work?

I've just been looking at the picture again (in high resolution) and I'm sure they do open from the inside - but of course there's no glass. In traditional Las Hurdes life, and most other peasant traditions, glass would have been impossibly expensive and almost unknown. If it's cold or raining, you live in the dark. The few new buildings which use the traditional style of walling and slate roofs do have glass windows, of course.

 

[biffvernon]

I'm sure they do open from the inside - but of course there's no glass.

Ah ha, that's what I was wondering. Diferent to the normal French pattern of shutters hinging outwards and glazed casements opening inwards, then. This part of Spain doesn't get too cold in the winter then?

 

[middi]

Internal opening shutters, security bars and no windows was widespread in poorer dwellings in the south of Italy untill the mid 50's.
I remember my grandparents living in one of those. In was not a case of glass being too expensive but more to do with the cost of having window frames made to fit the openings.
Eventually window frames were made on these types of dwellings incorporating shutters, both casements and shutters open internally. A tradition that has followed to this day. On the more "modern" buildings with larger "balcony" style windows internal roller shutters are used.

This system works very well in the hotter climates, the shutters are closed during hottest of days, this keeps the temp. more than 10deg C. lower than the external temp.

I think the same thing has happened in the " mutilated windows" in our picture, the cost to restore and make windows to fit those lovely openings would, probably, have been too expensive. Still, there is no excuse for that particular " abortion".

 

[biffvernon]

both casements and shutters open internally.

Oh ho, how does that work? Doesn't that mean you can't have the glass part shut and the wooden part open at the same time - rather defeating the object of the exercise?