One year after the house across the street burned down, various permits and legal issues have been cleared and building is rapidly underway. A typical American balloon frame. In only a month, concrete has been poured for foundation, the skeleton is complete and plywood is being slapped on.
Americans invented this type of home – stronger than it appears and in some ways ideal as long as there is an abundant supply of milled lumber and cheap nails. Much easier to maintain then old European chateaus – as wealthy expatriates have been discovering for years.
Over a century or so, we have come to expect this to be the absolutely typical housing outside of urban areas. We assume the materials are available and labor is plentiful. Most of the middle class regard it as a birthright.
I suppose that like everything else it will vanish soon.
In the meantime, my wife and old time neighbors complain “too big for the lot” “No personality.” It’s true that current aesthetics (or lack thereof) tries to fit the largest blocky McMansion on as many square inches of property as code allows. People these days live indoors unless away on vacation. A yard larger than a living room is a nuisance. A giant box fits the bill.
Anyway, I enjoy the sense of old-fashioned construction, workers like busy bees in a hive, something quickly emerging from nothing.
Besides, lately complaints are futile and as my radical friends used to say, so it goes.
